Sea-Sey: Sears through Seys

See below for annotated biographies of American abolitionists and anti-slavery activists. Sources include: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography and Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.


SEARS, Susan, Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS), Boston, Massachusetts.

(Yellin, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horne (Eds). The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994, p. 61)


SEATON, William Winston (January 11, 1785-June 16, 1866), journalist, editor. Seaton was a Whig, a Free Mason, and a Unitarian.  For many years he was an official in the American Colonization Society; he favored gradual emancipation and freed his own slaves, but opposed the Garrison abolitionists.  American Colonization Society, Manager, 1833-1839, Executive Committee, 1839-1841.  Editor of the National Intelligencer in Washington, DC.  Elected Mayor of Washington, DC, in 1840, serving 12 years in office.  Co-published Annals of Congress. 

(Josephine Seaton, William Winston Seaton of the "National Intelligencer" (1871); Atlantic Monthly, October 1860, July 1871; Frederic Hudson, Journalism in the U.S. from 1690 to 1872 (1873).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 541-542:

SEATON, WILLIAM WINSTON (January 11, 1785-June 16, 1866), journalist, was born at the stately homestead "Chelsea" in King William County, Virginia, the son of Augustine and Mary (Winston) Seaton. The Seatons, whose forefather, Henry, settled in Gloucester County, Virginia, in 1690, were of Scottish, and the Winstons of English, ancestry; both were of the Virginia gentry. First trained by tutors, William entered Ogilvie's academy in Richmond, where he acquired a taste for drama, literature, art, and journalism. At eighteen, having already gained a practical knowledge of printing in a Richmond newspaper office, he entered on his journalistic career. After brief service as an assistant editor of the Richmond Virginia Patriot, he edited successively the Petersburg Republican and the North Carolina Journal of Halifax, North Carolina. In 1809 he moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, and became associated with the elder Joseph Gales [q.v.] of the Raleigh Register, a Jeffersonian newspaper; on March 30 of the same year he married Gales's daughter, Sarah Weston Gales. In 1812 he joined his brother-in-law, the younger Joseph Gales [q.v.], as associate editor of the National Intelligencer of Washington, D. C.

Seaton's policy as an editor of the "Court Paper" for fourteen years became conservative, nationalistic, and free from partisanship. His characteristically short and dignified editorials can hardly be distinguished from those of Gales. His ablest work, however, was done as a reporter of the debates in the Senate while Gales reported the debates of the House. Masters of shorthand, the brothers-in-law were the exclusive reporters of Congress from 1812 to 1829. Upon the authorization of Congress their shorthand reports, with those of the earlier reporters, covering the years from 1789 to 1824, were published by Gales & Seaton (42 volumes, 1834-56), as The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States, better known by the half-title, Annals of Congress. They also issued the Register of Debates in Congress, covering the years 1824-37 (14 volumes in 29, 1825-37), and the monumental series, American State Papers (38 volumes, 1832- 61).

Seaton was sanguine in nature and amused by the bitter attacks made upon him by editors and congressmen of opposite views. He preferred Crawford to Adams for president in 1824, and never accepted the leadership of Jackson, whom he respected as an honest, patriotic citizen but considered a rough frontiersman and an advocate of a low type of democracy. Seaton's personal tastes were aristocratic, although he sympathized with the laboring class, gave freely to the unfortunate, and died a poor man. He was genial, generous, captivatingly courteous, and a good conversationalist; in appearance he was tall, vigorous and handsome. He traveled in America and Europe. Among his friends he counted the leading Southern politicians and planters, and also Daniel Webster. He maintained a farm and a shooting-box in Prince George County to which he could retreat with friends of like tastes and his fine dogs to relax after a strenuous season in Washington. He was skilled in the use of the rod and gun. His witty and charming wife, who translated Spanish documents for him to use in the National Intelligencer, was a capable and attractive hostess, maintaining an elegant house to which came men and women of the higher circles of society.

Seaton was a Whig, a Free Mason, and a Unitarian. Much of his time was given to public service. He was an alderman of Washington from 1819 to 1831 and mayor from 1840 to 1850. He served on many committees, made numerous addresses, gave the city a progressive administration, developed the local educational system, led the movement for the Washington Monument, was active in the organization of the Smithsonian Institution and acted as its treasurer from 1846 until his death. He served in the state militia in Virginia, enrolled as a private in the War of 1812, and saw service at Bladensburg. For many years he was an official in the American Colonization Society; he favored gradual emancipation and freed his own slaves, but opposed the Garrison abolitionists and maintained that the national government should not interfere with slavery. Though he was at a11 times a compromiser on slavery, he was stanchly Unionist. He retired from his editorial work in 1864. His two sons died in 1827 and 1835, respectively; his wife died in 1863, leaving only his daughter, Josephine, to survive him.

[Josephine Seaton, William Winston Seaton of the "National Intelligencer" (1871); Atlantic Monthly, October 1860, July 1871; Frederic Hudson, Journalism in the U.S. from 1690 to 1872 (1873); A. C. Clark, "Colonel William Winston Seaton and His Mayoralty," Records of the Columbia Historical Society, volumes XXIX-XXX (1928); Joseph Henry, "A Sketch of the Services of the Late Hon. W. W. Seaton in Connection with the Smithsonian Institution," Annual Report ... Smithsonian, Inst . . . . 1866 (1867), reproduced in W. J. Rhees, The Smithsonian Inst. (1879); O. A. Seaton, The Seaton Family (1906); Daily Nat. Intelligencer, June 18, 19, 20, 1866.]

W.E.S.


SEDGWICK, Theodore, 1780-1839, lawyer.  Member of the U.S. Congress from Massachusetts, opposed slavery in Congress.  Advocated Free Trade and temperance reform.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 451; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 551; Locke, Mary Stoughton. Anti-Slavery in America from the Introduction of African Slaves to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade (1619-1808). Boston: Ginn & Co., 1901, p. 93; Annals of Congress). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 551-552:

SEDGWICK, THEODORE (January 27, 1811- December 8, 1859), author, lawyer, and diplomat, was born at Albany, New York, the son of Theodore Sedgwick [q.v.], the second of that name, and of Susan Anne Livingston (Ridley) Sedgwick. Catharine Maria Sedgwick [q. v.] was his aunt. Prepared for college in the public schools of New York City and at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, the family seat, he graduated at Columbia in 1829. He studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1833, and in the same year was appointed attaché at the United States legation in Paris under Edward Livingston [q. v.]. Here he enjoyed a number of stimulating personal contacts, notably with De Tocqueville, the historian, who became his friend and correspondent.

Returning to New York in 1834, Sedgwick began a law practice which in the next sixteen years grew to be very extensive. Ill health, however, made it impossible for him to continue in his profession after 1850, and during 1851-52 he travel ed in Italy, Switzerland, France, and England. Upon his return to New York he became president of the newly incorporated Association for the Exhibition of the Industry of all Nations ("Chrystal Palace Association"), in which capacity he carried on a voluminous correspondence with eminent men all over the world. After a year, however, the delicate state of his health forced him into retirement, first in New York and then at Stockbridge, where he partially recuperated. In 1857 President Buchanan offered him the post of minister to the Netherlands and later that of assistant secretary of state, both of which offices he declined. In 1858 he was persuaded to accept the position of United States district attorney of the southern district of New York, in which capacity he served until his death in December 1859, at Stockbridge.

