actually occur.

He wrote to Thurlow Weed March 15, 1850, "I have just read your note, and of course I am satisfied that the occasion for the difference between Mr. Webster's views and my own was an unfortunate one. But it was there and had to be met. The first element of political character is sincerity. In any event, this question is to continue through this year and longer. We know which class of opinion must gain and which must lose strength. Remember that my dissent on the fugitive slave question alone would have produced the same denunciation if I had gone with Mr. Webster. This thing is to go on to an end near a revolution. While it is going on, could I with consistency or safety be less bold or firm? After it shall be over, could I endure that the slightest evidence of irresolution should have been given on my part?"

Mr. Seward's plea for California, which the objections raised to her admission to the Union by Calhoun and others inspired, was a brilliant piece of eloquence. He began by saying: "Four years ago California, a Mexican province, scarcely inhabited and quite unexplored, was unknown even to our desires, except by a harbor, capacious and tranquil, which only statesmen then foresaw would be useful in the commerce of a far distant future." Sketching her unparalleled growth into a state, asking admission to the family of states, Mr. Seward continued: "Yes. Let California come in. Every new state, whether she come from the east, or from the west; every new state, coming from whatever part of the continent she may, is always welcome. But California, that comes from a clime where the west dies away into the rising east; California, that bounds at once the empire and the continent; California, the youthful queen of the Pacific, in her robes of freedom, gorgeously inlaid with gold, is doubly welcome."

At this time, as we all know, the anti-slavery men were a powerless minority, and the facts and philosophy of the situation in connection with subsequent events invest the slight, graceful figure of the senator from New York, which towered so high in the midst of the assembled statesmen, with a halo of light, and we begin to understand the secret of his peculiar power. He was never ultimately obtrusive with his clear-cut and positive opinions, or hesitant when discussion was appropriate, while his animated countenance at all times revealed his firm faith in his own foresight.

His private letters from Washington during the stormy twelve years of his senatorial service present the man and measures of the period as in a mirror, in clear outline. Judicious extracts from these have been made by his son, for which the country will owe him a debt of gratitude. In 1859 Mr. Seward visited Europe, and his long and closely written

correspondence described the incidents of each day's travel. He attended at the opening of parliament in the house of lords, and listened attentively to the queen's speech, saying: "She read it sitting, and read it beautifully. The scene was a very brilliant one. The figures were the queen in royal attire, with the great officers of state in their robes, the bishops in their robes and mitres, the judges in wigs and robes, the lords in scarlet robes, and the peeresses in magnificent costumes, all arranged with the art of a tableau." The next day Mr. Seward was at the queen's ball, and tells us: “The queen danced gayly and joyously many hours." He went to Scotland, journeyed on the continent, being entertained at the European courts and by representative public characters in all countries; passed some time in Italy, sailed over the blue Mediterranean to Egypt, and went through the vale of Sharon, up to Jerusalem and down the Jordan. After an absence of eight months he returned home in December, 1859, and found the whole country in a ferment. He resumed his seat in the senate early in January, 1860.

The exciting events of that year are familiar to the American public. Mr. Seward was styled the "great arch-agitator" by the southern journals, from one of the most prominent of which the following passage may be quoted: "Unlike others who are willing to follow in the wake of popular sentiment, Mr. Seward leads. He stands a head and shoulders above them all. He marshals his forces and directs the way. The abolition host follows. However we may differ from William H. Seward, we concede to him honesty of purpose, and the highest order of talent. He takes no half-way grounds. He does nothing by halves. Bold, fearless, talented, and possessed of all the requirements of a great political leader, turning neither to the right nor to the left, gifted with a self-possession possessed by few men, he listens to the assaults of his enemies with the most perfect nonchalance, and receives the warmest greetings of his friends with a wonderful composure. He has fought us at every step, disputed every inch of ground. He is at once the greatest and most dangerous man in the government."

Mr. Seward's great speech for the admission of Kansas into the Union was graphically described by Henry B. Stanton in the New York Tribune, who said: "The audience filled every available spot in the senate galleries, and overflowed into all the adjacent lobbies and passages, crowding them with throngs eager to follow Mr. Seward's argument, or even to catch an occasional sentence or word. It was on the floor itself that the most interesting spectacle was presented. Every senator seemed to be in his seat. Hunter, Davis, Toombs, Mason, Hammond, Slidell,

