CHAPTER XXVII

THE MAN AND THE SENATOR, 1849-61

SEWARD'S intellectual and social qualities were most attractive. Yet probably no other antislavery man, on entering Congress, encountered such strong prejudices. "The newspapers have given me so bad a character that I am regarded with alarm and apprehension," he wrote from Washington in February, 1849. His manner was dignified, but not courtly, and his easy and unpretentious address was very pleasing. Although Mrs. Seward's health compelled her to remain in Auburn most of the time, the Senator, unlike the great majority of his colleagues, always kept a well-equipped house in Washington.

A social dinner was his favorite form of hospitality. Of course northern Whigs or Republicans were most frequently invited, but he early sought friendly relations with political adversaries. Of a dinner-party in April, 1852, Mrs. Seward reported: "We had, as usual, a singular combination of ultra-southern men, Free-Soilers, and Democratic members of Congress." In December, 1853, he gave a reception to the Whig delegation from New York, and to "such other Whigs as choose to comesay forty or fifty." On May 28, 1858, he wrote: "I invited all the Anti-Lecompton members of Congress to supper last night, together with most of the foreign Ministers. Nearly all came from North, South, East, and West, Republicans, 'Americans,' and Democrats, and we had a very joyful time." Seward's house was much

like a club where political questions were discussed with frankness, even with opponents. There was rarely any ostentation in his entertainments during this period, but he did not overlook the average public man's appreciation of good dishes and choice wines and cigars.

His personal habits were well suited to his political position and his many duties. He dressed plainly, usually in black. He rose early, contrary to Washington custom: at five or six in summer, and an hour or so later in winter.' He often enjoyed an early walk to the market, and rarely omitted his daily letter to Mrs. Seward when they were separated.' He wrote to her in 1850: "I [have] had my walk, a visit to the public greenhouse, my coffee and eggs, and the Intelligencer, and now indulge myself with a word to you, before beginning the studies of the day." He was an inveterate smoker. He drank little except at dinner, and then in moderation; but he was always fond of the good-fellowship and sprightly conversation that wine and brandy are likely to inspire. He was much amused by a remark made in his house by Greeley to the servant

1 In a letter of May 16, 1850, to his wife, he said: "I retire at ten, and thus have enabled myself to resume my habit of rising at five.”

' A few sentences from these notes will amply show their character:

"I have set my window wide open to draw in the morning sun, and I begin the labor of the day as usual by rehearsing to you the details and incidents of the day that has just past."

"Your letters woo me home strongly by so many touching notices of my children, of the trees and flowers, and of friends.”

On his fifty-fourth birthday he said: “I write to you a note to express to you my joy at your returning health, and my assurances of continued and enduring affection. I would that I were nearer to you."

"This is Christmas Eve. House solitary. How poor I am! I shall wake up to-morrow and there will be no beaming faces around me, no children, no friends. Well, I am tired of this, and I have but one more Christmas after it to spend in Washington."

All that you

filling a champagne-glass: "That's right. put in there is warranted not to kill!" As to work, he had the happy faculty of accomplishing a great deal without seeming to be weighed down by it. He thought so far ahead and was so rapid a planner that he was hardly ever caught unprepared. Sumner told his colleagues that the New York Senator's life had been one of "unsurpassed industry." After Seward moved to Washington his opportunities for miscel laneous reading became fewer and fewer. "What luxury there is in reading nowadays, when all that is done that way is not merely by stealth, but by 'flat burglary'!"

1 Globe, 1855-56, Apdx., 540.

1

2 2 Seward, 135. Writing of his father's summer life in Auburn, Mr. F. W. Seward says: “He rose usually at six, and liked either a walk in the garden or a canter on horseback of a mile or two before breakfast. Then meeting the family at table, he would tell them what new flower was in bloom, what fruit had ripened, what birds had come, and how they were occupied, what change or improvement he found in the village streets or on the country roads. After a cigar and the morning paper, he would go to the old writing-chair in the bay-window of the tower, and here write his letters and study lawcases or public addresses. . . . Sometimes the visitors would be so frequent, and the visits so long, that he would find it necessary to supplement the day's work by continuing his studies till late at night. The papers in his cases would be sent to the law-office to be copied."

