William Henry Seward
By John M. Taylor
HarperCollins, 352 pages, $25
We, modern folk, tend to forget about William Henry Seward-or never learn of him. We are focused on Abraham Lincoln, the man who saved the Union, the man who freed the slaves. Lincoln is woven into the American psyche, one of the better angels of our nature.
But in May 1859, when Lincoln was still a relatively obscure politician, Seward was the leader of the Republican Party, a prominent member of the Senate, and the standard-bearer for the anti-slavery cause.
Seward`s departure that month on a seven-month European holiday was, John M. Taylor writes, ”an important political event. Nearly three hundred invited guests … boarded the excursion boat that took Seward to the eighteen-hundred-ton paddle-wheeler off Sandy Hook. … A second steamer pulled alongside to bid bon voyage to America`s supposed next president. A band played `Hail to the Chief.”`
Yet, 18 months later, it was Lincoln who was elected.
Even then, it was difficult for many to accept Lincoln`s pre-eminence. Seward, the new secretary of state, was viewed by many as the power behind the throne. When Thaddeus Stevens, a former anti-slavery ally of Seward, learned of the secretary`s doubts about Lincoln`s Emancipation Proclamation, he said, ”I have accused the prime minister to his face for having gone back on the faith he taught us, and instead of arming every man, black or white, who would fight for this Union, he is preventing a well-meaning President from doing so.”
Seward had no such power. Still, he was, without question, the most important member of Lincoln`s Cabinet. He was the one whose diplomatic skill kept Britain and France from helping the South during the Civil War. More important, he was the one to whom Lincoln turned for advice.
Seward provided important public service before Lincoln and after the president`s death-his purchase of Alaska for $7.2 million, for example, was during the Andrew Johnson administration-and Taylor does a fine job of recounting this complex politician`s full but often overlooked life.
In telling of Seward`s time with Lincoln, Taylor gives an especially fascinating glimpse of the interaction of the two men, showing the importance of Seward and the greatness of his president. It came when Lincoln asked Seward to review his first inaugural address, and the secretary added this closing paragraph:
”I close. We are not and must not be aliens or enemies but fellow countrymen and brethren. Although passion has strained our bonds of affection too hardly, they must not, I am sure they will not, be broken. The mystic chords which proceeding from so many battlefields and so many patriot graves pass through all the hearts and all the hearths in this broad continent of ours will yet again harmonize in their ancient music when breathed upon by the guardian angel of the nation.”
Lincoln took that, made revisions and ended his speech this way:
”I am loth (sic) to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell and chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
