Part 7 (1/2)

Seward soon found the land-developing business more engaging than law. The six young clerks he hired quickly became a surrogate domestic circle, though he a.s.sured Frances in his nightly letters that he missed her and his children terribly. Once more he reiterated how he yearned for the day when they would read aloud to each other by the fire. He had just finished and enjoyed three of Scott's Waverley novels, but ”there are a thousand things in them, as in Shakespeare, that one may enjoy more and much longer if one has somebody to converse with while dwelling upon them.” His children pined for him and the vibrant life his presence brought to the household. More than a half century later, his son Fred ”so vividly remembered” one particular evening when his father read aloud from the works of Scott and Burns that he realized ”it must have been a rare event.”

Life in Westfield, meanwhile, settled into a pleasant routine. So long as Seward kept intact the image of his happy home in Auburn, he could fully immerse himself in new adventure elsewhere. His serenity was shattered when his little girl contracted smallpox and died in January 1837. Returning home for three weeks, he begged Frances, who had plunged into depression, to come back with him to Westfield. She refused to leave her two boys and ”did not think it would be quite right to take them both from their Grandpa.”

Back in Westfield, Seward wrote anxiously to Frances that the ”lightness that was in all my heart when I thought of you and your sanctuary, and those who surrounded you there, was the main const.i.tuent of my cheerfulness.” But now ”I imagine you sitting alone, drooping, desponding, and unhappy; and, when I think of you in this condition, I cannot resist the sorrow that swells within me. If I could be with you, to lure you away to more active pursuits, to varied study, or more cheerful thoughts, I might save you for yourself, for your children, for myself.”

The following summer, Frances was finally persuaded to join him in Westfield. In an exultant letter to Weed, Seward expressed his contentment. ”Well, I am here for once, enjoying the reality of dreams,” he wrote. ”I read much, I ride some, and stroll more along the lake-sh.o.r.e. My wife and children are enjoying a measure of health which enables them to partic.i.p.ate in these pleasures.” He lacked but one thing to complete his happiness: ”If you were here,” he told Weed, ”we would enjoy pleasures that would have seduced Cicero and his philosophic friends from Tusculum.”

While Frances enjoyed her summer, she was unable to share her husband's great contentment. Returning to Auburn in September, she told Harriet Weed she had ”found Westfield a very pleasant little village...but it was not my home and you can very well understand that I am more happy to be here-There is a sort of satisfaction, melancholy it is, in being once more in the room where my darling babe lived and died-in looking over her little wardrobe-in talking with those who missed and loved her.”

By the fall of 1837, an economic slump had spread westward to Chautauqua County. This ”panic” of 1837 brought widespread misery in its wake-bankrupt businesses, high unemployment, a run on banks, plummeting real estate values, escalating poverty. ”I am almost in despair,” Seward wrote home. ”I have to dismiss three clerks; they all seem near to me as children, and are almost as helpless.”

Once again, fortune smiled upon Seward in uncanny fas.h.i.+on. Because Democrats were blamed for the depression, the shrinking economy enlarged his party's political prospects. In the elections that fall, the Whigs swept the state. ”There is such a buzz of 'glorious Whig victories' ringing in my ears,” Seward wrote Weed, ”that I hardly have time to think.” Replying from Albany, where he was back in control, Weed was jubilant. ”I have been two days endeavoring to s.n.a.t.c.h a moment for communion with you, to whom my heart always turns in joy or grief.... It is a great triumph-an overwhelming revolution. May that Providence which has given us deliverance, give us also wisdom to turn our power into healthful channels.”

In the months that followed, Seward and Weed worked together to broaden the Whig Party beyond its base of merchants, industrialists, and prosperous farmers. Hoping to appeal to the ma.s.ses of workingmen, who had generally voted Democratic since Andrew Jackson's day, Weed raised money for a new partisan weekly. Horace Greeley was chosen editor for the fledgling journal. The slight, rumpled-looking, nearsighted young Greeley occupied a garret in New York where he had edited a small magazine called The New Yorker. The new partisan weekly became an instant success, eventually evolving into the powerful New York Tribune. For nearly a quarter of a century, Weed, Seward, and Greeley collaborated to build support first for the Whigs and, later on, for the Republicans. For much of that time, the three were like brothers. If they often quarreled among themselves, they presented a united front to the world.

In the summer of 1838, Weed believed the time was right for Seward's second bid to become governor. At the Whig convention that September, ”the Dictator” was everywhere, persuading one delegate after another that Seward was the strongest possible choice to top the ticket. To bolster his case, he distributed statistics from the 1834 gubernatorial race showing that, despite the Whigs' loss, Seward had claimed more votes than all the other Whig candidates. Weed's magic worked: his protege received the nomination on the fourth ballot. ”Well, Seward, we are again embarked upon a 'sea of difficulties,' and must go earnestly to work.” In fact, most of the work was left to Weed, since it was thought improper in those days for candidates to stump on their own. And Weed did his job well. When the votes were counted, the thirty-seven-year-old Seward was the overwhelming victor.