Clingman, Benjamin, and Brown paid closest attention to the speaker. Crittenden listened to every word. Douglas affected to be self-possessed, but his nervousness of mien gave token that the truths now uttered awakened memories of the Lecompton contest, when Lecompton, Seward, and Crittenden, the famous triumvirate, led their allies in their attacks on the administration. The members of the house streamed over to the north wing of the Capitol, almost in a body, leaving Mr. Regan of Texas to discourse to empty benches while Seward held his levee in the senate. His speech was upon the problem awaiting solution by the whole

body of our people. It was the utterance of a man of sharply defined opinions pronounced twenty years ago, then finding feeble echoes, but which have been reiterated until they have become the creed and rallying cry of a party on the eve of assuming the control of the national government. His exposition of the relation of the Constitution to slavery contained in a few lucid sentences all that is valuable upon that subject in Marshall, Story, and Kent. The historic sketch of parties and politics, and the influence of slavery upon both from the rise of the Missouri compromise onward to its fall, exhibited all of Hallam's fidelity to fact, lighted up with the warm coloring of Bancroft. The episodical outline of

the Kansas controversy and of the Dred Scott pronunciamento have never been compressed into words so few and weighty. Nothing could be more felicitous than his invitation to the south to come to New York and proclaim its doctrines from Lake Erie to Sag Harbor, assuring its champions of safe conduct in their raid upon his constituents; while the suggestion that if the south would allow republicans the like access to its people, the party would soon cast as many votes below the Potomac as it now does north of that river, was one of the happiest retorts, whose visible effect upon senators must have been seen to be appreciated. Finally this speech closed by an exposition alike original, sincere, and hearty, of the manifold advantages of the Federal Union, the firm hold it has upon the people, and the certainty that it will survive the rudest shocks of faction."

Mr. Seward's prominent position in the republican party made him the most conspicuous candidate for the next presidential nomination. The memorable Chicago convention met on the 16th of May, 1860, and although Mr. Seward received one hundred and seventy-three votes in the first ballot against one hundred and two given to Mr. Lincoln, the latter was eventually nominated. Mr. Seward soon afterward canvassed the western states in behalf of Mr. Lincoln, telling the young men of the country that if it had devolved upon him to select from all the men in the United States a president to whom he would confide the standard of the cause of freedom against slavery, that man would have been Abraham Lincoln. Mr. Seward was everywhere received with enthusiasm. In Kansas honors innumerable were accorded him. At Atchison, for instance, the streets were filled with arches, one of which, formed of oak-boughs, bore the inscription, "Welcome to Seward, the defender of Kansas and of Freedom." As the canvass progressed the greatness of the crisis grew more manifest. The leading men of each political organization were speaking to excited audiences in every part of the land. Douglas himself was traveling from point to point, earnestly advocating his own principles. Breckinridge had the leading political orators of the south almost unitedly in his service. Then came the election and its results.

President Lincoln made Mr. Seward secretary of state, which department was then located in the old two-story brick building that stood on ground now occupied by the northern end of the treasury department. The two rooms in the north-eastern corner of the second floor were usually occupied by the secretary-one for study, the other for receiving visitors. The building was of plain drab color, with no ornamentation save a portico of six white columns on the northern side. On the morning after his ap

pointment Mr. Seward quietly entered and took his chair, summoning Mr. Hunter, in whose charge the department had been left on the retirement of Judge Black. Mr. Hunter, originally appointed by John Quincy Adams, had been in the department ever since then as chief clerk or assistant secretary. His life had been devoted to its service; he was its memory and guiding hand, while successive presidents and secretaries came and passed away. Mr. Seward made inquiry as to how many of the clerks were loyal to the Union, and every disunion sympathizer was promptly dismissed. He made no inquiry into their politics, but their stay in the department was to depend upon their fidelity in the discharge of their official duties. No case of disloyalty subsequently occurred in this branch of the government, and the same incumbents have continued in place from that day to this, such vacancies only being filled that have occurred through death, resignation, or promotion. One day during his first week in office Mr. Seward asked his son to provide him with a blank-book, remarking that as the epoch would probably be one of historic importance, he would begin to keep a diary. A suitable book was obtained and laid upon his table. On the following morning he came out of his room with giving it back, said: "There is the first page of my diary and the last. One day's record satisfies me that if I should every day set down my hasty impressions, based on half information, I should do injustice to everybody around me, and to none more than my most intimate friends." The book still remains with its one written page.

it in his hand, and

Describing the condition of public affairs at the beginning of the new administration, Mr. Seward said: "It found itself confronted by an insurrectionary combination of seven states practicing insidious strategy to secure eight others. Disaffection lurked, if it did not openly avow itself, in every department and every bureau, in every regiment and in every legation and consulate from London to Calcutta. Of four thousand four hundred and seventy officers in the public service, civil and military, two thousand one hundred and fifty-four were representatives of states where the revolutionary movement was openly advocated and urged, even if not actually organized. No provision had ever been made to anticipate this unprecedented disturbance. The magistracy was demoralized and the laws were powerless."

As important events crowded and overlapped one another, and the pressure of the public danger and its far-reaching consequences kept the president and the cabinet almost constantly in consultation, Mr. Seward wrote to his wife: "I think that care and responsibility will make me forget everybody and everything but the country and its perils. I leave