For myself, I stood in no very near relations to Mr. Seward until I received
the appointment to Berlin. It is due to his memory to say that I found in
him always, as head of the Department, friendly support, unlimited
confidence, a just conception of European political relations, and a
readiness under all circumstances to do justice and to promote the best
relations between Germany and the United States.
I remain, &c.
[Translation from the Spener’sche Zeitung,
Berlin, October 15, 1872.]
WILLIAM H. SEWARD.
We have already referred to the departed transatlantic statesman in our
daily summary. The greatness of the man, however, demands a more
extended notice than can he given in the limited space of a summary, and
we therefore give one here.
We have briefly alluded to the principal events of his life. He was, on
his father’s side, of Welsh, and on his mother’s side of Irish descent,
and was therefore, notwithstanding his Anglo-Saxon name, of purely
Celtic extraction. His physical exterior gave no indications of this
fact. Acute understanding, political consistency, and unyielding
intrepidity are not the characteristics by which this in other respects
highly gifted Celtic race has distinguished itself in history. Precisely
these qualities were possessed by Mr. Seward in an eminent degree. While
a boy he spent six months at an institute in Georgia, and the brief
insight which he there gained of life in the slave States decided the
political course of his whole life. Thenceforth he was an earnest
abolitionist. While governor of the State of New York, to which office
he was elected in the year 1838, he settled this question so far as he
was concerned. He resolutely refused the surrender of two sailors who
were supposed to have aided fugitive slaves in making their escape, and,
in an official document, boldly declared the act with which they were
charged to be a praiseworthy one. On retiring from his office as
governor, he entered the arena of Federal politics. In the year 1844 he
supported Henry Clay, the unsuccessful candidate for the presidency, and
in 1848 General Taylor, the successful candidate. Finally, in the year
1849, he was elected to the Senate of the United States by an immense
majority. He immediately began the great struggle against slavery, which
was destined to lead, through streams of blood to the removal of this
cancer, which was consuming the vitals of the United States. The
struggle began with a dispute concerning the Territories which had been
annexed to the United States. The South wished to have slavery
introduced by law into these Territories; the North objected Seward
fought in the front rank of the abolition party. It was from his; lips
that the well-known declaration then fell, that the question at issue
was whether slavery was to be extended over the whole Union or was to be
abolished everywhere in its territory. In the year 1852 Seward supported
General Scott, and in the year 1856 Fremont, for the Presidency.
Finally, in May, 1860, at the republican convention held at Chicago, he
received, on the first ballot, 173 votes; the largest number received by
any of the rival candidates was 102, which gave Seward a plurality of 71
votes. A
[Page 274]
plurality, however,
was not sufficient for a nomination by the party; a clear majority was
required; and, as he was vigorously opposed by Horace Greeley, the
editor of the influential New York Tribune, Lincoln, his strongest
competitor, received the necessary majority through the change of a very
few votes after the third ballot. Seward nobly withdrew, and worked with
untiring zeal for his successful rival, who, in the following autumn,
was chosen President by the vote of the whole people. With a proper
appreciation of his merits, Lincoln then selected his self-sacrificing
friend as his minister of foreign affairs.
The early days of the term of the new Secretary of State were dark ones.
“The United States for freedom, and America for the Americans,” had been
the motto of his political career, and now for years he saw the militia
of the North fly before the warlike cavaliers of the slave States, saw
the Union apparently hopelessly disrupted, and, finally, saw a French
army on the soil of the American continent. The famous Monroe doctrine
could certainly not have been more contemptuously set at naught than by
the establishment of a Mexican empire, with a European prince, under the
protection of European bayonets. Seward bided his time. Once, in the
well-known Trent case, he allowed himself to be so far carried away as
to give England an opportunity to interfere in the contest. In his first
note addressed to the London cabinet he very vigorously defended the
search of the British steamer which had been made for the purpose of
arresting the envoys of the rebel States. Subsequent reflection,
however, induced him to yield this point, and he gave all desired
satisfaction to the English government. The passionate Secretary of
State took revenge on England in a speech, in which he referred to the
annexation of Canada to the United States as a simple question of time.
Meantime the affairs of the war began to take a turn. At the moment of
the greatest military triumphs of the South, Seward extorted from the
hesitating Lincoln the decree which irrevocably banished slavery from
the entire territory of the Union, and thereby gave the death-blow to
the warlike southern confederacy. Being thenceforth obliged to hold its
slave population in check, the South succumbed at last, after a glorious
resistance. The vanquished slave-party, however, at once raised the
dagger of the assassin. Lincoln was murdered in the theater, and Seward,
who lay ill in bed, was severely wounded in the face and neck, while one
of his sons was killed in pursuing the assailant. Contrary to the
expectation of his physicians, he recovered from his wounds, although
now sixty-four years of age; and now commenced an era of political
success for him.
Seward had hitherto shown himself a passionate and energetic partisan; he
now showed himself a statesman. In the contest between Congress and the
new President, Johnson, he resolutely took the part
of the latter, who, while making many mistakes, was yet earnestly
laboring for the reconciliation of the conquered South, and did not wish
to abandon it to the partisan bitterness of the fanatical population of
the North. The result justified his course; Johnson
was acquitted by the Congress before which he had been impeached. Still
more decided was Seward’s triumph in foreign politics. In the autumn of
1865 the new Mexican empire seemed firmly established; then it was that
the American Secretary of State first found time to give this subject
his attention. A brief exchange of notes with France sufficed to shake
the Mexican empire to its foundations, to drive the hitherto victorious
French array, demoralized and decimated, home, and to bring about, for
the unfortunate Emperor Maximilian, the catastrophe of Queretaro. The
Monroe doctrine had been fully vindicated by a bloody example. Seward
also lived to see the humiliation of England before America, although
then no longer in the active service of his country. He saw England
found guilty and sentenced to make due reparation by the Geneva court of
arbitration. A few weeks after this he laid his weary head to rest.
The departed American statesman belonged to a class of politicians
scarcely represented in the American politics of to-day. He was a man of
high principle, who knew something higher than the use of the public
resources for private and party purposes. In ardent energy and
unflinching intrepidity, he resembled one of those mighty statesmen who
stood by the cradle of the American Republic. He therefore deserved, in
the midst of smaller contemporaries, to free the great republic of the
West from the stigma of slavery, as he gloriously did, after a most
obstinate struggle.
