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Mr. Motley was very sensitive, very high-spirited, very impulsive, very patriotic, and singularly truthful. The letter of Mr. Seward to such a man was like a buffet on the cheek of an unarmed officer. It stung like the thrust of a stiletto. It roused a resentment that could not find any words to give it expression.
Doc. No. 100, p. 209, Thirty-seventh Cong., Second Sess. H. Ex. Doc No. 54, p. 46, Thirty-seventh Cong., Third Sess. Ibid., p. 48. Dayton to Seward, April 22, 1862. Earl Cowley to Earl Russell, May 15, 1862, H. Ex. Doc. No. 54, p. 746, Thirty-seventh Cong., Third Sess. Earl Russell to Sir C. Wyke, May 22, 1862. Earl Cowley to Earl Russell, April 25, 1862, H. Ex. Doc.
Nine days thereafter Lincoln visited him in his sick chamber. It was their last meeting. On the same evening Lincoln was assassinated, and the murder of Seward was attempted.
It was by the representations of Miss Seward, who strongly urged on him the absolute necessity of his adherence to trade, if he wished to secure the means of accomplishing matrimony, that André was now persuaded to renounce, for some years longer, his desire for the army. He went back to London, and applied himself diligently to his business.
Another leading figure, but on the Whig side, was a State senator, commonly known as ``Bray'' Dickinson, to distinguish him from D. S. Dickinson who had been a senator of the United States, and a candidate for the Presidency. ``Bray'' Dickinson was a most earnest supporter of Mr. Seward; staunch, prompt, vigorous, and really devoted to the public good.
McClellan organized a board of generals, arriving daily from the camps, to discuss some new fancy army equipment. And Lincoln, Seward, Blair, and all the tail of intriguers and imbeciles, still admire him. In no other country would such a futile man be kept in command of troops opposed to a deadly and skilful enemy. Oh human imbecility!
He showed this power toward his Cabinet officers, who included the most various material, Seward, accomplished, resourceful, somewhat superficial, but thoroughly loyal to his chief after he knew him, managing the foreign relations with admirable skill, and somewhat conservative in his views; Chase, very able as a financier and jurist, but intensely ambitious of the Presidency, regarded as a radical as to slavery; Stanton, a great war minister but of harsh and intractable temper.
Seward was right, although in a sense different from that in which he uttered the above sentence. Oct. 23. The recent publication of General Scott's letter, and of a writing to President Buchanan, confirms my opinion that "the highest military authority in the land" faltered after March 4, 1861, and inaugurated that defensive warfare wherein we stick on the Potomac until this day.
On December 18 of that year, when Lincoln had been eight months dead, William Seward, as Secretary of State, was able to certify that the requisite majority of States had passed the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and the cause of that "irrepressible conflict" which he had foretold, and in which he had played a weak but valuable part, was for ever extinguished.
Seward was still Secretary of State. Hardly yet an old man, though showing marks of time and violence, Mr. Seward seemed little changed in these eight years. He was the same with a difference. Perhaps he unlike Henry Adams had at last got an education, and all he wanted. Perhaps he had resigned himself to doing without it.
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