Sedgwick was a keen student of legal, judicial, and political problems, and wrote extensively on th ese subjects. In politics he was, like his father, a n advocate of Jeffersonian principles, but some later democratic developments, such as the popular election of judges, "filled him with disgust, and he labored ... energetically to have the system altered" (Harper's Weekly, December 31, 1859). He contributed largely to Harper's Monthly and Harper's Weekly, and under the pseudonym Veto, to the New York Evening Post, then edited by William Cullen Bryant. In the year he was admitted to the bar he published a biography of his great-grandfather, A Memoir of the Life of William Livingston (1833), and thereafter books and articles from his pen appeared at frequent intervals: What is a Monopoly? (1835); A Statement of Facts -iii Relation to the Delays and Arrears of Business in the Court of Chancery of the State of New York (1838); Review of the Memoirs of the Life of Sir Samuel Romilly (1841); Constitutional Reform (1843); Thoughts on the Proposed Annexation of Texas (1844); The American Citizen (1847), an address at Union College; Address ... Delivered before the Columbia College Alumni Association ... October 27, 1858 (1858). In 1840 he edited A Collection of the Political Writings of William Leggett, in two volumes. His most important publication was A Treatise on the Measure of Damages, or, an Inquiry into the Principles Which Govern the Amount of Compensation Recovered in Suits at Law (1847; 9th edition, eel. by Arthur George Sedgwick and J. H. Beale, 4 volumes, 1912). For some years the only work in English on the subject, this study, in the opinion of a contemporary, was "characterized by a philosophic spirit ... and by accuracy of detail," and "may well take its place by the side of the more famous works of Chancellor Kent and Mr. Justice Story" (Solicitors' Journal, January 14, 1860, p. 183). In 1857 he published another considerable volume, A Treatise on the Rules Which Govern the Interpretation and Application of Statutory and Constitutional Law, of which a second edition was issued in 1874, with additional notes by J. N. Pomeroy.

Sedgwick was a man of methodical habits, preserving and carefully labeling all his private correspondence and official documents. He married, September 28, 1835, Sarah Morgan Ashburner, of a Stockbridge family, and was the father of seven children, three of whom died in infancy. His son Arthur George Sedgwick [q.v.] followed his father's profession and a daughter, Susan, married Charles Eliot Norton [q.v.].

[H. D. Sedgwick, "The Sedgwicks of Berkshire" (1900), Berkshire Historical and Sci. Society Colts., volume III; B. W. Dwight, The History of the Descendants of John Dwight of Dedham, Massachusetts (1874), II, 744-45; Sedgwick's correspondence as president of the Crystal Palace Company, in New York Historical Society; MSS. in the possession of E. L. W. Heck; Horace Greeley, Art and Industry as Represented in the Exhibition at the Crystal Palace, New York, 1853-4 (1853); Harper's Weekly, December 31, 1859; Solicitors' Journal and Reporter (London), January 14, 1860; New York Daily Tribune, December 10, 1859; Evening Post (New York), December 9, 1859.]

E.L.W.H.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 451:  

SEDGWICK, Theodore, lawyer, born in Sheffield, Massachusetts, 31 December, 1780; died in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 7 November, 1839, was graduated at Yale in 1798, studied law with his father, was admitted to the bar in 1801, and practised at Albany till 1821, when he removed to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, owing to impaired health, and retired from the active practice of his profession. He afterward interested himself in agriculture, was repeatedly chosen president of the Agricultural society of the county, was a member of the legislature in 1824, 1825, and 1827, and in the last year carried through a bill for the construction of a railroad across the mountains from Boston to Albany, which had been generally regarded as a chimerical scheme. He was for a series of years the unsuccessful candidate of the Democratic party for lieutenant-governor. He was an earnest advocate of free-trade and temperance, and an opponent of slavery. His death resulted from a stroke of apoplexy, which occurred at the close of an address to the Democratic citizens of Pittsfield. He published “Hints to my Countrymen” (1826); “Public and Private Economy, illustrated by Observations made in Europe in 1836-'7” (3 vols., New York, 1838); and addresses to the Berkshire agricultural association (1823 and 1830). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 451.  


SEELEY, Uri, Geauga County, Ohio, Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1836-39.


SELDEN, Henry Rogers, 1805-1885, lawyer, jurist, abolitionist.  Republican Lieutenant Governor for New York State.  Opposed to the extension of slavery to the territories.  Aided in the formation of the Republican party, and in 1856 was its successful candidate for the lieutenant-governorship.

(Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888,Volume V, pp. 456-457)

Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888,Volume V, pp. 456-457:

SELDEN, Henry Rogers, jurist, born in Lyme, Connecticut, 14 October, 1805; died in Rochester, New York, 18 September, 1885. In 1825 he removed to Rochester, New York, where he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1880. He began practice in Clarkson, Monroe county, but returned to Rochester in 1859; and was reporter of the court of appeals in 1851-'4. He was a Democrat, but, being opposed to the extension of slavery, aided in the formation of the Republican party, and in 1856 was its successful candidate for the lieutenant-governorship. He attended the Republican national convention at Chicago in 1860, and concurred with his colleagues from New York in advocating the nomination of William H. Seward, but acquiesced in the nomination of Abraham Lincoln. In July, 1862, Mr. Selden was appointed a judge of the court of appeals to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of his brother, and he was afterward elected for a full term, but resigned in 1864. In 1872 he attended the Cincinnati convention that nominated Horace Greeley for the presidency, and, though opposed to this course, reluctantly supported him in his canvass. He published “Reports, New York Court of Appeals, 1851-'4” (6 vols., Albany, 1853-'60). Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


SELLERS, John, Jr., Delaware, County, Pennsylvania, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1843-45.


SERGEANT, John, 1779-1852, lawyer.  U.S. Congressman from Pennsylvania.  Opposed extension of slavery into the territories.  Stated in Congressional debate of 1819:  “It is to no purpose, to say that the question of slavery is a question of state concern.  It affects the Union, in its interests, its resources, and character, permanently; perhaps forever.  One single State, to gratify the desire of a moment, may do what all the Union cannot undo; may produce an everlasting evil, shame and reproach.  And why?  Because it is a State right…  Sir, you may turn this matter as you will; Missouri, when she becomes a State, grows out of the Constitution; she is formed under the care of Congress, and admitted by Congress; and if she has a right to establish slavery, it is a right derived directly from the Constitution, and conferred upon her through the instrumentality of Congress.”  Further, Sergeant said, “If Missouri be permitted to establish slavery, we shall bring upon ourselves the charges of hypocrisy and insincerity, and upon the Constitution a deep stain, which must impair its lustre, and weaken its title to the public esteem.” 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 462-463; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 588; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 103, 105, 107, 213-214, 383n24, 29; 16 Congress, 1 Session, 1819-1820, II, p. 1201). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 588-589:

SERGEANT, JOHN (December 5, 1779-November 23, 1852), lawyer, congressman, was born in Philadelphia, the third child of Jonathan Dickinson Sergeant [q.v.] and Margaret (Spencer) Sergeant, and elder brother of Thomas Sergeant [q.v.]. He was orphaned at fourteen, and at sixteen, in 1795, was graduated from the College of New Jersey. He then began an apprenticeship in the house of Ellison & Perot, where he learned the rudiments of finance. In March 1797 he entered the law office of Jared Ingersoll [q.v.] and on July 17, 1799, was admitted, in Philadelphia, to the practice of law. Within six years, aided by a comfortable fortune, he had established himself, and for the next half-century he was an acknowledged leader of a famous bar.

In 1800 he was appointed by Governor Thomas McKean [q.v.] to be deputy attorney general for Chester County and Philadelphia. Two years later Thomas Jefferson made him commissioner of bankruptcy for Pennsylvania (Luzerne Federalist, July 12, 1802). He was elected to the legislature in 1805, and in 1806 declined reelection as well as an offer of the recordership of Philadelphia (Meredith, post, p. 9). Elected to the legislature again in 1807, he served as chairman of the committee on roads and inland navigation, and, though he did not (as claimed, Ibid., p. 9) report the first bill giving direct aid to internal improvements in Pennsylvania, he did demonstrate a deep and lasting interest in transportation and also in banking. At this time, furthermore, he revealed one of his fundamental traits of character as a public man by introducing a bill prohibiting masquerades as dangerous to public morals. Probably his growing law practice among a wealthy clientele and his identification with the vested interests brought about his temporary retirement from politics and, with it, his transition from a McKean-Jefferson Republican to a firm Federalist. Having scholarly tastes, he naturally fell in with the circle of intellectuals led by Joseph Dennie, Nicholas Biddle, and Joseph Hopkinson [qq.v. ]. His resulting friendship with Biddle lasted until the latter's death and in consequence Sergeant had an influence in the banking affairs of the nation that has never been fully recognized.

