Team of Rivals (15 page)

During the transition period, Seward’s impulsive remarks often aggravated the ever-cautious Weed. “Your letter admonishes me to a habit of caution that I cannot conveniently adopt,” Seward replied. “I love to write what I think and feel as it comes up.” Nonetheless, Seward generally deferred to Weed, recognizing a superior strategic prudence and experience. “I had no idea that dictators were such amiable creatures,” he told Weed, no doubt provoking the approval of his proud mentor. “There were never two men in politics who worked together or understood each other better,” Weed wrote years later in his memoir. “Neither controlled the other…. One did not always lead, and the other follow. They were friends, in the best, the rarest, and highest sense.”

In later years, Seward told the story of a carriage ride he took from Albany shortly after his election. He had struck up a lively conversation with the coachman, who eventually asked him who he was. When Seward replied that he was governor of New York, the coachman laughed in disbelief. Seward said they had only to consult the proprietor of the next tavern along the road to confirm the truth. When they reached the tavern, Seward went in and asked, “Am I the Governor of the State of New York or not?” The man did not hesitate. “No, certainly not!” “Who is, then?” queried Seward. “Why…Thurlow Weed!” the man replied.

The youthful governor’s inaugural address on New Year’s Day, 1839, laid out an ambitious agenda: a vast expansion of the public school system (including better schools for the black population), the promotion of canals and railways, the creation of a more humane system for the treatment of the insane, and the abolition of imprisonment for debt. His vision of an ever-expanding economy, built on free labor, widespread public education, and technological progress, offered a categorical rejection of the economic and cultural malaise he had witnessed on his Southern trip in 1835.

“Our race is ordained to reach, on this continent, a higher standard of social perfection than it has ever yet attained; and that hence will proceed the spirit which shall renovate the world,” he proclaimed to the New York legislature in the year of his election. If the energy, ingenuity, and ambitions of Northern free labor were “sustained by a wise and magnanimous policy on our part,” Seward promised, “our state, within twenty years, will have no desert places—her commercial ascendancy will fear no rivalry, and a hundred cities will enable her to renew the boast of ancient Crete.”

Looking once more to broaden the appeal of the Whig Party, Seward advocated measures to attract the Irish and German Catholic immigrants who formed the backbone of the state Democratic Party. He called on his fellow Americans to welcome them with “all the sympathy which their misfortunes at home, their condition as strangers here, and their devotion to liberty, ought to excite.” He argued that America owed all the benefits of citizenship to these new arrivals, who helped power the engine of Northern expansion. In particular, he proposed to reform the school system, where the virulently anti-Catholic curriculum frightened immigrants away, dooming vast numbers to illiteracy, poverty, and vice. To get these children off the streets and provide them with opportunities to advance, Seward hoped to divert some part of the public school funds to support parochial schools where children could receive instruction from members of their own faith.

Seward’s school proposal provoked a violent reaction among nativist Protestants. They accused him of plotting “to overthrow republican institutions” by undoing the separation of church and state. Handbills charged that Seward was “in league with the Pope” and schemed to throw Protestant children into the hands of priests. In the end, the legislature passed a compromise plan that simply expanded the public school system. But the nativists, whose strength would grow dramatically in the decades ahead, never forgave Seward. Indeed, their opposition would eventually prove a fatal stumbling block to Seward’s hopes for the presidential nomination in 1860.

If Seward’s progressive policies on education and immigration made him an influential and controversial figure in New York State, his defiant stand against slavery in the “Virginia Case” brought him into national prominence in the late 1830s and early 1840s. In September 1839, a vessel sailing from Norfolk, Virginia, to New York was found to have carried a fugitive slave. The slave was returned to his master in Virginia in compliance with Article IV, Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution that persons held to service or labor in one state escaping into another should be delivered up to the owner. When Virginia also demanded the arrest and surrender of three free black seamen who had allegedly conspired to hide the slave on the vessel, the New York governor refused.

