William Henry Seward (1801-1872) of Auburn, New York, was one of the most consequential Americans of the 19th Century. Not only did he construct the blueprint for America’s overseas expansion (e.g., acquiring the Guano Islands and Midway, brokering the greatest real estate deal in American history – “Seward’s Folly,” the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million), he was also a two-term governor of New York (1839-43), a U.S. senator (1849-61), and U.S. Secretary of State, an office he held through both the Lincoln and Johnson administrations (1861-69).
Seward had been the favorite for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination; after his loss by a whisker to Lincoln at the Republican convention, he was devastated. Nonetheless, he undertook a vigorous speaking tour throughout the country on behalf of Lincoln’s candidacy. The tour turned out to be wildly successful; in Chicago, for example, over 200,000 people turned out to hear him speak – the largest crowd in Illinois political history. When Seward’s train stopped in Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln came on board to greet his new advocate; as one observer noted, Lincoln was “very awkward in manner; as if he felt out of place, and had a realizing sense that properly the positions should be reversed.”
Lincoln’s Election
Lincoln’s election in November (which was sealed when New York’s electoral votes were decided in his favor) triggered a sectional crisis. Within days, South Carolina was poised to secede from the Union, with four other states from the deep South soon thereafter to establish dates for their own secession conventions.
In Washington, D.C., the political class was in complete turmoil. Lincoln, back in Springfield, was publicly silent. Seward, on the campaign trail in September, had declared:
The slave power . . . rails now with a feeble voice, instead of thundering as it did in our ears for twenty or thirty years past. With a feeble and muttering voice they cry out that they will tear the Union to pieces. They complain that if we will not surrender our principles, and our system, and our right, being a majority to rule, and if we will not accept their system and such rulers as they will give us, they will go out of the Union. Who’s afraid? Nobody’s afraid!
But now, although he had planned to remain at his home in Auburn, New York, through December, Seward recognized the grave danger to the country and decided he needed to be in Washington instead – to “save the Union in my own way.”
Seward’s Southern Strategy
Recognizing that the “Cotton States” were lost to the Union (at least for the time being), Seward – together with his political alter-ego, Thurlow Weed (New York State Republican leader and editor of the Albany Evening Journal) – believed that the best hope was to do everything possible to keep the Upper South in the Union; if he was successful in achieving that goal, economic and other pressures would likely then cause the seceding states to come back into the fold.
Just weeks after the election came the first salvo: Weed published two editorials questioning the necessity of Northern personal liberty laws (designed to negate the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850) and also asking why the Missouri Compromise line could not be restored – “that secured to the South all Territory adopted by Soil and Climate, to its ‘peculiar institution.’” This latter proposal was thought to be an immaterial concession given the widely-held belief (in the North, at least) that the Southwest territory’s climate and terrain rendered it unsuitable for slavery. Notwithstanding, Weed’s editorials brought on a firestorm of criticism from many Republican leaders (including Lincoln – but not publicly), so much so that Seward would claim that he had had no role in or knowledge of Weed’s actions. (This is extremely unlikely because Seward had met with Weed right before the editorials, and, as Seward once said: “Seward is Weed and Weed is Seward. What I do, Weed approves. What he says, I endorse. We are one.”)
Once in Washington, Seward cast as broad a net as possible: cautioning Republican Senators and Congressmen to be restrained, and reaching out to Southerners of all stripes, including his friend and Senate colleague Jefferson Davis. On December 2, 1860, Seward wrote to Weed: “If we can keep peace and quiet until the decree of S.C. is pronounced the temper will be favorable on both sides to conciliation.” About ten days later Seward received a letter from Lincoln (dated December 8) requesting that he become Secretary of State in the new administration. Rather than reply immediately, Seward and Weed determined that Weed should visit Lincoln, not only to negotiate Seward’s role in the cabinet, but, more importantly, to take the president-elect’s temperature on how to deal with the volatile political climate in Washington.
On December 20, the same day South Carolina seceded, Weed met with Lincoln in Springfield. As to the cabinet, Weed, wanting a composition favorable to Seward and compromise efforts, suggested that at least two Southerners be appointed: to that end he gave Lincoln the names of four prominent Southern men with Union sympathies. He also urged Lincoln not to be swayed to appoint former Democrats (now Republicans), especially Salmon Chase (known to be anti-compromise of any kind). This lobbying was a mixed bag: Lincoln was open to appointing Southerners; but he was clear in being committed to former Democrats as well.