He was elected to the Fourteenth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Jonathan Williams, and served in that body from 1815 to 1823, from 1827 to 1829, and, again, from 1837 to September 15, 1841. He gave entire support to the "American system," despite bitter opposition to a high tariff by the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce and the mercantile interests of his constituency. The woollen manufacturers of the Middle States, however, wrote him that "the Manufacturing Part of Society ... observe your zealous regard for their interest" (Sergeant MSS., Historical Society of Pennsylvania, post, January 20, 1816). He opposed the Missouri Compromise, favored uniform bankruptcy laws, championed internal improvements, and throughout his terms in Congress was the chief legal and political adviser to the Second Bank of the United States. In 1816, armed with plenary powers and letters of introduction, he was sent by the Bank on a mission to Europe to obtain specie to bolster the banking structure of the country. The skilful diplomacy which this thirty-seven-year old lawyer used in wresting a signal victory from stich lords of the world's financial capital as Baring Brothers and Reid, Irving & Company is a significant index to his abilities. A historian of the Bank, R. H. C. Catterall, criticizes the "pitiably inadequate" amount of specie kept on hand, but does not mention the strategic victory won by Sergeant in the face of great difficulties (The Second Bank of the United States. 1903, p. 29); yet Sergeant's successful mission undoubtedly had an ameliorating effect upon the depression of 1819. Besides serving as a director of the Bank and as its adviser, Sergeant fought some of its most notable legal battles before the Supreme Court (Charles Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History, 1922, II, 90, 108, and passim). He is credited with having had more influence than anyone else in inducing Biddle to apply for a renewal of the Bank's charter (Catterall, pp. 217-18; but cf. R. C. McGrane, The Correspondence of Nicholas Biddle Dealing with National Affairs, 1919, p. 147) . His position on public questions made him an ideal, but unsuccessful, National Republican candidate for vice-president in 1832 (E. M. Carroll, Origins of the Whig Party, 1925). In 1834 the Bank sought Sergeant's election to the United States Senate, and, though the attempt failed, it did prevent the election of Richard Rush [q.v.], an unfriendly candidate (Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, volume IX, 1876, p. 40).

He was president of the board of canal commissioners of Pennsylvania in 1825-26, and was named a member of the Panama Congress of 1826, though he never proceeded farther than Mexico city on his way to Tacubaya. He was president of the constitutional convention of Pennsylvania in 1837-38 and took the lead in the fight over the judiciary. His stature can be measured by the offices that he declined: these included a seat on the bench of the United States Supreme Court, a cabinet position under Harrison, and the embassy to England under Tyler (H. A. Wise, Seven Decades of the Union, 1872, p. 219; H. L. Carson, The Supreme Court of the United States, 1891, p. 343; Meredith, post, p. 27). His great strength was as a forensic legalist, less eloquent than intellectual, but powerful enough to win such battles as the Girard Will Case (2 Howard, 127) over such opponents as Webster. In the famous cases he conducted before the Supreme Court-Osborn vs. United States Bank (9 Wheaton, 738), Worcester vs. Georgia (6 Peters, 515), etc.-he was the advocate of national powers as opposed to state rights, and though he usually defended the strongholds of vested interests, he also fought legal battles for purely humanitarian ends, as in the Cherokee cases (5 Peters, 1). He headed several humanitarian and scholarly enterprises in Philadelphia, and his printed lectures were so extensive and well received that his admirers in 1832, possibly as an aid to his campaign of that year, gathered a number of them into a volume, Select Speeches of John Sergeant of Pennsylvania, in an effort "to rescue from the precarious tenure of ephemeral publications the reputation of an eminent man." He was married June 23, 1813, to Margaretta Watmough, by whom he had ten children.

[Sergeant MSS., 5 volumes, Conarroe MSS., Etting Papers, and Poinsett Papers in Historical Soc . of Pennsylvania; Hopkinson MSS. in hands of Hopkinson family, Philadelphia; Biddle, Sergeant, Clay, and Webster MSS. in Library of Congress; Sergeant MSS. and Canal Board Papers, in Pennsylvania State Library; Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); W. M. Meredith, Eulogy on the Character and Services of the Late John Sergeant (1853); Horace Binney, Remarks to the Bar of Philadelphia on the Occasion of the Deaths of Charles Chauncey and John Sergeant (1853); S. R. Gammon, The Presidential Campaign of 1832 (1922); Edward Stanwood, A History of Presidential Elections (1884); Proceedings and Debates of the Convention of ... Pennsylvania, to Propose Amendments to the Constitution ... 1837 (volumes I-XIII, 1837-39); Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, October 1924; Public Ledger (Philadelphia), November 25, 1852. ]

J.P. B.
Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 462-463:

SERGEANT, John, lawyer, born in Philadelphia, 5 December, 1779; died there, 25 November, 1852, was graduated at Princeton in 1795, and, abandoning his intention to become a merchant, studied law, and was admitted to the Philadelphia bar in 1799. For more than half a century he was known throughout the country as one of the most honorable and learned members of his profession and its acknowledged leader in Philadelphia. He entered public life in 1801, when he was appointed commissioner of bankruptcy by Thomas Jefferson, was a member of the legislature in 1808-'10, and of congress in 1815-'23, 1827-'9, and 1837-'42. In 1820 he was active in securing the passage of the Missouri compromise. He was appointed one of the two envoys in 1826 to the Panama congress, was president of the Pennsylvania constitutional convention in 1830, and Whig candidate for the vice-presidency on the ticket with Henry Clay in 1832. He declined the mission to England in 1841, and his last public service was that of arbitrator to determine a long-pending controversy. The question at issue concerned the title to Pea Patch island as derived by the United States from the state of Delaware, and by James Humphrey claiming through Henry Gale from the state of New Jersey. This involved the question of the boundary between the two states, or, in other words, the claim to Delaware river, and the decision in favor of the United States incidentally decided the boundary dispute in favor of Delaware. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 462-463.


SESSIONS, Horace, Pomfret, Connecticut, clergyman.  Agent for the American Colonization Society, Rhode Island and Connecticut. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 123-124)


SESSIONS, Lucy Stanton Day, 1831-1910, African American, educator, author, abolitionist.  Graduate of Oberlin College.  Early African American woman writer.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 10, p. 153)


SEVERENCE, Caroline M. Seymour, 1820-1914, Canandaigua, New York, abolitionist, suffragist, women’s rights activist.  Member of the Boston Anti-Slavery Society.  Married to abolitionist Theodore C. Severence. 

(Elwood-Akers, 2010; Severence, 1906)


SEVERENCE, Theodore C., abolitionist, husband of abolitionist Caroline Severence. 

(Severence, 1906)


SEWALL, Charles, Massachusetts, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1834-1837.


SEWALL, Samuel, 1652-1730, Massachusetts, jurist, early Colonial opponent of slavery.  Wrote essay, “The Selling of Joseph,” 1700, which spoke out against slavery. Sewall was the Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature.  Sewall was part of Salem witch trials, which he later regretted.  

(Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005, pp. 120-121; Bruns, Roger, ed. Am I Not a Man and a Brother: The Antislavery Crusade of Revolutionary America, 1688-1788. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1977, pp. 10-14; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 16-17; Francis, 2005; La Plante, 2007, 2008; Locke, Mary Stoughton. Anti-Slavery in America from the Introduction of African Slaves to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade (1619-1808). Boston: Ginn & Co., 1901, pp. 16-20, 23, 27, 34, 52, 131, 192; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 467-468; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 610; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 19, p. 671). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 610-612:

SEWALL, SAMUEL (March 28, 1652-January 1, 1730), merchant, colonial magistrate, diarist, was the grandson of Henry Sewall, a linen draper of Coventry, England, who acquired a considerable fortune and was several times mayor. In 1634 Samuel's father, Henry, emigrated to New England, where he married Jane, daughter of Stephen and Alice (Archer) Dummer. They soon returned to England, where Samuel, the second of eight children, was born at Bishopstoke. Some months afterward the family moved to Baddesley. There Samuel received his first schooling, going later to the grammar school at Rumsey. When he was nine years old the family returned to New England and settled in Boston. After further preparation, Samuel entered Harvard College, from which he graduated in 1671. At this time he seems to have been undecided whether he would enter the ministry or embark on a mercantile career. On November 5, 1673, he was chosen resident fellow, or tutor, at Harvard, and was installed on November 26. On February 28, 1675/6 he married the first of his three wives, Hannah, daughter of John Hull [q.v.], by whom he had fourteen children.