Seward was thrilled to be back in the thick of things. ”G.o.d bless Thurlow Weed!” he exulted. ”I owe this result to him.” Within a week of the election, however, Seward's nerve began to fail. ”It is a fearful post I have coveted,” he confided to his mentor. ”I shudder at my own temerity, and have lost confidence in my ability to manage my own private affairs.” Frances, pregnant with their third son, Will, had suffered weeks of illness and was nervous about the move to Albany. Confessing that he did not ”know how to keep a house alone,” he wondered if he could instead take up rooms at the Eagle Tavern.

Weed arrived in Auburn and immediately took charge. He secured a mansion with a full-time staff for the governor to rent, and convinced Frances to join her husband. The yellow brick house, Seward's son Fred recalled, ”was in all respects well adapted for an official residence.” Set on four acres, it contained a suite of parlors, a ballroom, a s.p.a.cious dining room, and a library in one wing, with a suite of family rooms in another. While Seward combed through books on history and philosophy, preparing what proved to be a brilliant inaugural message to the legislature, Weed stocked the residence with wine and food, chose Seward's inaugural outfit, and met with hundreds of office seekers, eventually selecting every member of the governor's cabinet. Seward believed ”it was [his] duty to receive, not make a cabinet.”

During the transition period, Seward's impulsive remarks often aggravated the ever-cautious Weed. ”Your letter admonishes me to a habit of caution that I cannot conveniently adopt,” Seward replied. ”I love to write what I think and feel as it comes up.” Nonetheless, Seward generally deferred to Weed, recognizing a superior strategic prudence and experience. ”I had no idea that dictators were such amiable creatures,” he told Weed, no doubt provoking the approval of his proud mentor. ”There were never two men in politics who worked together or understood each other better,” Weed wrote years later in his memoir. ”Neither controlled the other.... One did not always lead, and the other follow. They were friends, in the best, the rarest, and highest sense.”

In later years, Seward told the story of a carriage ride he took from Albany shortly after his election. He had struck up a lively conversation with the coachman, who eventually asked him who he was. When Seward replied that he was governor of New York, the coachman laughed in disbelief. Seward said they had only to consult the proprietor of the next tavern along the road to confirm the truth. When they reached the tavern, Seward went in and asked, ”Am I the Governor of the State of New York or not?” The man did not hesitate. ”No, certainly not!” ”Who is, then?” queried Seward. ”Why...Thurlow Weed!” the man replied.

The youthful governor's inaugural address on New Year's Day, 1839, laid out an ambitious agenda: a vast expansion of the public school system (including better schools for the black population), the promotion of ca.n.a.ls and railways, the creation of a more humane system for the treatment of the insane, and the abolition of imprisonment for debt. His vision of an ever-expanding economy, built on free labor, widespread public education, and technological progress, offered a categorical rejection of the economic and cultural malaise he had witnessed on his Southern trip in 1835.

”Our race is ordained to reach, on this continent, a higher standard of social perfection than it has ever yet attained; and that hence will proceed the spirit which shall renovate the world,” he proclaimed to the New York legislature in the year of his election. If the energy, ingenuity, and ambitions of Northern free labor were ”sustained by a wise and magnanimous policy on our part,” Seward promised, ”our state, within twenty years, will have no desert places-her commercial ascendancy will fear no rivalry, and a hundred cities will enable her to renew the boast of ancient Crete.”

Looking once more to broaden the appeal of the Whig Party, Seward advocated measures to attract the Irish and German Catholic immigrants who formed the backbone of the state Democratic Party. He called on his fellow Americans to welcome them with ”all the sympathy which their misfortunes at home, their condition as strangers here, and their devotion to liberty, ought to excite.” He argued that America owed all the benefits of citizens.h.i.+p to these new arrivals, who helped power the engine of Northern expansion. In particular, he proposed to reform the school system, where the virulently anti-Catholic curriculum frightened immigrants away, dooming vast numbers to illiteracy, poverty, and vice. To get these children off the streets and provide them with opportunities to advance, Seward hoped to divert some part of the public school funds to support parochial schools where children could receive instruction from members of their own faith.

Seward's school proposal provoked a violent reaction among nativist Protestants. They accused him of plotting ”to overthrow republican inst.i.tutions” by undoing the separation of church and state. Handbills charged that Seward was ”in league with the Pope” and schemed to throw Protestant children into the hands of priests. In the end, the legislature pa.s.sed a compromise plan that simply expanded the public school system. But the nativists, whose strength would grow dramatically in the decades ahead, never forgave Seward. Indeed, their opposition would eventually prove a fatal stumbling block to Seward's hopes for the presidential nomination in 1860.

If Seward's progressive policies on education and immigration made him an influential and controversial figure in New York State, his defiant stand against slavery in the ”Virginia Case” brought him into national prominence in the late 1830s and early 1840s. In September 1839, a vessel sailing from Norfolk, Virginia, to New York was found to have carried a fugitive slave. The slave was returned to his master in Virginia in compliance with Article IV, Section 2, of the U.S. Const.i.tution that persons held to service or labor in one state escaping into another should be delivered up to the owner. When Virginia also demanded the arrest and surrender of three free black seamen who had allegedly conspired to hide the slave on the vessel, the New York governor refused.