As far as Lincoln’s openness to compromise, that part of the meeting went badly. Lincoln had read Weed’s December 17 editorial re-urging the Missouri Compromise line and he called it “a heavy broadside”; Lincoln made it clear that he was (and would be) inflexible on the issue of slavery’s expansion. Instead, Lincoln presented Weed with three resolutions he wanted Seward to present to the Senate:
(1) That the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution should be enforced by federal law;
(2) That state laws in conflict with federal law (i.e., the personal liberty laws) should be invalidated; and
(3) That “the Federal Union must be preserved.”
But while Lincoln was issuing these (still private) directives, the political climate in Washington was getting even hotter. On December 18, Senator John Crittenden had proposed several constitutional amendments, one of which provided that, in all territories “now held or hereafter acquired,” the Missouri Compromise line would be reimposed. Two days later a committee of thirteen Senators (including Seward) was appointed to consider the “Crittenden Compromise.”
Seward Versus Lincoln
Lincoln’s leading biographer, Michael Burlingame, has written that Seward “[d]ominat[ed] Congress that winter” in his efforts to keep the Union from breaking apart before Lincoln could take office on March 4, 1861. Thus, and notwithstanding Lincoln’s clear (but private) directive against compromise on the extension of slavery (“Have none of it. The tug has to come and better now than later.”), Seward privately wooed prominent Southern Unionists with promised support for the Crittenden Compromise (in some form). For example, to James Barbour of Virginia, who told him that “nothing materially less than the Crittenden compromise” would keep his state in the fold, Seward replied: “I am of your opinion that nothing short of that will allay the excitement, and therefore I will favor it substantially.”
But given the “hereafter acquired” language in the Crittenden Compromise, no Republican (including Seward) could ultimately agree to the proposal, because it clearly envisioned the country expanding into the Caribbean where slavery existed (e.g., Cuba). But at the same time that proposal was being waylaid a number of other critical events happened. First was a move by Major Anderson of his troops to the more defendable Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor on December 27; that caused President Buchanan’s cabinet to collapse, with its Southern members bolting. Seward wrote several letters to Lincoln the next day, alerting him to the “fevered excitement here,” and suggesting that Lincoln come to Washington earlier than planned to understand better the mood of the U.S. Capitol; he also suggested some new Southern Unionists for the cabinet; lastly, he formally agreed to serve as Secretary of State.
Seward was also busy on other fronts at the same time. On December 28, he met with James Orr, who had come to Washington to seek recognition of South Carolina as an independent country. Orr told Seward that Anderson’s action was perceived in a number of Southern States as “unanswerable evidence” that the federal government intended “to coerce South Carolina.” Seward agreed that Anderson’s “movement was a most unfortunate one” and suggested that it might be possible to have Anderson evacuate Sumter and return to his prior (and hard to defend) fort.
Behind the scenes, Seward (in collaboration with his close friend Congressman Charles Francis Adams, as well as other colleagues) also helped devise two alternatives to the Crittenden Compromise. The first became known as the New Mexico Plan, whereby the large western territory south of the Missouri Compromise line would be admitted into the Union as a state without regard to slavery (New Mexico had a slave code and eleven slaves within the territory – but most people believed it to be inhospitable to plantation slavery), with the large territory north of the line being free of slavery. A slightly different proposal – the so-called Border State Plan – would have forbidden Congress as well as any territorial legislature from enacting a law for or against slavery south of the Missouri Compromise line. While there appeared to be some early optimism for some version of these compromise proposals – they in fact split the Upper South from the Lower South (and there was some possibility of passage, at least in the House of Representatives) – what these proposals really accomplished was to buy time for Seward in the months of the New Year to continue to try to hold the Upper South in the Union – at least until Lincoln could take office.
January 1861
As the New Year started, however, things were trending in an ominous direction. On January 9, not only did Mississippi follow South Carolina and secede, but a federal ship trying to re-supply Fort Sumter was fired upon and turned back as it tried to enter Charleston Harbor. Then, on January 10 and 11, first Florida and next Alabama left the Union. During this same time, the Virginia legislature was called into a special session to consider secession. Against this backdrop, Seward stood up in the Senate on January 12 to somehow try to stem the tide.
Thurlow Weed days before had published the news that Seward would be the incoming Secretary of State, so there were great expectations that the new administration’s “Premier” would “extend the olive branch” and that his speech might yet save the Union; anticipation ran so high that approximately 1,800 people crammed into the Senate chamber to hear from the Capitol’s leading Republican.