Made a freeman April 29, 1679 ("Records of the Suffolk County Court," Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, volume XXX, 1933, p. 1015), he began a long political career. From October 12, 1681, to September 12, 1684, he managed the colony's printing press. He was present at the General Court on November 7, 1683, as deputy from Westfield, Hampden County, and from 1684 to 1686 he was a member of the Council. The twelve months from November 1688 were devoted to a trip to England, during which he spent some time in London and traveled through the provinces, visiting both Cambridge and Oxford. The trip was primarily on private business connected with his mercantile enterprises, but he appeared before the King and Council and gave some assistance to Increase Mather [q.v.] in his efforts to recover the Massachusetts charter. Upon his return to Massachusetts, he resumed his position on the Council as one of the officers elected in 1686, and in 1691 he was named a councilor in the new charter which the colony was forced to receive. This post he continued to hold until he declined reelection in 1725.

On June 13, 1692, the governor, Sir William Phips [q.v.], appointed him one of the special commissioners of oyer and terminer to try the cases of witchcraft at Salem. The court met during July and August and sentenced nineteen persons to death, the executions taking place September 22, 1692. Sewall was the only one of the judges who ever publicly admitted that he had been in error in this matter. The part he played long preyed on his mind, and for some reason he considered himself as more guilty than any of the other judges. The legislature appointed January 14, 1697, to be a fast day for whatever might have been done amiss in the tragedy, and on that day Sewall stood up in the Old South Church, Boston, while the clergyman, the Reverend Samuel Willard, read a confession of error and guilt which Sewall wished to make for himself thus publicly. On December 6, 1692, he had been appointed a justice of the superior court. He was made a commissioner of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England in 1699, and shortly afterward became its local secretary and treasurer. He always showed much interest in the Indians and also in the negro slaves, publishing in 1700 a tract entitled The Selling of Joseph, one of the earliest appeals in the antislavery cause. He believed that the Indians should be set apart on permanent reservations and taught the English language and habits.

Sewall continued to hold various offices until almost the close of his life. In 1701 he was made captain of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company. He became judge of probate for Suffolk County in 1715, and chief justice of the superior court of judicature in 1718, which office he held for ten years. He was typical of the provincial judge of his time, without preliminary training in the law and with an unsystematic reading acquaintance with the legal classics ("Diary," post, I, 419). Yet he was a competent jurist and of more than average liberality, as evidenced by his modification of the rigorous miscegenation act of 1705 (Ibid., II, 143), his opposition to high-handed interpretations of the treason laws (Ibid., p. 149), and his stand against capital punishment for counterfeiting (Ibid., III, 277).

In the field of authorship he is credited with Proposals Touching the Accomplishment of Prophesies Humbly Offered (1713); A Memorial Relating to the Kennebeck Indians (1721); and Phaenomena Quaedam Apocalyptica ad Aspectum Novi Orbis Configuration, or, Some Few Lines Towards a Description of the New Heaven as It Makes to Those Who Stand Upon the New Earth (1697). With Edward Rawson, he wrote The Revolution in New England Justified (1691). He also composed many verses which circulated in manuscript form. Chiefly, however, he is remembered for his diary, which was published in three volumes by the Massachusetts Historical Society a century and a half after his death. It covers the period from 1674 to 1729, with a gap of about eight years, 1677- 85. There are other American diaries of higher importance from a political point of view, but none in which the journalist's entire world is so vividly reproduced. In it is given an incomparable picture of the mind and life of a Puritan of the transition period. Sewall, as unwittingly portrayed by himself, emerges as mercenary, mercantile, of average mentality, conventional, Puritanically introspective, morbidly fond of dwelling on death, yet playful, affectionate, honorable, strong, and fearless. The rich merchant who could plead for slaves and publicly abase himself for wrongdoing on the bench in the Boston of 1690-1700 was no ordinary man.

Sewall's first wife died October 19, 1717, and on October 29, 1719, he married Abigail, daughter of Jacob Melyen and widow of James Woodmansey and William Tilley. She died on May 26, 1720. Subsequently he courted Madam Katherine Winthrop, with gifts of sermons, gingerbread, and sugar almonds at three shillings a pound (he gave her half a pound); but the lady insisted on his keeping a coach and wearing a wig, which, with a disagreement over a marriage settlement, cooled her suitor's ardor ("Diary," III, 262-75). On March 29, 1722, however, he married Mary Gibbs, daughter of Henry Shrimpton. By his last two wives he had no children. At his death he was buried in the Granary Burying Ground, Boston.

[The "Diary of Samuel Sewall," in 3 volumes, was pub. as Massachusetts Historical Society Colls., 5 series V-VII (1878-82); an abridged edition, Samuel Sewalls Diary, ed. by Mark Van Doren, was pub. in 1927; Sewall's letter-book, containing mercantile matters chiefly, is printed in Massachusetts Historical Society Colts., 6 series, I. II (1886-88); "Letters of Samuel Lee and Samuel Sewall Relating to New England and the Indians," ed. by G. L. Kittredge, appears in Colonial Society of Massachusetts Pubs., volume XIV (1913). The Judge's son, Joseph Sewall, preached and published a funeral sermon, The Orphan's Best Legacy (1730). Other sources include J. L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, volume II (1881); G. E. Ellis, An Address on the Life and Character of Chief-Justice Samuel Sewell (1885); Emory Washburn, Sketches of the Judicial History of Massachusetts from I630 to ... I775 (1840); N. B. Shurtleff, Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay (1854), volume V; John Noble, Records of the Court of Assistants of the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay, volume I (1901); minutes and files of the superior court of judicature, Suffolk County Court House, Boston; R. C. Winthrop, A Difference of Opinion Concerning the Reasons Why Katherine Winthrop Refused to Marry Chief Justice Sewall (1885); V. L. Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought, volume I (1927).]

J.T.A.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 467-468:

SEWALL, Samuel, jurist, born in Bishopstoke, England, 28 March, 1652; died in Boston, Massachusetts, 1 January, 1730. His early education was received in England before his parents came to New England. They went to Newbury, Massachusetts, and his lessons were continued there. He was fitted to enter Harvard in 1667, and took his first degree in 1671, his second in 1675. He studied divinity and had preached once before his marriage, but after that event, which took place on 28 February, 1677, he left the ministry and entered public life. His wife was Hannah Hull, the daughter and only child of John and Judith (Quincy) Hull. The position which his father-in-law held as treasurer and mint-master undoubtedly had somewhat to do with the change in the young man's plans. One of his first ventures after his marriage was to assume charge of the printing-press in Boston. This was under his management for three years, when other engagements compelled him to relinquish it. His family connections, both through his marriage and on the maternal and paternal sides, brought him in contact with some of the most prominent men of the day. In 1684 he was chosen an assistant, serving for two years. In 1688 he made a voyage to England, and remained abroad a year in the transaction of business, visiting various points of interest. In 1692 he became a member of the council and judge of the probate court. Judge Sewall appeared prominently in judging the witches during the time of the Salem witchcraft. His character was shown more clearly at that time and immediately afterward than at any other time during his long life. He was extremely conscientious in the fulfilment of duty, and yet, when he found he was in error, was not too proud to acknowledge it. Of all the judges that took part in that historic action, he was the only one that publicly confessed his error. The memory of it haunted him for years, until in January, 1697, he confessed in a “bill,” which was read before the congregation of the Old South church in Boston by the minister. During its reading, Sewall remained standing in his place. The action was indicative of the man. During the remaining thirty-one years of his life he spent one day annually in fasting and meditation and prayer, to keep in mind a sense of the enormity of his offence. In 1699 he was appointed a commissioner for the English Society for the propagation of the gospel in New England. Soon afterward he was appointed their secretary and treasurer. His tract, entitled “The Selling of Joseph,” in which he advocated the rights of the slaves, was published in 1700. He was very benevolent and charitable, and his sympathies were always with the down-trodden races of humanity. In 1718 he was appointed chief justice, and served till 1728, when he retired on account of the increasing infirmities of old age. He also published “The Accomplishment of Prophecies” (1713); “A Memorial Relating to the Kennebec Indians” (1721); “A Description of the New Heaven” (1727). The Massachusetts historical society have published his diary, which covers the larger portion of his life, in their “Historical Collections,” and it has also published his letter-book, in which he kept copies of his important letters. These throw light upon the civil and social life of the day in a marked degree, and strengthen the opinion that he was a man of eminent ability and of sterling character. In addition to his diary, he kept a “commonplace book,” in which he recorded quotations from various authors whose works he had read. At the time of his death he had also filled twelve manuscript volumes with abstracts of sermons and addresses that he had heard at various times. His funeral sermon, by the Reverend Thomas Prince, was highly eulogistic, but evidently a just tribute to one of the most remarkable men of his age.  

