"No truer exposition of the republican creed could be given, than the platform adopted by the convention contains. No truer or firmer defenders of the repubtican faith could have been found in the Union, than the distinguished and esteemed citizens on whom the honors of the nomination have fallen. Their election, we trust, by a decisive majority, will restore the government of the United States to its constitutional and ancient course. Let the watchword of the republican party, then, be Union and Liberty, and onward to victory."

Two days afterwards he addressed the following reply to a letter from the central republican committee of the city of New York :'

'AUBURN, May 21, 1860.

"GENTLEMEN: I will not affect to conceal the sensibility with which I have received the letters in which you and so many other respected friends have tendered to me expressions of renewed and enduring confidence. These letters will remain with me as assurances in future years that, although I was not unwilling to await, even for another age, the vindication of my political principles, yet that they did nevertheless receive the generous support of many good, wise and patriotic men of my own time.

"Such assurances, however made, under the circumstances now existing, derive their priceless value largely from the fact that they steal upon me through the channels of private correspondence, and altogether unknown to the world. You will at once perceive that such expressions would become painful to me, and justly offensive to the community, if they should be allowed to take on any public or conventional form of manifestation. For this reason, if it were respectful and consistent with your own public purposes, I would have delayed my reply to you until I could have had an opportunity of making it verbally next week on my way to Washington, after completing the arrangements for the repairs upon my dwelling here, rendered necessary by a recent fire.

The same reason determines me also to decline your kind invitation to attend the meeting in which you propose some demonstrations of respect to myself, while so justly considering the nominations which have been made by the recent national convention at Chicago. At the same time, it is your right to have a frank and candid exposition of my own opinions and sentiments on that important subject.

My friends know very well that, while they have always generously made my promotion to public trusts their own exclusive care, mine has only been to execute them faithfully, so as to be able, at the close of their assigned terms, to resign them into the hands of the people without forfeiture of the public confidence. The presentation of my name to the Chicago convention was thus their act, not mine. The disappointment, therefore, is their disappointment, not mine. It may have found them unprepared. On the other hand, I have no sentiment either of disappointment or discontent; for who, in any possible case, could, without presumption, claim that a great national party ought to choose him for its candidate for the first office in the gift of the American people? I find in the resolu

1 See Appendix for the committce's letter.

tions of the convention a platform as satisfactory to me as if it had been framed with my own hands, and in the candidates adopted by it, eminent and able republicans, with whom I have cordially co-operated in maintaining the principles embodied in that excellent creed. I cheerfully give them a sincere and earnest support.

I trust, moreover, that those with whom I have labored so long that common service in a noble cause has created between them and myself relations of personal friendship unsurpassed in the experience of political men, will indulge me in a confident belief that no sense of disappointment will be allowed by them to hinder or delay, or in any way embarrass, the progress of that cause to the consummation which is demanded by a patriotic regard to the safety and welfare of the country and the best interests of mankind. I am, sincerely and respectfully, your friend and obedient servant, WILLIAM H. SEWARD.

Congress adjourned on the 25th June, 1860, refusing to admit Kansas into the Union, to enact a proper tariff, or to pass a homestead act.'

Mr. Seward labored diligently to secure all these great measures. His speech on the admission of Kansas has already been noticed. In a brief speech on the tariff, he especially protested against a postponement of the question, remarking that

"The proposition to postpone involves the question of the true value of our present time, and also leads us to consider the prospects of a more favorable season at the next session of congress. We are here," he said, "in the middle of the month of June, which is yet one, or two, or even three months earlier than congress has been accustomed to adjourn. Before the adoption of the present salary system, no man would have felt himself bound to put off this question of a tariff, at this season of the year, because of a want of time. It is now of no consequence, as a question of economy, to the public at all whether we sit here till August or adjourn to-day. If we have not time enough to consider this question, somebody is responsible for that lack of time. Who is responsible? We were at liberty to sit here till the month of December next. But ten days ago a majority of the senate—a majority of whom were understood to be opposed to this principle of protection-fixed an arbitrary period, and shortened up the time of congress until Monday next, with the full knowledge that this question was to be acted upon."