The Speech (and Its Aftermath)
At the outset, Seward cited the multiple benefits which had accrued to all the states since the founding of the country, and predicted calamities if the Union were dissolved. Then he turned to the concessions he would make to prevent civil war: there were five:
● All state laws in conflict with the Constitution (e.g., the personal liberty laws) would be repealed;
● A constitutional amendment would be enacted to ensure that slavery could not be interfered with “in any state”;
● Kansas should be admitted as a free state, with the remaining western territory being divided into two additional states (implying New Mexico would come in as a slave state); alternatively, a constitutional convention should be held in a few years (after passions had cooled down) to consider the status of the western territory and any related issues;
● To deter another incident like John Brown’s invasion of Virginia to foment a slave insurrection, Congress should enact a law to “prevent mutual invasions of states by citizens of other states”; and
● There should be two separate railroads constructed to reach the Pacific – a northern one and a southern one.
Reactions to the speech were widely different: Radical Republicans and abolitionists denounced it (including Seward’s own wife!), and the secessionist wing of the Democrats did too. But neither group was the audience to which Seward was appealing. Importantly, as The New York Times reported, leading border states representatives were “highly pleased” by the speech and “the people . . . who represent the conservative spirit of the South [] are in fine spirits.” And as Lincoln wrote to Seward, the speech “is well received here [in Springfield], and, I think, is doing good all over the country.”
Lincoln was right, because a few days later the Virginia legislature rejected convening a secession convention. The legislature also called for a “Peace Convention” consisting of all states to take place in Washington starting in the first week of February. Henry Adams (Congressman Adams’ youngest son) would later credit Seward’s hidden-hand behind the idea of a “Peace Convention”; whether true or not, the process allowed Seward to continue his efforts to strengthen Union sentiment in the Upper South during January and February.
But Lincoln was still resisting any compromise on the extension of slavery, and Seward recognized that without the president-elect indicating some flexibility there would be no way to bolster sufficient Union support in the Upper South. On January 27, Seward wrote Lincoln that “[t]he appeals from the Union men in the Border states for something of concession or compromise are very painful since they say that without it those states must go with the tide, and your administration must begin with the free states, meeting all the Southern states in a hostile confederacy. . . . It is almost in vain that I tell them to wait, let us have a truce on slavery, put our issue on Disunion and seek remedies for ultimate grief in a constitutional question. . . . [E]very thought that we think ought to be conciliatory forbearing and patient, and so open the way for the rising of a Union Party in the seceding states which will bring them back into the Union.”
Seward’s plea seemed to touch a chord. In his February 1 response, Lincoln wrote to Seward, reiterating his (still private) opposition to a compromise on slavery’s expansion, but adding:
As to fugitive slaves, District of Columbia, slave trade among slave states, and whatever springs of necessity from the fact that the institution is amongst us, I care but little….Nor do I care much about New Mexico, if further extension were hedged against.” (Emphasis added.)
As noted by Michael Burlingame, this last sentence “represented a momentous policy shift” by Lincoln. And his house organ – the Illinois State Journal – also signaled a potential endorsement of the admission of New Mexico as a slave state.
Upon receiving Lincoln’s letter, Seward told Congressman Adams that Lincoln “approved his course.” But Seward did not see any compromise garnering enough support at that point and did not want to risk “making himself responsible for a rejected plan” (according to Lord Lyons, Britain’s ambassador to the United States); as Seward told a New York group espousing a variation of the Crittenden Compromise, if he backed a losing plan he would be finished politically and “would have to go back to Auburn and amuse myself with writing history the rest of my life.” Instead, with the Peace Convention just getting underway in Washington, Seward continued his back-channel efforts to strengthen Union sentiment in the Upper South.
February 1861
Beyond the Peace Convention itself, there was even more favorable news: Virginia’s vote on February 4 was a dramatic rejection of secession. Of 152 delegates elected to the state convention, not more than 30 supported immediate secession, and a requirement that a convention vote in support of secession would have to be put to a statewide election won by a two to one margin. Then, on February 9 came even better news: Tennessee voters rejected the calling of a secession convention all together. These two developments seemed to justify all of Seward’s efforts since November and he was in “high spirits.” Henry Adams wrote to his father (Congressman Adams): “[Seward] says . . . [w]e shall keep the border states, and in three months or thereabouts, if we hold off, the Unionists and Disunionists will have their hands on each other’s throats in the cotton states. The storm is weathered.” Unfortunately, this proved to be the high watermark of Seward’s optimism.
At the same time the Electoral College was (safely) meeting, ensuring Lincoln’s election, Lincoln left Springfield on a circuitous trip through the North on route to Washington. Along the way he made a number of unscripted comments which caused a great deal of consternation to Union sentiment in the Upper South (and thus to Seward, as well). For example, in Indianapolis Lincoln said it would not be “coercion” if the U.S. government held onto its forts in seceded states, or retook “those forts that belong to it.” Later, in New Jersey, Lincoln said “it may be necessary to put the foot down firmly” to deal with the secession crisis (stamping his foot down as he said it, to loud applause). These widely reported comments were directly at odds with Seward’s Southern Strategy and undercut the perceived influence he was supposed to have in the incoming administration. Charles Francis Adams, Jr. (Congressmen Adams’ elder son) wrote that his father and Seward were “more depressed” by Lincoln’s impromptu comments than at any prior time: the president-elect’s statements “have spread the impression that Seward’s policy is not to be followed out,” an impression that has “seriously discouraged the Union men.”