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 467-468.


SEWALL, Samuel E., Boston, Massachusetts, attorney, abolitionist leader.  Co-founding member of the New England Anti-Slavery Society (NEASS), founded January 1, 1832, in Boston, Massachusetts.  Founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833, and Manager, 1833-1837.  Auditor, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 1836-1840. Leading member of the Boston Vigilance Committee (BVC).  As a lawyer, he representated fugitive slaves in Boston.  Sewall supported immediate, uncompensated emancipation.  He was a leader and active member of the Liberty Party and was its party candidate for Governor of Massachusetts.  Sewall was a close working associated of abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison. Sewall was a descendant of early colonial abolitionist Samuel Sewall (1652-1730).

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 301, 405n12; Sinha, 2016, pp. 222-223, 225, 321, 251, 327, 385, 386, 391, 392, 404, 505-508, 545, 560; Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)


SEWALL, Thomas, 1786-1845, Washington, DC, physician.  Manager, American Colonization Society, 1834-39. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 469; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, p. 469:

Sewall, Thomas, physician, born in Augusta, life., 16 April, 1786; died in Washington, D. C., 10 April, 1845, was graduated in medicine at Harvard in 1812, and practised in Essex, Massachusetts, till 1820, when he removed to Washington. In 1821 he was appointed professor of anatomy in the National medical college of Columbian university. He began his lectures when the college first opened in 1825, and continued them till his death. He published, among other works, “The Pathology of Drunkenness” (Albany), which was translated into German, and established his reputation as an original investigator in Europe as well as in the United States. Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.



SEWARD, Frederick William (July 8, 1830-April 25, 1915), journalist and diplomat, son of William Henry Seward. opposed slavery.

(Who's Who in America, 1914-15; Who's Who in New York City and State, 1907; New York Times, April 26, 1915)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, pp. 612-613:

SEWARD, FREDERICK WILLIAM (July 8, 1830-April 25, 1915), journalist and diplomat, was born at Auburn, New York, the son of William Henry [q.v.] and Francis (Miller) Seward. In 1849 he graduated from Union College, and then became secretary to his father who had just been elected to the United States Senate. After admission to the bar, through the influence of his father he became, in 1851, a member of the staff of the Albany Evening Journal, conducted by Thurlow Weed [q. v.], and served on this paper continuously, most of the time as associate editor, for the next ten years.

With his father's entry into the State Department, Frederick became assistant secretary of state, He had special charge of the consular service, but played a part in the preparation of many diplomatic dispatches. He was present at the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. In the spring of 1865, when the Secretary was incapacitated by a carriage accident, Frederick became acting secretary of state. In this connection he sent out the notices for the last of Lincoln's cabinet meetings (April 14, 1865), attended the meeting itself, and left an interesting account of what occurred on that day (Reminiscences, pp. 254-57). On the same night on which the President was assassinated, one of the conspirators forced his way into William Seward's house. Frederick met him in the hall, and there a tussle ensued in which the younger Seward was seriously hurt, without, however, being able to prevent the would-be murderer reaching his father's bedside and inflicting painful wounds upon him. In 1866 Frederick was sent with Vice-Admiral David D. Porter [q.v.] on a diplomatic mission which had in view the leasing or purchasing of the Bay of Samana, in the island of Santo Domingo. The negotiations broke down, temporarily, but some months later a treaty was negotiated in Washington, which, however, was never ratified by the Senate.

With the change of administration in 1869 the two Sewards retired to private life, and Frederick accompanied his father to Mexico. In 1874, two years after his father's death, he was elected to the New York Assembly, and in the subsequent session he introduced two constitutional amendments, providing for a superintendent of public works and a superintendent of prisons; a bill for th e construction of an elevated railway (the first of its kind); and a measure for the reduction of canal tolls. He was nominated for secretary of state of New York in the fall, but was defeated in the election. With the advent of the Hayes administration, Seward again went to Washington as assistant secretary of state (March 21, 1877-October 31, 1879). In this capacity he laid down the policy pursued by the administration with regard to the recognition of Porfirio Diaz in Mexico, negotiated for the lease of the harbor of Pago-Pago in Samoa, and prepared the presidential proclamation which resulted in the sending of troops to Pittsburgh in connection with the riots of 1877. After retiring from office he took little part in public life. In 1877 he published Autobiography of William H. Seward from 1801 to 1834, with a Memoir of His Life and Selections from His Letters, from 1831 to 1846, reprinted in 1891 as William H. Seward: An Autobiography, which he supplemented by Seward at Washington (2 volumes, 1891), and "Seward's West Indian Cruise" (Godey's Magazine, April-November 1894). His Reminiscences of a War-Time Statesman and Diplomat (1916) was published after his death. On November 9, 1854, he married Anna M. Wharton of Albany.

[In addition to Seward's own writings, see Encyclopedia of Contemporary Biography of New York (4 volumes, 1878-85); Outlook, May 5, 1915; Who's Who in America, 1914- 15; Who's Who in New York City and State, 1907; New York Times, April 26, 1915.]

D. P.


SEWARD, William Henry, 1801-1872, statesman, U.S. Secretary of State under Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, U.S. Senator from New York, abolitionist, member Anti-Slavery Republican Party 

(Baker, 1884; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 292, 302, 355-356; Mitchell, Thomas G. Antislavery Politics in Antebellum and Civil War America. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007, pp. 9, 10, 54, 119-121, 160, 162, 165-167, 168, 177, 191-192, 198, 247; Pease, William H., & Pease, Jane H. The Antislavery Argument. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965, pp. 177-181, 483-485; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 52, 62, 136, 138, 240, 513, 634-636; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 470-472; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 8, Pt. 2, p. 615; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 19, p. 676; Hinks, Peter P., & John R. McKivigan, Eds., Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition.  Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood, 2007, Volume 2, pp. 613-616)

SEWARD, WILLIAM HENRY (May 16, 1801-October 10, 1872), statesman, was born in Florida, Orange County, New York, the son of Dr. Samuel S. and Mary (Jennings) Seward. After preparatory studies in Florida and the neighboring village of Goshen, he was sent at the age of fifteen to Union College. Graduating in 1820, he began to read law and was admitted to the bar in 1822, establishing himself the next year in Auburn, New York, which was to be his home for the rest of his life. Seward's convivial temperament as well as his profession fitted him for politics; the question was with what political group he would affiliate himself. His family had been Democratic-Republicans of the strictest persuasion, but with praiseworthy independence the rising young lawyer chose to ally himself with the opposing elements. In this decision the principal factors, according to his Autobiography (p. 54) written nearly fifty years later, were his distrust of the Southern Jeffersonians, and his great interest in internal improvements. At any rate, Seward voted for De Witt Clinton for governor, and John Quincy Adams for president in 1824, and wrote a good "Address" in support of the former (Works, III, 335). The enthusiasm which he then felt for Adams was never dimmed, and undoubtedly had its part in forming his own political ideals as time went on.