But his counsels, joined with those of Mr. Cameron and other republican senators, were unheeded, and the subject was postponed. The attention of congress was, several times and in various ways, called to the alarming increase of the African slave trade. A pro

1 A compromise homestead bill passed both houses, but was vetoed by the president. The vote in the senate, by which Kansas was kept out of the Union, stood twenty-seven to thirtytwo-Messrs. Bigler and Pugh voting with the republicans. Messrs. Douglas and Crittenden were absent the former having paired with Mr. Clay, of Alabama. The house voted to admit, by ayes one hundred and thirty-four, nays seventy-three.

position was made in the senate to amend the naval appropriation bill so as to provide three steam vessels for its suppression. Mr. Seward warmly advocated the motion, but it failed, by yeas eighteen, nays twenty-five. He availed himself of the occasion, however, to call the attention of the country to an elaborate bill that he had submitted to the senate, at a previous session, for arresting the slave trade, which he pledged himself to bring to the consideration of the senate at the next meeting of congress.

Congress also neglected to adopt any decisive measures for constructing a railroad to the Pacific ocean, and curtailed the mail facilities already existing between California and the eastern states. A large portion of the time of the senate, as well as that of the house, was occupied in debates on the subject of slavery. The resolutions of Mr. Jefferson Davis, and those of Mr. Douglas, consumed several weeks of the session in the senate, while the delay in electing a speaker, and the discussion of the resolution offered by Mr. Clark, of Missouri, in the house, seemed to leave little opportunity for the consideration and disposal of various important practical measures, awaiting the action of congress.

Avoiding the usual summer resorts, Mr. Seward sought recreation during the month of July (1860), in brief visits to cherished friends in Vermont, Maine, and Massachusetts. He was unable to escape public attentions on the way, but was interrupted at various places with popular demonstrations of respect and affection. At Windsor and Bellows Falls, in Vermont; Keene and Dover, in New Hampshire; Bangor and Portland, in Maine, and many lesser places, large crowds of people assembled to greet him. The public authorities of the states, cities and towns welcomed his appearance among them. Mr. Seward spoke briefly in response to the addresses that were made to him, eliciting hearty applause. After a brief stay with his friend, Israel Washburn, Jr.,' Mr. Seward proceeded homeward through the state of Massachusetts. At Boston he was received with distinguished honor. The governor of the state' presented him to the people, in a complimentary speech, which was received by them with repeated expressions of cordial sympathy. Brief addresses were also made by Charles Francis Adams and Henry Wilson, who had accompanied Mr. Seward from the depot to the Revere House. A band

1 Since elected governor of the state of Maine. VOL. IV.

11

2 Nathaniel P. Banks. See Appendix.

of music played several national airs; and, although it was nearly midnight, the crowd listened to Mr. Seward's speech with singular enthusiasm. Mr. Seward spoke as follows:

"CITIZENS OF BOSTON-OF MASSACHUSETTS: I have heard your explanation from my excellent and esteemed friend, the chief magistrate of your state. Something, however, seems to me to be due from myself, to you and to the country, for the unexpected surprise which has overtaken me. It is so contrary to the habit of my whole life to be arrested on a journey which had for its object but the performance of a duty of friendship, and was commenced and prosecuted, and hoped to be ended, in a manner entirely private, that I am sure some explanation will be expected of me. That explanation is a very simple one. I have made a great mistake. I have committed a great blunder. I have been very weak. My first mistake was in supposing that it was safe to trust myself on a railroad through New England and down east, instead of the telegraph. I found out my mistake only when it was too late; for although I succeeded in finding the wide-awakes at Bangor fast asleep in the middle of the day, yet I very quickly discovered that they woke up quite too soon for the convenience of a quiet traveler. I certainly have not besought, and have not desired, any demonstration of consideration at the hands of my fellow citizens. There are many reasons why I prefer to seek the satisfaction of the attempt to perform my duty, in my own conscience and not in the acclamations of my fellow men; but it is God's will that we must be overruled and disappointed, and I have submitted with such graciousness as I can.

