MR. SEWARD.
[Fnom OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT. j
New York, July 14, 1865. Jr there be one man eminent in political life in the United States who is regarded in Great Britain with more general disfavour than any other that man is Mr. Seward. He seems to be the bete noir, the Yankee bugaboo, of every true Briton. At the height of the excitement about our rebellion Mr. Lincoln was called all kinds of hard names by the British Press of one inclining, and by that of the other Mr. Davis was spoken of with mingled censure of his principles and admiration of the splendour of his abilities. But as to Mr. Seward there was singular unanimity of condemnation. Among all the offensive politicians in the United States he was found most offensive, and indeed it seemed as if, even by the Liberals and Others who favoured the preservation of this Re- public, our Secretary of State was made the scapegoat of the nation, bearing upon his devoted head all the anger and resent- ment excited by the various causes of grievance which we were supposed to have given the British Government and people, hardly less at times by our friends than by our enemies. There was cause of course for all this, although I hardly think good reason. Mr. Seward's official position placed him always at the point of collision between the two countries. If we were injured he was the attorney for the plaintiff ; if you, attorney for the defendant ; and, whether there is a case or not, the parties to a suit never take a calm and professional view of the purposes and pro- ceedings of the legal gentlemen upon the other side, witness the famous case of "Barden v. Pickwick." And whether there were an actual grievance on either aide to be discussed or not, Mr. Seward was the spokesman of a nation which, having been made the butt of Europe ever since it had the audacity to be born at its full time, to be brought forth, has of necessity maintained a constant attitude of defence and of resentment that has led those who do not see the necessity for its existence to regard it as tetchy, irritable, vain, and singularly lacking in proper deference to its betters. It is therefore with some apprehension of sending an unwelcome letter that, fulfilling a purpose long entertained, I endeavour to give the readers of the Spectator what seems to me a just appreciation of Mr. Seward as a public man.
Mr. Seward has been in public life nearly if not quite forty years, and from the beginning of his career to the present day his efforts have been directed toward the moral and intellectual elevation of his countrymen, and, as far as it was in his power, of all mankind. He has sought to remove disabilities, to do away privilege and restriction, to abrogate, or at least to mollify, the harsh codes which we all have inherited from the days when strength was the only right and force the only law. He became Governor of the State of New York in 1838, and was re-elected. To his efforts that commonwealth largely owes the improvement of its internal resources, the abolition of imprisonment for debt, and the establishment of a new system of common-school instruc- tion, the advantages of which he /aboured amid much obloquy to diffuse among our entire population, foreign as well as native, and regardless of the limits of sectarian religion. In this last respect almost all those who dreaded the influence of Roman Catholicism were his opponents. But his system in the main has prevailed, and its working has been his justification. He was one of the first of our public men to assume an attitude of open hostility to slavery, to per- ceive its essentially, its necessarily aggressive character, and its de- moralizing effect upon our national politics, and to declare himself therefore without entering the ranks of the abolitionists its foe with- in the limits of the law. From this position he has never receded, nor has he ever vacillated one moment in maintaining it. He was the first of our statesmen to declare that "there is a higher law than the Constitution," which regulates our authority over the national domain, and devotes it, not less than to other objects, to liberty. He did this in 1850 in the course of his opposition to the com- promise measures—compromises with the slave interest of course —of that year in the Senate of the United States. In his speech upon that occasion there is this remarkable passage :-
"I feel assured that slavery must give way, and will give way to the salutary instructions of economy and to the ripening influences of humanity ; that emancipation is inevitable and is near ; that it may be hastened or hindered ; that all measures which fortify slavery or extend it tend to the consummation of violence ; all that check its extension and abate its strength tend to its peaceful extirpation. But I will adopt none but lawful, constitutional, and peaceful measures to secure even that end, and none such can I or will I forego."
The last sentence of this passage is the key to Mr. Seward's political life, in his later as well as his earlier days. He seeks to accomplish his ends by peaceful and lawful, almost, it may be said, by legal methods. He would appeal to men's reason and to their interests, rather than to their fears. Bred to the law, and having attained distinction at the Bar, it is the habit of his mind to narrow a question down, as if by pleadings, until a distinct issue is reached, and then to try that issue according to the law and the evidence. Certainly a not unreasonable mode of pro- cedure, but Mr. Seward seems at times to forget that some ques- tions arise which are too fundamental to be treated after a nisi prius fashion, and that forces are sometimes not only too turbulent, but too elementary and too vital, to yield to any prescriptive methods of restraint, or in fact to anything except greater forces of the same nature, by which they are destroyed. He is, too, upon all subjects a politic man. He has written despatches as Minister of Foreign Affairs which when published abroad seemed to the people to whose representatives they were addressed decidedly impolitic. And if the object and the end of a diplomatic note were merely the immediate impres- sion to be produced by it abroad, this judgment might in many cases be correct. But he looks far beyond that, and also much this side of it. He knows that from the nature of our Government he must speak not only as the representative of that Government, but in a manner which will enlist the sympathies of the people of the country, and therefore so long as he does no essential injustice, and offers no real affront, he is more thoughtful of the prejudices and the feelings of the people for whom he speaks than of those of the people whom he addresses. He has felt that since he has been Secretary of State it became him more to assert the dignity of his Government and the integrity of his country than to conciliate and persuade those who were inclined to derogate from