In a statement that brought condemnation throughout the South, Seward argued that the seamen were charged with a crime that New York State did not recognize: people were not property, and therefore no crime had been committed. On the contrary, ”the universal sentiment of civilized nations” considered helping a slave escape from bondage ”not only innocent, but humane and praiseworthy.”

As controversy over the fate of the three sailors was prolonged, the Commonwealth of Virginia enacted a series of retaliatory measures to damage the commerce of New York, calling upon other Southern states to pa.s.s resolutions denouncing Seward and the state of New York for ”intermeddling” with their time-honored ”domestic inst.i.tutions.” Democratic periodicals in the North warned that the governor's stance would compromise highly profitable New York trade connections with Virginia and other slave states. Seward was branded ”a bigoted New England fanatic.” This only emboldened Seward's resolve to press the issue. He spurred the Whig-dominated state legislature to pa.s.s a series of antislavery laws affirming the rights of black citizens against seizure by Southern agents, guaranteeing a trial by jury for any person so apprehended, and prohibiting New York police officers and jails from involvement in the apprehension of fugitive slaves.

Such divisive incidents-the ”new irritation” foreseen by Jefferson in 1820-widened the schism between North and South. Though few slaves actually escaped to the North each year-an estimated one or two hundred out of the millions held in bondage-the issue exacerbated rancor on both sides. In the North, William Lloyd Garrison's newspaper, the Liberator, called for immediate emanc.i.p.ation and racial equality, denouncing slavery as sinful and inhumane, advocating ”all actions, even in defiance of the Const.i.tution,” to bring an end to ”The Empire of Satan.” Such scathing criticisms moved Southern leaders to equally fierce defenses. They proclaimed slavery a ”positive good” rather than a mere necessity, of immense benefit to whites and blacks alike. As discord between North and South escalated, many Northerners turned against the abolitionists. Fear that the movement would destroy the Union incited attacks on abolitionist printers in the North and West. Presses were burned, editors threatened with death should their campaign persist.

In 1840, Seward was reelected governor, but by a significantly smaller margin. His dwindling support was blamed on the parochial school controversy, the protracted fight with Virginia, and a waning enthusiasm for social reform. Horace Greeley editorialized that Seward would ”henceforth be honored more for the three thousand votes he has lost, considering the causes, than for all he has received in his life.” Nonetheless, Seward decided not to run a third time: ”All that can now be worthy of my ambition,” he explained to a friend, ”is to leave the State better for my having been here, and to ent.i.tle myself to a favorable judgment in its history.”

Throughout the dispute with the state of Virginia, and every other controversy that threatened Seward's highly successful tenure, Weed had proved a staunch ally and friend, answering critics in the legislature, publis.h.i.+ng editorials in the Albany Evening Journal, ever sustaining Seward's spirits. ”What am I to deserve such friends.h.i.+p and affection?” Seward asked him in 1842 as his second term drew to its close. ”Without your aid how hopeless would have been my prospect of reaching the elevation from which I am descending. How could I have sustained myself there...how could I have secured the joyous reflections of this hour, what would have been my prospect of future life, but for the confidence I so undenyingly reposed on your affection?”

Returning to Auburn, Seward resumed his law practice, concentrating now on lucrative patent cases. He found that his fight with Virginia had endeared him to antislavery men throughout the North. Members of the new Liberty Party bandied about his name in their search for a presidential candidate in 1844. Organized in 1840, the Liberty Party was born of frustration with the failure of either major party to deal head-on with slavery. The abrogation of slavery was their primary goal. Though flattered by the attention, Seward could not yet conceive of leaving the Whig Party.

Meanwhile, he continued to speak out on behalf of black citizens. In March 1846, a terrifying ma.s.sacre took place in Seward's hometown. A twenty-three-year-old black man named William Freeman, recently released from prison after serving five years for a crime it was later determined he did not commit, entered the home of John Van Nest, a wealthy farmer and friend of Seward's. Armed with two knives, he killed Van Nest, his pregnant wife, their small child, and Mrs. Van Nest's mother. When he was caught within hours, Freeman immediately confessed. He exhibited no remorse and laughed uncontrollably as he spoke. The sheriff hauled him away, barely reaching the jail ahead of an enraged mob intent upon lynching him. ”I trust in the mercy of G.o.d that I shall never again be a witness to such an outburst of the spirit of vengeance as I saw while they were carrying the murderer past our door,” Frances Seward told her husband, who was in Albany at the time. ”Fortunately, the law triumphed.”

Frances recognized at once an ”incomprehensible” aspect to the entire affair, and she was correct. Investigation revealed a history of insanity in Freeman's family. Moreover, Freeman had suffered a series of floggings in jail that had left him deaf and deranged. When the trial opened, no lawyer was willing to take Freeman's case. The citizens of Auburn had threatened violence against any member of the bar who dared to defend the cold-blooded murderer. When the court asked, ”Will anyone defend this man?” a ”death-like stillness pervaded the crowded room,” until Seward rose, his voice strong with emotion, and said, ”May it please the court, I shall remain counsel for the prisoner until his death!”