V.

WILLIAM H. SEWARD.

YOUNG men will read with sympathy William H. Seward's account of his first striking out for himself, at the age of seventeen. His father was a gentleman of education, some wealth, and high social and political position, in Central New York. Harry Seward, as he was called in his boyhood, was sent to Union College, Schenectady. A disagreement between Harry and his father arose out of some financial matters. Young Seward complained, in his own account of this affair, written many years afterward, that the more rigid his economy, the more limited was the appropriation for his expenses. Finally, the misunderstanding was increased, as he says, "by the intrusion of the accomplished tailors of Schenectady," whose bills his father thought were unreasonable; and as the lad could not submit to the shame of loss of credit, he resolved upon independence and self-maintenance. Accordingly, on the first of January, 1819, without any notice to his father or anyone else, he left Union College, as he thought forever, and went to New York by stage-coach, where he took passage with a fellowstudent for Savannah. After an uneventful voyage of seven days from New York, the vessel

anchored in the river at Savannah, and he rode by stage wagon to Augusta, where he hired a gig, which landed him at Mount Zion, and he was among friends from Orange County, N. Y. Not being any longer able to hire a conveyance, he took the road on foot to Eatonton, the capital of Putnam County, Ga.; he soon found himself with nine shillings and sixpence, New York currency, soiled with the wear of travel, and almost unable to resume his journey; but he finally made his way to Eatonton, where he met the treasurer of the State, who was one of the Board of Directors of the Union Academy of Eatonton. After a cursory examination of the young man, the Directors agreed to accept him as preceptor of the new institution at the munificent sum of one hundred dollars a year and his board. As the academy was not yet finished, the directors agreed to compensate him for the delay by furnishing him with a horse and carriage in which he could travel in any part of the State, and in the interval he was to be boarded among the directors without charge. This important matter being disposed of, one of the directors of the institution said: "I am going to state something which, if you prefer, you need not reply. In your absence from the meeting of trustees they asked how old you were. I answered that I thought you were twenty. They replied that that seemed very young for such an enterprise." Mr. Seward says in his account of this incident: "I candidly confessed to my generous patron that I was only seventeen." "Well," said he,

"we will leave them to find that out for themselves."

In brief, then, Harry Seward had run away from home to undertake the management of the Union College at Eatonton, Ga., where, as he fondly hoped, he was concealed from the pursuit of his family. He was very much dismayed, however, by the intelligence that a packet of letters had been transmitted to Richardson, President of the United States Branch Bank at Savannah, from the paternal Seward, at Florida, N. Y., in which was a letter from the father to the son describing the paternal anguish and solicitude caused by the young fellow's flight from college and from home. The senior Seward implored his wandering boy to return, and he sent the necessary funds to pay his expenses and for the bills that he had incurred in the meantime. Young Seward sent his father an Eatonton newspaper which contained an advertisement announcing to the people of the State of Georgia that "William H. Seward, a gentleman of talents, educated at Union College, N. Y., had been duly appointed principal of the Union Academy," etc. His indignant father, having read the newspaper advertisement, informed the president and trustees of the college who and what kind of a person this new principal of their academy was; that "he was a much-indulged son who, without just cause and provocation, had absconded from Union College, thereby disgracing a well-acquired position and plunging his parents into profound shame and grief." The upshot of

this business was that young Seward, a few weeks later, returned to college, and in due course was graduated with all the honors.

It was during these six months in Georgia that he first came in contact with Southern slavery. In his "Autobiography," he says: "Although the planters were new and generally poor, yet I think the slaves exceeded the white population." No jealousy or prejudice at that day was manifested in regard to inquiries or discussions of slavery, but at the same time there were two kindred popular prejudices highly developed. One was a suspicion, amounting to hatred, of all emancipated persons, or free negroes, as they were called. The other a strong prejudice of an abstract nature against the lower class of adventurers from the North, called 'Yankees.' The planters entertained me always cordially, as it seemed from a regard to my acquirements, while the negroes availed themselves of every occasion to converse with a stranger who came from the big North,' where they understood their race to be free, but which they believed to be so far distant as to be forever inaccessible to them." Seward gained the confidence and esteem of the negroes without exciting any jealousy on the part of their masters. The effect of his observations, he says, was to confirm and strengthen the opinions he had already entertained adverse to slavery.

It should be said that in his childhood slavery had not yet been abolished in the State of New York. He early discovered in his own home that, besides his parents, brothers, and sisters,