Lincoln in Washington
Upon the president-elect’s arrival in Washington, Seward used all his considerable one-on-one charms to persuade Lincoln to reach out to the Upper South. On Cabinet appointments he was unsuccessful: John Gilmer, the most prominent pro-Union man in North Carolina, declined to serve because of Lincoln’s perceived anti-compromise position; Salmon Chase was appointed Secretary of the Treasury; and the only token Southern appointment went to Montgomery Blair (whose prominent political family was based in Maryland) – according to Henry Adams, this latter appointment was “the death-blow to the policy of Mr. Seward” because the Blairs were on record in favor of “coercion.”
On a more positive note, Lincoln did share with Seward a final draft of his inaugural address. Seward was aghast, informing Lincoln it would cause Maryland and Virginia to secede. Lincoln’s draft was a no-compromise, protect and take back federal property challenge to the seceding states; and it ended with: “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. . . . You can forbear the assault upon [the federal government], I can not shrink from the defense of it. With you, and not with me, is the solemn question of ‘Shall it be peace, or a sword?’”
By letter dated February 24, Seward sent a lengthy response, making more than fifty suggested changes. Many of the suggestions constituted whole-scale deletions of sections indicating Lincoln’s confrontational challenges. He also suggested an entirely new ending:
I close. We are not we 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 battle fields and so many patriot graves pass through 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.”
Two days before March 4, having heard nothing from Lincoln about whether the inaugural address would shift from confrontation to conciliation, Seward played his ultimate card: he wrote Lincoln a short note declining to serve in the new administration. With the Peace Convention having come up with nothing more than a new version of the Crittenden Compromise and an inaugural address sure to cause the Upper South to leave the Union, Seward was telling Lincoln he could not be part of a hard-line, aggressive administration, especially in light of everything he had been trying to do since the election.
When Seward heard Lincoln’s address in March 4, however, he saw that his threat had worked. Gone were the hard-line threats and promises to protect and re-take federal property. Instead, Lincoln endorsed the just passed constitutional amendment (by the Senate that very morning) to protect slavery in the states; and he also endorsed the idea of a Constitutional Convention to address Southern grievances (a long-time Seward proposal). And, of course, Lincoln’s famous closing lifted heavily from the Seward draft.
Before he had given his address, Lincoln had written to Seward asking him to reconsider his withdrawal. Meeting with Lincoln at the White House that afternoon, Seward agreed; and the next morning, Seward confirmed in writing that he had yielded to the “opinions and wishes” expressed by the president.
March 1861
Having kept the Upper South in the Union prior to Lincoln’s inauguration, Seward (who was not yet settled in to being the second most powerful Republican in the Capitol) was laser focused on the May congressional elections in Virginia; he hoped that the Union party in that state would be victorious and a peaceful resolution of the crisis would thereafter occur. The key issue in Virginia (and the Upper South) was “coercion”; that specifically meant cooling hot heads vis-à-vis two federal outposts: Fort Pickens off of Pensacola, Florida, and Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, with the latter being far more important, both strategically and symbolically.
Seward believed that holding on to Fort Sumter would lead to secession by the Upper South and civil war. Thinking Lincoln agreed with him, he repeatedly informed Virginia Unionists that the government would abandon Sumter – a message that was very well received. And when Lincoln’s cabinet met on March 15 and thereafter voted five to two not to re-supply Sumter, Seward believed the issue was resolved and passed on that news to Virginian George Summers (who subsequently told Seward that the news had “worked like a charm” in bucking up Union support in the state). Unfortunately, at the end of March Lincoln decided to re-supply Sumter. That fateful decision led to the firing of South Carolina guns on Sumter and the onset of the Civil War.
Seward’s Strategy (Redux)
It is not historically accurate to conclude that Seward’s strategy failed. What is the case is that it was not really implemented. Seward and Lincoln were never on the same page and, once Lincoln became president, his decision(s) were obviously final. Nonetheless, Seward’s strategy had indisputably bought the new administration time to get into place and start to wield the levers of power. In Henry Adams’ words, Seward’s efforts “like all such attempts at wisdom and moderation in times of heated passion and threatening war” were “swallowed up and crushed under the weight of brute force. [Nonetheless, it was] right to make the effort even if overruled.”