The closing  years of the 1820's saw the rise of the Anti-Masonic movement in western New York. To this Seward found himself drawn, both by expediency and by conviction. In the deliberations of the new organization, as indeed in previous political discussions, the rising young politician was drawn close to Thurlow Weed [q.v.], whose casual acquaintance he had first made in 1824 and with whom he was to maintain one of the most intimate and long-standing friendships in American political annals. It was due to Weed's influence that Seward stood for and was elected in the fall of 1830 to the state Senate. In this body he served for the next four years, as a distinguished member of the minority and later as its leader. He played a prominent part in the debates on Andrew Jackson's bank policy; he sustained the President in his opposition to Nullification; he continued to advocate internal improvements; he supported abolition of imprisonment for debt. Defeated for reelection in 1833, he was unanimously nominated for governor in 1834. By this time the Whig party had supplanted the Anti-Masons, and it was under the Whig banner that Seward was to fight for the next twenty years. In this first Whig candidacy, however, he was defeated, by William L. Marcy [q.v.]. The next few years Seward devoted to the practice of law, and he acquired a modest competence through his success as agent for the Holland Company, in settling disputes with settlers in Chautauqua County (Autobiography, p. 328; Works, III, 461).

The Whigs carried the New York legislature in the election of 1837 and Seward's political ambitions, which he professed were dead in 1834, rapidly came to life again, with the governorship as their objective. The contest for the nomination lay between him and the dignified Francis Granger [q.v.], nearly nine years his senior. Seward professed to be willing to let the convention decide, but an active organization was set on foot, the young voters being particularly active in his favor. Weed, after some hesitation, decided that his protege should have the nomination, and in a closely contested convention battle Seward was chosen. In the electoral campaign itself, he was compelled for the first time to face the issue of slavery. His attitude in 1838 can hardly be called an advanced one. By the abolitionists he was asked three questions, whether he was in favor of (1) a law granting trial by jury to all fugitives, (2) of abolishing the special qualifications for negro voters, and (3) of repealing a law permitting the importation and detention of slaves in the state of New York for a period of nine months. He answered the first question in the affirmative, but the other two in the negative, declaring that the subjects with which they dealt did not enter "into the political creed" of his party (Works, III, 426-32).

The election of 1838 resulted in a victory for Seward, as did that of 1840, though by a reduced plurality. His four years in the governorship reveal the natural ardor and optimism of his temperament, his strong humanitarian sympathies, and also his impulsiveness and tendency to challenge majority opinion. Always warmly convinced of the desirability of internal improvements, Seward courageously urged them upon successive legislatures (see his message of 1840, Works, II, 212-55). In the midst of the depression, he refused to acquiesce in the suspension of activities already undertaken, and from first to last boldly defended large expenditures. In this particular case the policy cannot be said to have succeeded. The state's credit was adversely affected, its bonds selling at a discount of twenty per cent in 1841. When the Democrats regained control of both houses of the legislature in the fall elections, they proceeded to suspend virtually all but the most necessary expenditures, and to levy additional taxes. Seward, however, stoutly insisted that his policy had been wise, and that the obstacles to its accomplishment were merely a blind distrust of the future, on the part of foreign investors and of the American people. His natural impulsiveness, as well as his generosity of feeling, was illustrated also by his attitude on the question of public education in New York City. The schools there, conducted by a private corporation, the Public School Society, had been unacceptable to the rapidly growing Catholic population, and, furthermore, did not attract the children of the immigrant classes. In his message of 1840, after consulting with his old friend, Dr. Eliphalet Nott of Union College, Seward recommended "the establishment of schools in which they (the children of New York) may be instructed by teachers speaking the same language with themselves and professing the same faith" (Works, II, 215). This recommendation caused a storm of criticism from the nativist elements in the state, stronger in the Whig than in the Democratic party. Seward was compelled to retreat from the position which he had assumed, though he succeeded in securing the establishment of public schools free from sectarian influence in the city.

On the slavery question Seward took advanced ground during his term of office. He refused to surrender three sailors, who had instigated the flight of a fugitive slave to New York, when the extradition of these men was demanded by the state of Virginia. His act provoked so much irritation in Virginia as to bring about reprisals against New York shipping. But it was typical of his humanitarian spirit, and it won him the ardent support of the growing abolitionist element (for the controversy, 1839-41, see Works, II, 449 ff.). No one would maintain, however, that Seward was an uncompromising idealist in the governorship. He dispensed offices on the strict spoils basis, as was the custom of the time; he signed a law requiring registration of voters in New York City under party pressure and very much against his personal convictions; and it may be that other motives than humanitarian interest were operating in the evolution of the policies above described. But he declined to be a candidate for reelection in 1842, and his letters show that he felt himself at this time to be too far in advance of public opinion to prosper politically.

The years in the governorship depleted Seward's financial resources. During the next seven years he worked assiduously to restore them, at first in his old field, the court of chancery, but, after a little, more and more in patent cases. From time to time he took criminal cases, involving trial before a jury. One of the most striking involved the death sentence on a poor imbecile negro, Freeman, in whose defense Seward made in 1846 one of the most eloquent of his speeches (Works, I, 391-475); this he afterwards declared he would have repeated without the alteration of a word. A case which won him still more fame was that in which in a suit for damages he unsuccess fully defended in 1846-47 Van Zandt, an Ohio farmer, who had assisted in the flight of fugitive slaves (Ibid.,   I, 476 ff.). In these years of private practice Seward was very far from abandoning his interest in politics. He took part in almost every campaign, often outside the borders of the state. He also ardently championed the cause of Irish freedom, gaining the support of the Irish-American voters as a result. The tide was running more and more his way, also, with regard to the question of slavery. By 1848 anti-slavery sentiment had become so strong that it was possible for him to be elected to the United States Senate, many Democrats, as well as all the Whig members of the legislature, voting for him.

When Seward entered the Senate the slavery question had become acute, and the question of its relation to the disposition of the territories just acquired from Mexico was assuming portentous proportions. In the celebrated debate growing out of Henry Clay's famous resolutions of 1850, Seward took his stand firmly against all compromise, and in favor of the unconditional admission of California as a free state. In his well-known speech of March 11 he declared that there was no reason to jumble together a variety of important questions in a single measure, as Clay had wished to do; he boldly asserted that the fugitive-slave law was impossible of enforcement in the North; he wished to abolish, not only the slave trade, as proposed by Clay, but also slavery in the District of Columbia; he was opposed to leaving the territories to organize themselves with or without slavery. In a prescient sentence he declared that the slave system would either be removed "by gradual voluntary effort, and with compensation," within the framework of the Union, or the Union would be dissolved, and civil wars ensue, bringing on violent but complete and immediate emancipation he had been passed over in 1856 in the Republican National Convention for Fremont; and some of his shifts of attitude may be attributed to the fact that he had his eye on the presidential nomination of 1860.