Fellow citizens, I have endeavored, all along the road-for this, I think, is the seventh or eighth time that I have been called out to meet a kind and cordial welcome on this day only-I have endeavored to accommodate myself to this form of reception by treating it as a light and trivial affair, trusting that those who have been so exceedingly kind to me would believe, after all, that there was gratitude, unexpressed and strong, concealed under the face of a simple, honest good nature. But, fellow citizens, the case is altered when I come upon the soil of Massachusetts. I cannot say that I have a veneration, though I have a profound affection, for Vermont. Her statesmen are not my teachers—her people are but my equals. Although I honor them and respect and love them for their fidelity to the interests of their country and to the cause of justice and humanity, they are still but my fellow laborers in the vineyard. I can say the same of New Hampshire, that I know none of her statesmen or her sons who were earlier in the field than the statesmen and sons of New York. I can say the same of the state of Maine, which I have visited--great and honorable as the works are which have been done in those states by the champions of human rights. I am their equal; I have received their cordial welcome as an expression of esteem and kindness. But it is altogether different in the state of Massachusetts. Here I can play no part; I can affect no disguise; because, although not a son of Massachusetts, nor even of New England born, I feel and know it my duty to confess that if I have ever studied the interests of my country, and of humanity, I have studied in the school of Massachusetts. If I have ever conceived a resolution to maintain the rights and interests of these free states in the union of the confederacy, I learned it from Massachusetts.

"It was twenty-two years ago, not far from this season, when a distinguished and venerable statesman of Massachusetts had retired to his home, a few miles in the suburbs of your city, under the censure of his fellow citizens, driven home by the peltings of remorseless pro-slavery people, that I, younger then, of course, than I am now, made a pilgrimage, which was not molested on my way, to the Sage of Quincy, there to learn from him what became a citizen of the United States, in view of the deplorable condition of the intelligence and sentiment of the country, demoralized by the power of slavery. Thence I have derived every resolution, every sentiment, that has animated and inspired me in the performance of my duty as a citizen of the United States, all the intervening time. I know, ndeed, that those sentiments have not always been popular, even in the state of Massachusetts. I know that citizens of Massachusetts, as well as citizens of other states, have attempted to drive the disciples of that illustrious teacher from their policy. But it is to-night that I am free to confess that whenever, any man, wherever he might be found, whether he was of northern or southern birth, whether he was of the 'solid men of Boston,' or of the light men of Mississippi, has assailed me for the maintenance of those doctrines, I have sought to commune with his spirit, and to learn from him whether the thing in which I was engaged was worthy to be done. What a commentary upon the wisdom of man is given in this single fact, that fifteen years only after the death of John Quincy Adams the people of the United States, who hurled him from power and from place, are calling to the head of the nation, to the very seat from which he was expelled, Abraham Lincoln, whose claim to that seat is that he confesses the obligation of that higher law which the Sage of Quincy proclaimed, and that he avows himself, for weal or wo, for life or death, a soldier on the side of freedom in the irrepressible conflict between freedom and slavery.

This, gentlemen, is my simple confession. I desire, now, only to say to you, that you have arrived at the last stage of this conflict before you reach the triumph which is to inaugurate this great policy into the government of the United States. You will bear yourselves manfully. It behooves you, solid men of Boston, if such are here-and if the solid men are not here, then the lighter men of Massachusetts-to bear onward and forward, first in the ranks, the flag of freedom. "But let not your thoughts or expectations be confined to the present hour. I tell you, fellow citizens, that with this victory comes the end of the power of slavery in the United States. I think I may assume that a democrat is a man who maintains the creed of one or the other branch of the democratic party, as it is confessed at the present day. Assuming this to be correct, I tell you, in all sincerity, that the last democrat in the United States has been already born.

Gentlemen, it remains only to thank you for this kind reception, and to express my best wishes for your individual health and happiness, and for the prosperity and greatness of your noble city and most ancient and honored state."

Mr. Seward passed a day at Quincy with Charles Francis Adams, visiting the old homestead and the tombs of John Quincy Adams and John Adams. The remainder of his journey homeward was inter rupted only by the hearty greetings of the people.