that dignity and to regard that dignity as destroyed. He barely in this respect satisfied the demands of his country- men during their time of excitement and trial, although now they all see that what they were inclined to reject as pusillanimity was indeed a wise moderation. His recent position has been one of exceeding delicacy and difficulty, and during the rebellion he whom the journalists of London and Paris were attacking for his self-sufficiency and his presumption was almost flouted and scoffed at by those of New York and Boston as a truckler to European power. He is the most peaceful of men. His temperament leads him to conciliation, and to this end he is ready to sacrifice every- thing except honour and principle. Throughout the war his in- fluence has been exerted to preserve peace between the United States and Great Britain. Had he been one jot more yielding, either in fact or in manner, Mx. Lincoln might have felt obliged to place another person in his chair, in which case the chances of war would have been greatly increased. It was at his instance that General Dix's order in regard to the pursuit of the St. Alban's raiders into Canada was revoked, and, that done, he made the peaceful and legal move of issuing the order by which passports were required for crossing the border. He put his politic finger upon the spring that moved the whole Canadian people. In ten days he was besieged with entreaties from Canada
to-recall this order. His reply was, "If you will give shelter to people who rob our banks, burn our houses, and shoot our people, can you complain that we insist upon seeing what sort of folk are going back and forth between us and you?" His antagonists were at his feet, aryl he accomplished his purposes as he loves to accomplish them—by peaceful policy. His course in Congress upon the slavery question was marked by the same temper and manner. The open and the relentless foe of oppression, he kept always within the bounds not only of Parliamentary propriety but of social courtesy, and he never gave the slaveholders the opportunity either of an accusation that he was ready to attack their constitu- tional rights, or of fastening upon him any social stigma. They hated him with a bitter hatred as a senator, but could find no excuse for refraining from courteous intercourse with him as a gentleman. The very men who were fomenting the great insur- rection dined at his table, and he dined at theirs, though all the while they regarded him, and justly regarded him, as their most formidable opponent. I remember being in the parlour of an insurance company early in the spring of 1860, when the nomi- nations for President had not yet been made. There were half a dozen gentlemen present, among them a slaveholder, an exceedingly highly dried old Virginia gentleman. The talk was of course of polities and the coming election. At last the Virginian, with much nervousness, said, "Well, gentlemen, let me tell you this, elect Mr. Seward and you will see this Union dissolved im- mediately." Such an outspoken declaration somewhat startled the company, and there was an impressive silence for a few seconds, when one of the other gentlemen, turning to the slave- holder, said calmly but very decidedly, "I am glad to hear you say that, Sir, if you mean it. Mr. Seward is not my man, because I am an old Democrat ; but if you Southern' gentlemen mean to say that because he or any other man is constitutionally elected President, you will break up the Government, then I vote for Mr. Seward on principle." Mr. Seward was not nominated, and many persons who would have voted for him did not vote for Mr. Lin- coln. Mr. Lincoln was comparatively unknown, and they felt it to be a disgrace to the Republican party that Mr. Seward did not receive its nomination. But if his party flinched from him, he did not flinch from his party, or hesitate one instant about assert- ing and maintaining to the utmost of his power the principles which had been his guide throughout his political life. In the gloomy and uncertain days that followed the election of Mr. Lincoln, when in the Congressional session of 1860-1 some of his party were paltering, and shuffling, and compromising, and offering to "let the South go" on the one hand, or to "split the difference" with them, and give up -half the territories to slavery on the other, Mr. Seward said in the Senate : — "I avow here my adherence to the Union, with my friends, with my party, with my State, or without either, as they may determine, in every event of peace or of war, of honour or dishonour, of life or death. . . . I certainly shall never directly or indirectly give my vote to establish or sanction slavery in the common territory of the United States, or anywhere else in the world."
Yet in this speech, and in another made about the same time, there were passages which caused him to be denounced by zealots as a lukewarm trifler. But this is the man,—to be firm as a rock upon every point of principle, and to be easy, good-natured, and conciliating upon all others. He is not only a politic man of the world, but is really kind-hearted ; and so he was able to meet the Confederate Peace Commissioners at Hampton Roads and with- stand them without budging a hair's breadth upon the questions of independence, armistice, and slavery, and yet to make his personal intercourse not only pleasant but cordial, and at parting to say from his heart, "Good bye, Hunter, God bless you!"
Mr. Seward is In person about the middle height, although by six-feet men he would be regarded as below it. His nose is strongly aquiline, his eyes blue, and his countenance in conversa- tion expresses blandness, intelligence, and a somewhat conscious self-possession. His figure is now slight, and his face thin, but sickness, hard work, and advancing years have told upon him. There are those who remember him with a well-rounded figure, a full face, and a square, deeply dimpled chin. His manner in speak- ing is quiet, though impressive, and his style is rather simple and direct than the rhetorical. He trusts to his matter and his thought to command attention. We might easily find a Secretary of State who would assume a bolder attitude upon all questions domestic and foreign ; we should have difficulty in finding one who would maintain more firmly a position that, with a conviction of its justice, he once had taken. Foreign powers may not un- reasonably wish that his communications were not "as a rule so very disagreeable," to use a description of them that has been given in an eminent quarter. But he, and those for whom he speaks, will reciprocate the wish, and attribute the disagreeableness of the communications to their subjects and their occasions. European Powers have sometimes found diplomatic notes that were less direct and outspoken than Mr. Seward's, more fraught with peril, and really more derogatory to their dignity. -
A YANKEE.
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