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Miraculously, Seward recovered. Seward was not told of President Lincoln’s assassination, but he divined what had occurred when he saw the American flag at the War Department was signaling a country in mourning. Seward told his male nurse: “The President is dead.”
Oct 6, 2024 · On April 14, 1865, nine days after he was severely injured in a carriage accident, the bedridden Seward was stabbed in the throat by Lewis Powell (alias Lewis Payne), a fellow conspirator of John Wilkes Booth, who had that night assassinated Lincoln.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
During an interval of several months early in 1861, a bellicose Seward invented a "foreign war panacea" for solving the problem of Southern secession and was barely thwarted by President Abraham Lincoln from bringing about such a conflict. Either Seward. was possessed of an almost insane truculence or he had anticipated.
- Early Life
- Marriage
- Political Arena
- Governor of New York
- U.S. Senator
- Ardent Abolitionist
- Presidential Hopeful
- U.S. Secretary of State
- Lincoln Assassination
- Moderate Reconstructionist
William Henry Seward was born in Florida, New York, on May 16, 1801. He was the fourth of six children of Samuel Sweezy Seward and Mary Jennings Seward. Seward’s father was a prominent physician and land speculator. His grandfather served as a colonel in the New Jersey Militia during the Revolutionary War. Seward’s family owned several slaves until...
In 1821, Seward joined the New York State Bar. Two years later, he entered a law partnership with Judge Elijah Miller in Auburn, New York. Soon thereafter, Seward began courting Judge Miller’s daughter, Frances Adeline Miller. The couple married on October 20, 1824. Their marriage produced five children.
While living in Auburn, Seward became active in politics, first as a member of the dying Federalist Partyand then as an anti-Jacksonian National Republican Party. In 1824, while in Rochester, Seward met newspaper editor and politico Thurlow Weed. The two became friends, and Weed served as Seward’s political adviser throughout the latter’s career. B...
Seward resumed his political career in 1838 when New York voters elected him as governor of the state. Re-elected in 1840, Seward served a total of four years. During his tenure, Seward promoted prison reform, increased funding for public education, advocated state support for parochial schools, and sought the extension of canal and railroad system...
Seward’s lifestyle as governor exacted a costly toll on his personal finances, and he decided not to run for reelection in 1842. Instead, he returned to his law practice as a high-profile attorney for the next seven years. In 1849, the Whig-controlled New York State Legislature selected Seward to represent the state in the United States Senate. As ...
During the 1850s, Seward and his wife opened their Auburn home as a safe-house for fugitive slaves. In 1857, Seward provided sanctuary to Harriet Tubman in a brick home on the outskirts of Auburn. Two years later, Seward sold the house to Tubman for a modest sum on lenient terms.
During his tenure in the Senate, Seward helped found the Republican Party. As the presidential election of 1860 approached, many considered him to be the leading Republican candidate. On the advice of Thurlow Weed, Seward undertook an eight-month tour of Europe in 1859 to avoid publicly making inflammatory statements that might offend potential sup...
Still serving in the Senate between Lincoln’s election in November 1860 and inauguration in March 1861, Seward worked unsuccessfully to preserve the Union as it teetered on the brink of civil war. Seward assumed his duties as Secretary of State in the Lincoln administration with expectations to domineer his ostensibly unsophisticated leader from th...
Seward nearly lost his life on the same night that John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Lincoln. On April 14, 1865, Lewis Powell, a co-conspirator of Booth, visited Seward’s home on the pretense of delivering medicine to the secretary who had been injured in a carriage accident a few days before. Upon entering the house, Powell pistol-whipped S...
Seward stayed on as Secretary of State for President Andrew Johnsonafter Lincoln’s death. As a moderate on Reconstruction issues, Seward often found himself caught between Radical Republicans in Congress and Johnson’s more lenient policies. In general, however, Seward remained loyal to Johnson, and he helped broker the president’s acquittal by the ...
- Harry Searles
- He attended the first national political convention in U.S. history. Third parties are a storied tradition in America. The first of any real consequence was the short-lived Anti-Masonic Party, which—as the name implies—sought to abolish the secretive fraternal order known as Freemasonry.
- While governor, he took a stand for education. Once the Anti-Masonic party started to fade, Seward joined an upstart group called the Whigs, and was elected Governor of New York on that party's ticket in 1838.
- He devised an expansionist bird poop law (that's still on the books). In 1849, Seward was elected to the U.S. Senate where he represented the Empire State (a position he held until 1861).
- His Auburn home was part of the Underground Railroad. Exactly how many fugitives traveled through the Seward house is unknown. Still, the place was apparently a well-regarded stop.
Best known as Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of state during the Civil War, William Henry Seward conducted full careers as a statesman, politician, and visionary of America’s future, both before and after that traumatic conflict.
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Seward has been severely criticised because he was jovial, patient, and overoptimistic, rather than grave, vigorous, and precise.