In a statement that brought condemnation throughout the South, Seward argued that the seamen were charged with a crime that New York State did not recognize: people were not property, and therefore no crime had been committed. On the contrary, “the universal sentiment of civilized nations” considered helping a slave escape from bondage “not only innocent, but humane and praiseworthy.”

As controversy over the fate of the three sailors was prolonged, the Commonwealth of Virginia enacted a series of retaliatory measures to damage the commerce of New York, calling upon other Southern states to pass resolutions denouncing Seward and the state of New York for “intermeddling” with their time-honored “domestic institutions.” Democratic periodicals in the North warned that the governor’s stance would compromise highly profitable New York trade connections with Virginia and other slave states. Seward was branded “a bigoted New England fanatic.” This only emboldened Seward’s resolve to press the issue. He spurred the Whig-dominated state legislature to pass a series of antislavery laws affirming the rights of black citizens against seizure by Southern agents, guaranteeing a trial by jury for any person so apprehended, and prohibiting New York police officers and jails from involvement in the apprehension of fugitive slaves.

Such divisive incidents—the “new irritation” foreseen by Jefferson in 1820—widened the schism between North and South. Though few slaves actually escaped to the North each year—an estimated one or two hundred out of the millions held in bondage—the issue exacerbated rancor on both sides. In the North, William Lloyd Garrison’s newspaper, the
Liberator,
called for immediate emancipation and racial equality, denouncing slavery as sinful and inhumane, advocating “all actions, even in defiance of the Constitution,” to bring an end to
“The Empire of Satan.”
Such scathing criticisms moved Southern leaders to equally fierce defenses. They proclaimed slavery a “positive good” rather than a mere necessity, of immense benefit to whites and blacks alike. As discord between North and South escalated, many Northerners turned against the abolitionists. Fear that the movement would destroy the Union incited attacks on abolitionist printers in the North and West. Presses were burned, editors threatened with death should their campaign persist.

In 1840, Seward was reelected governor, but by a significantly smaller margin. His dwindling support was blamed on the parochial school controversy, the protracted fight with Virginia, and a waning enthusiasm for social reform. Horace Greeley editorialized that Seward would “henceforth be honored more for the three thousand votes he has lost, considering the causes, than for all he has received in his life.” Nonetheless, Seward decided not to run a third time: “All that can now be worthy of my ambition,” he explained to a friend, “is to leave the State better for my having been here, and to entitle myself to a favorable judgment in its history.”

Throughout the dispute with the state of Virginia, and every other controversy that threatened Seward’s highly successful tenure, Weed had proved a staunch ally and friend, answering critics in the legislature, publishing editorials in the
Albany Evening Journal,
ever sustaining Seward’s spirits. “What am I to deserve such friendship and affection?” Seward asked him in 1842 as his second term drew to its close. “Without your aid how hopeless would have been my prospect of reaching the elevation from which I am descending. How could I have sustained myself there…how could I have secured the joyous reflections of this hour, what would have been my prospect of future life, but for the confidence I so undenyingly reposed on your affection?”

Returning to Auburn, Seward resumed his law practice, concentrating now on lucrative patent cases. He found that his fight with Virginia had endeared him to antislavery men throughout the North. Members of the new Liberty Party bandied about his name in their search for a presidential candidate in 1844. Organized in 1840, the Liberty Party was born of frustration with the failure of either major party to deal head-on with slavery. The abrogation of slavery was their primary goal. Though flattered by the attention, Seward could not yet conceive of leaving the Whig Party.

Meanwhile, he continued to speak out on behalf of black citizens. In March 1846, a terrifying massacre took place in Seward’s hometown. A twenty-three-year-old black man named William Freeman, recently released from prison after serving five years for a crime it was later determined he did not commit, entered the home of John Van Nest, a wealthy farmer and friend of Seward’s. Armed with two knives, he killed Van Nest, his pregnant wife, their small child, and Mrs. Van Nest’s mother. When he was caught within hours, Freeman immediately confessed. He exhibited no remorse and laughed uncontrollably as he spoke. The sheriff hauled him away, barely reaching the jail ahead of an enraged mob intent upon lynching him. “I trust in the mercy of God that I shall never again be a witness to such an outburst of the spirit of vengeance as I saw while they were carrying the murderer past our door,” Frances Seward told her husband, who was in Albany at the time. “Fortunately, the law triumphed.”