In 1859 Seward went abroad, meeting many celebrities in England and France, and returning to a great reception in New York. In February 1860, he again advocated the admission of Kansas as a free state, and made a speech which may be regarded as an expression of the platform on which he would stand for the Republican nomination (February 29, 1860, Ibid., IV, 619-43). Its general tenor was extremely conciliatory and moderate; with rare exceptions, Seward optimistically believed that Republicanism involved no threat to the unity of the American people. When the Republican National Convention met in Chicago in June 1860, he was undoubtedly the leading candidate, but the hostility of Horace Greeley, the opposition of the Know-Nothings, and Seward's own too widely known radical utterances, conspired to deprive him of the nomination. It was a severe blow, but he bore it with his usual outward equanimity and with very real generosity. He campaigned for the Republican ticket throughout the North, minimizing the Southern threats of secession, and urging the election of Lincoln. In the crisis which followed the election Seward showed characteristic elements of strength and weakness. His invincible optimism inclined him to minimize the dangers that lay ahead; yet, in the face of secession, he employed the language and the method of conciliation. He was also one of the Senate committee of thirteen constituted to consider means of composing the situation; as the spokesman of the section, and at the suggestion of Weed, he proposed on December 24 that Congress guarantee slavery in the slave states, and request the repeal of the personal liberty laws in exchange for the grant of jury trial to fugitive slaves (Senate Report No. 288, 36 Congress, 2 Session, pp. 10, 11, 13). His speech of January 12, 1861, made after three more states had seceded, was admirable in its spirit (Works, IV, 651-69). Clearly avowing his loyalty to the Union, he again spoke in the most conciliatory vein, advocating a constitutional convention to settle outstanding difficulties, and even suggesting, in departure from the Republican platform, the admission of the remaining territories as two states without regard to slavery. It is entirely possible that he personally favored the Crittenden Compromise; but the influence of the President-elect was thrown on the other side, and Seward voted against this proposal when it came before the Senate on March 2.

As early as December 8, Seward had been offered the office of secretary of state by Lincoln. He accepted on December 28; and although he was deeply displeased at the selection of Chase and Blair as cabinet colleagues, and even sought to reverse his decision as late as March 2, he yielded to the entreaties of the President. He took office on March 4, no doubt believing that he would be, and deserved to be, the dominant figure in the administration, and the man who could best avert the perils of civil war. In the critical period from March 4 to April 12, 1861 (the date of the firing on Sumter), Seward appears at very far from his best. He still retained the delusion that he might determine the course of the administration; and his famous memorandum, "Some Thoughts for the President's Consideration, April 1, 1861," admits of no apology. In this reckless document he advocated embroiling the United States with most of Europe and waging actual war on Spain and France, as a means of solidifying the Union (Nicolay and Hay, post, II, 29). The only concrete grievance on the horizon was the Spanish re-annexation of Santo Domingo, and this had not been officially consummated. A madder or wilder project than Seward's could hardly have been devised. Nor is it possible to imagine anything more arrogant than the last sentence of his memorandum, in which he virtually suggested that the President abdicate his power to the Secretary of State. Seward's course with regard to secession itself is not easy to justify. It is understandable that he entered into negotiations with the Confederate commissioners sent to Washington to demand the surrender of the forts still held by the Union government in the South; but it is not so easy to justify machinations behind the back of the President, by which the reënforcement of Fort Pickens was delayed, and the expedition to Sumter, when it sailed, weakened by the absence of the Powhatan. Seward was not even resolutely pacifist; on one occasion he spoke of using force to collect the revenue, and in general he was in favor of holding the Gulf forts, perhaps with a view to a possible war with Spain, though not of holding Sumter. No doubt much to his discomfiture, and with many a wound to his pride, he saw himself overruled and the decisive events which culminated in the opening of the Civil War directed by the chief whose real measure he had not yet taken.

Seward's conduct of the office of secretary of state during the four years of the war deserves high praise. More than any preceding secretary he conducted his diplomatic correspondence with an eye to public opinion at home. It is no chance that the publication of diplomatic dispatches in one or more annual volumes put out by the State Department begins with him (Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 2 volumes, 1861). He no doubt wrote almost too much for the American public, as compared with those to whom his dispatches were actually directed. But in so doing he did much both to inspirit and to restrain public opinion as occasion demanded. His early dispatches were too blustering in tone, and might have gotten him into serious trouble sometimes had it not been for the wisdom of Lincoln. As time went on, he dropped the truculent tone and expressed the views of the United States with dignity and force. On the occasion of the seizure of Mason and Slidell on board the Trent, an act received with something like ecstasy by Northern opinion, he behaved with great coolness in the midst of popular excitement. When the protest of the British government against such action arrived, it was the Secretary, this time somewhat against the opinion of the President, who decided that the protest must be heeded. The dispatch in which he conceded the surrender of the Southern commissioners is a masterpiece (Works, V, 295-309). Written with an eye to making palatable an act sure to be violently condemned by the hotheads in the United States, it flattered Northern opinion by its specious reasoning, and made the action appear as in accord with fundamental American traditions.

The possibility of European intervention in the Civil War Seward met, on the whole, with similar adroitness. The optimism of his dispatches, their profound self-confidence, and their array of facts, could hardly fail to make an impression. This tone, maintained through good fortune and bad, and coupled with warning after warning of the dangerous consequences of intervention, was, in general, just what the situation demanded. At times Seward was still a little bumptious, and his habit of publishing many of his dispatches was often irritating, but the general principle was sound. He could depend, too, on the tact and high diplomatic skill of Charles Francis Adams in interpreting his instructions. Seward made skilful use abroad of the question of slavery to check the anti-Northern agitation in France and England. On the Emancipation Proclamation he was at first conservative, because of his fear of its domestic consequences. When it was first discussed in July 1862, he urged Lincoln to postpone action, at least until a Federal victory (Nicolay and Hay, II, 479). But when the preliminary proclamation was issued after Antietam, he used it with great effect in his dispatches to Adams and W. L. Dayton. The danger of intervention seemed greatest in the fall of 1862 and the winter of 1863. At the end of October, the French government sought to secure joint action with Great Britain and Russia looking to an armistice. The proposal was rejected, and Seward wisely made no protest. But when the French directly proffered mediation early in 1863, Seward responded in one of his most effective dispatches (February 6, 1863, Senate Executive Document No. 38, 37 Congress, 3 Session, p. 11-16).

In his correspondence Seward adroitly defended the broad interpretation of continuous voyage in dispatches that suggest Sir Edward Grey's half a century later, and he protested vigorously against the outfitting of Confederate privateers in British ports. His steady pressure, combined with the skill of Adams, finally led the British government to take due precautions, in the case of the Laird rams, while his protests in the case of the Alabama laid the basis for solid pecuniary claims later. Nowhere was Seward more adroit than in his treatment of the French intervention in Mexico, and the establishment of Maximilian on a Mexican throne. From an early period he made the distaste of the United States for the whole project obvious; yet he suavely assumed the rumors of monarchy to be ill-founded as long as he could do so, and until the end of the war never let anything like menace enter into his tone. When the House of Representatives on April 4, 1864, condemned the schemes of Louis Napoleon (Congressional Globe, 38 Congress, l Session, p. 1408), Seward penned a masterly dispatch in which he soothed French susceptibilities, explaining that the opinion of the legislative branch of the government did not alter executive policy (April 7, 1864, Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, 1865, volume III, 356-57). When the Civil War was over, there was much sentiment for vigorous action against the French. Seward handled this delicate situation magnificently. He temporized while he could; the situation of the French grew more and more difficult; and then in dispatches gradually mounting in tone he edged his adversary, Drouyn de L'huys, from one position to another, until he finally secured the promise of the evacuation of Mexico in a fixed period of time. In the latter part of the correspondence Seward fell into his old habit of writing for domestic consumption; and the same may be said of his correspondence with Austria on the same subject; but the total effect of his activity is admirable.

Seward was, in temperament and conviction, an expansionist. During the 1850's this sentiment came in conflict with his anti-slavery views, and led him to oppose such projects as the purchase of Cuba. But when the war was over the strong instinct revived. In 1867 he negotiated the cession of Alaska, and with the aid of Sumner secured the prompt ratification of the treaty by the Senate. He sought to acquire the two most important islands of the Danish West Indies; but this agreement was never ratified. He encouraged overtures from the Dominican Republic looking to incorporation in the United States, again unsuccessfully. In his instructions to the American minister at Honolulu he advocated the annexation of Hawaii. Seward's views were those which a later generation was to accept.