"He liked to push his work vigorously. . . and then take a day for recreation. With his family, or some friend or neighbor, he would drive to the Owasco or Cayuga lake and spend the day in boating or fishing. Or he would take a longer drive to Skaneateles, Aurora, Elbridge, or some other village in the vicinity, call upon acquaintances there, and return at nightfall. In the evening, when not at work, he liked a rubber of whist, conversation, or reading."

Though having little leisure, he contrived to find time, in the course of a season, for a good deal of reading. Old and standard authors he preferred to any literary novelties. He would devote his spare moments, for a week or two, to some poet, philosopher, or historian, and then take up another. Chaucer and Spenser, Ben Jonson and Ariosto, were among his favorites at this period. Of English

Of all the public men of his time, probably Seward travelled most extensively for pleasure. It was not strange that social and political questions in all states and countries interested him, but it is very unusual to find a busy and ambitious politician that has eyes and ears and tastes for almost everything. The careful and interesting accounts that Seward wrote of his experiences from day to day are crowded with evidences of his enthusiastic temperament, quick perception, and great mental and physical activity.

In July, 1857, the Senator and Mr. and Mrs. Frederick W. Seward started on a trip to Labrador. They made several short stops between Niagara and Quebec. Just for enjoyment and novelty they spent a whole night in a rowboat on the St. Lawrence. At Quebec a fishing schooner was chartered. They engaged a captain, a pilot, and a seaman, and laid in provisions and equipments for a month's cruise. Labrador was the goal, and sailing and fishing according to wind and other circumstances were the chief pleasures. They caught cod, mackerel, trout, salmon, and lobsters, at different times. Seward kept a "Log of the Schooner Emerence," from July 31 to August 27, 1857. It was written in a flowing, jocose style, and was designed merely for the family circle at Auburn. But it was found to be so pleasing that the senatorial sailor consented to its publication in the New York Tribune and the Albany Evening Journal. A few selections from this log will give the flavor of Seward's quality as a traveller and descriptive writer:

essayists he liked Sidney Smith, Macaulay, Mackintosh, Jeffrey, and Carlyle. Prescott's histories he read as fast as they came out. Brougham's Political Philosophy, Lieber's Political Ethics, Burke's Speeches, and Tooke's Diversions of Purley, he read over more than once."-2 Seward, 203, 204.

1 2 Seward, 302 fr.

"There was a dispute kept up for some time, yesterday, between the cook and the pilot, whether the waters around us were fresh still, or salt. We compromised by boiling our soup with fresh water from the cask, and our pork with that brought up from the depth beneath us. Toward night, myriads of ducks dotted the waves, and so late as ten o'clock birds were heard singing in notes not unlike those of the robin and the mocking-bird. Here and there a huge porpoise disturbed the glassy surface as he came up to inhale, and once or twice a seal thrust his black and hairy doglike head like a buoy above the water. We studied the geography of the moon through our spy-glass, after the headlands of our planet became indistinct in the dark

"At two P.M. yesterday we passed a high rocky point, and the river Saguenay was disclosed to our view. It is a mile wide at its mouth, but this magnificent flood seems narrow in contrast with the twenty miles breadth of the St. Lawrence. The Saguenay inspired admiration when first seen, three hundred years ago, by white men, and it is marvellous yet. It flows from Lake St. John (eighty miles northward from here) in a defile between mountains fifteen hundred to two thousand and two thousand five hundred feet high, and its depth lower than that of the St. Lawrence. Far up as we could see, and those acquainted say so far as it is navigable, its banks are rugged, and scarce a habitation is found upon it. The shore of the St. Lawrence is almost equally rugged. Here and there is a hamlet hung on the mountain-side, surrounded by sterility itself. . . . We landed on the rocks, where a dead porpoise and a dead seal had been washed by the tide. On the beach we were kindly received by a young Scotchman, who lives in a long, low, and old building, which proves, inside, to be a very respectable mansion, and which overlooks the bay. He gave us brandy-and-water, and tendered us hospitalities under his roof for a day or a week. He showed us peltries and snow-shoes and the Indian-made apparel which he uses in his excursions in the winter."

"The events recorded in this Log are not great nor brilliant. They determine neither the fate of states nor the character of heroes. But they are nevertheless dramatic in one respect. They are various and sudden in their transition. Yesterday at noon we were humbly suing a