Frances recognized at once an “incomprehensible” aspect to the entire affair, and she was correct. Investigation revealed a history of insanity in Freeman’s family. Moreover, Freeman had suffered a series of floggings in jail that had left him deaf and deranged. When the trial opened, no lawyer was willing to take Freeman’s case. The citizens of Auburn had threatened violence against any member of the bar who dared to defend the cold-blooded murderer. When the court asked, “Will anyone defend this man?” a “death-like stillness pervaded the crowded room,” until Seward rose, his voice strong with emotion, and said, “May it please the court,
I shall remain counsel for the prisoner until his death
!”

Seward’s friends and family, including Thurlow Weed and Judge Miller, roundly criticized Seward for his decision. Only Frances stood proudly by her husband during the outburst that followed, assuring her sister that “he will do what is right. He will not close his eyes and know that a great wrong is perpetrated.” To her son Gus she noted that “there are few men in America who would have sacrificed so much for the cause of humanity—he has his reward in a quiet conscience and a peaceful mind.” Though her house and children were her entire world, she never flinched when retaliation against Seward’s decision threatened her family. She remained steadfast throughout. Then in her early forties, she was a handsome woman, despite the hard, drawn look imparted by ill health. Over the years she had grown intellectually with her husband, sharing his passion for reading, his reformer’s spirit, and his deep hatred of slavery. Defying her father and her neighbors, she sat in the courtroom each day, her quiet bearing lending strength to her husband.

Seward spent weeks investigating the case, interviewing Freeman’s family, and summoning five doctors who testified to the prisoner’s extreme state of mental illness. In his summation, he pleaded with the jury not to be influenced by the color of the accused man’s skin. “He is still your brother, and mine…. Hold him then to be a man.” Seward continued, “I am not the prisoner’s lawyer…I am the lawyer for society, for mankind, shocked beyond the power of expression, at the scene I have witnessed here of trying a maniac as a malefactor.” He argued that Freeman’s conduct was “unexplainable on any principle of
sanity,
” and begged the jury not to seek the death sentence. Commit him to an asylum for the term of his natural life, Seward urged: “there is not a
white
man or
white
woman who would not have been dismissed long since from the perils of such a prosecution.”

There was never any doubt that the local jury would return a guilty verdict. “In due time, gentlemen of the jury,” Seward concluded, “when I shall have paid the debt of nature, my remains will rest here in your midst, with those of my kindred and neighbors. It is very possible they may be unhonored, neglected, spurned! But, perhaps years hence, when the passion and excitement which now agitate this community shall have passed away, some wandering stranger, some lone exile, some Indian, some negro, may erect over them a humble stone, and thereon this epitaph, ‘He was Faithful!’” More than a century afterward, visitors to Seward’s grave at the Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn would find those very words engraved on his tombstone.

While Seward endured the hostility of his hometown, his defense of Freeman became famous throughout the country. His stirring summation was printed in dozens of newspapers and reprinted in pamphlet form for still wider distribution. Salmon Chase, himself a leading proponent of the black man’s cause, conceded to his abolitionist friend Lewis Tappan that he esteemed Seward as “one of the very first public men of our country. Who but himself would have done what he did for that poor wretch Freeman?” His willingness to represent Freeman, Chase continued, “considering his own personal position & the circumstances, was magnanimous in the highest degree.”

So in the mid-1840s, as Seward settled back into private life in Auburn, his optimism about the future remained intact. He had established a national reputation based upon principle and a vision of national progress. He trusted that when his progressive principles once more gained favor with the masses, he would return to public life.