In domestic affairs Seward exercised a constant influence both on the Lincoln and the Johnson administrations. He had a large, indeed it may be said the chief, responsibility for the treatment of political prisoners at the beginning of the war, and contrary to his general temperament he here showed much rigor. He exercised, as has been seen, a positive influence on the policy of the administration with regard to the border states and emancipation. He performed heavy labors as a sort of political liaison officer, and his interest in problems of patronage, while not always wisely exerted, was continuous. In the Johnson administration he was a central figure. He advocated a conciliatory policy towards the South, wrote some of Johnson's most important veto messages, and supported the President in many speeches, making "the swing around the circle" with him in 1866. By doing so he lost both popularity and influence, and he valued both dearly; but whatever the reaction of the moment, the judgment of time has been that he was wiser than his opponents.

The burdens of his last four years at Washington Seward sustained in circumstances that would have daunted a man less tenacious and industrious. He had suffered serious injury in a carriage accident in the spring of 1865, and this had been followed by the brutal attack upon him in his house which was contemporaneous with the assassination of Lincoln; yet he was soon transacting the public business with as much skill and coolness as ever. At the end of his term of office, despite the fact that he was partially crippled, he went around the world, the first important American political figure to do so, and much enjoyed the enthusiasm which his visit evoked. He returned to Auburn in the autumn of 1871, and there increasing paralysis overtook him. He died on October 10, 1872. On October 20, 1824, he had married Frances Miller, the daughter of his law partner. A woman of liberal sympathies and humanitarian views, she undoubtedly influenced his later career, and especially his attitude toward slavery. They had three sons and two daughters, one of whom died in infancy. Fredrick William Seward [q.v.] was closely associated with his father. A nephew, Clarence Armstrong Seward (October 27, 1828-July 24, 1897), who became an orphan in childhood and was brought up in his uncle's family, served for a brief time in 1865 as assistant secretary of state and attained prominence as a corporation lawyer. His cousin, George Frederick Seward [q.v.], another nephew of William H. Seward, was launched upon his diplomatic career under the latter's influence.

In Seward the politician and the statesman are interestingly, and on the whole happily, commingled. It is easy to discover occasions on which he equivocated, as politicians do; it is easy to discover occasions on which he sought the applause of the multitude, not always careful of the consequences. Even in his diplomacy, and strikingly in his early utterances on questions of foreign affairs, this is true. Yet Seward chose his early political creed, it would appear, from conviction; he associated himself with definite policies, and loved to do so; much earlier than most anti-slavery leaders of the political stripe, he adopted that important cause; he often showed real courage in advocating it. He made serious blunders, and might have made more, in estimating the true value of the conflicting forces at the end of 1860 and the beginning of 1861 but his years at the State Department are years of steady growth, and of very creditable achievement, while his role in maintaining national morale must not be underestimated. He was the partisan of a wise policy of reconciliation when the war was over. The unswervingly independent mind has its uses in the world; but its possessor is not apt to succeed in politics. It may be fairly argued that Seward combined devotion to principle, and flexibility as to means, in such proportions as to make him most effective.

As a human being, few could have been more lovable. Cheerful, generous, loathing personal controversy, he had a wide range of interests and of sympathies. He read much and widely; he traveled extensively, going to Europe several times, and seeing a great deal of his own country. He was a little vain, and he had his political enemies; he is dwarfed by the master-spirit of his great chief; but, compared with the irascible Stanton, the pompous Sumner, the intriguing Chase, and many others, he looms up as one of the most attractive, as well as most important, figures in a critical period of American history.

[Autobiography of William H. Seward, from 1801 to 1834, with a Memoir of His Life, and Selections from His Letters, from 1831 to 1846 (1877), ed. by F. W. Seward, the continuation of this by F. W. Seward, Seward at Washington (2 volumes, 1891); G. E. Baker, ed.,   The Works of William H. Seward (5 volumes, 1884); Life of Thurlow Weed (2 volumes, 1883-84), including his autobiography, ed. by Harriet A. Weed, and a memoir by T. W. Barnes; J. D. Hammond, The History of Political Parties in the State of New York (3 volumes, 1842-48); D. S. Alexander, A Political History of the State of New York, volume II (1906); Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the U. S. (2 volumes, 1861), and Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs (14 volumes, 1862-66), bound and usually cited as Diplomatic Correspondence of the U.S.; Gideon Welles, Lincoln and Seward (1874); F. W. Seward, Reminiscences of a War-Time Statesman and Diplomat (1916); Olive R. Seward, ed., William H. Seward's Travels Around the World (1873); J. G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln, Complete Works (2 volumes, 1894); Frederic Bancroft, The Life of William H. Seward (2 volumes, 1900), which is sympathetic yet critical, and is exceedingly well proportioned; T. K. Lothrop, William Henry Seward (1896) and E. E. Hale, Jr., William H. Seward (1910), of less importance; an interesting sketch in Gamaliel Bradford, Union Portraits (1916); C. F. Adams, Seward and the Declaration of Paris (1912); Tyler Dennett, "Seward's Far Eastern Policy," in American History Review, October 1922; studies of Seward's Mexican policy in J. M. Callahan, American Foreign Policy in Mexican Relations (1932), and Dexter Perkins, The Monroe Doctrine, 1826- 1867 (1933); detailed study of his policy toward Great Britain in E. D. Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War (2 volumes, 1925); general treatment by H. W. Temple in S. F. Bemis, ed., The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy, volume VII (1928); unpublished materials in the possession of Mrs. Thomas G. Spencer, Rochester, New York, and W. H. Seward, Auburn, New York; unpublished correspondence in Department of State, Washington, D. C.]

D.P.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 470-472:

SEWARD, William Henry, statesman, born in Florida, Orange county, New York, 16 May, 1801; died in Auburn, New York, 10 October, 1872. His father, Dr. Samuel S. Seward, descended from a Welsh emigrant to Connecticut, combined medical practice with a large mercantile business. His mother was of Irish extraction. The son was fond of study, and in 1816 entered Union, after clue preparation at Farmers' Hall academy, Goshen, New York. He withdrew from college in 1819, taught for six months in the south, and after a year's absence returned, and was graduated in 1820. After reading law with John Anthon in New York city, and John Duer and Ogden Hoffman in Goshen, he was admitted to the bar at Utica in 1822, and in January, 1823, settled in Auburn, New York, as the partner of Elijah Miller, the first judge of Cayuga county, whose daughter, Frances Adeline, he married in the following year. His industry and his acumen and power of logical presentation soon gave him a place among the leaders of the bar. In 1824 he first met Thurlow Weed at Rochester, and a close friendship between them, personal and political, continued through life. In that year also he entered earnestly into the political contest as an advocate of the election of John Quincy Adams, and in October of that year drew up an address of the Republican convention of Cayuga county, in which he arraigned the “Albany regency” and denounced the methods of Martin Van Buren's supporters. He delivered an anniversary address at Auburn on 4 July, 1825. He was one of the committee to welcome Lafayette, and in February, 1827, delivered an oration expressive of sympathy for the Greek revolutionists. On 12 August, 1827, he presided at Utica over a great convention of young men of New York in support of the re-election of John Q. Adams. He declined the anti-Masonic nomination for congress in 1828, but joined that party on the dissolution of the National Republican party, with which he had previously acted, consequent upon the setting aside of its candidate for Andrew Jackson. In 1830 he was elected as the anti-Masonic candidate for the state senate, in which body he took the lead in the opposition to the dominant party, and labored in behalf of the common schools and of railroad and canal construction. He proposed the collection of documents in the archives of European governments for the “Colonial History of New York,” advocated the election of the mayor of New York by the direct popular vote, and furthered the passage of the bill to abolish imprisonment for debt. At the close of the session he was chosen to draw up an address of the minority of the legislature to the people. On 4 July, 1831, he gave an address to the citizens of Syracuse on the “Prospects of the United States.” On 31 January, 1832, he defended the U.S. bank in an elaborate speech in the state senate, and at the close of that session again prepared an address of the minority to their constituents. In 1833 he travelled through Europe, writing home letters which were afterward published in the “Albany Evening Journal.” In January, 1834, he denounced the removal of the U. S. bank deposits in a brilliant and exhaustive speech. He drew up a third minority address at the close of this his last session in the legislature. On 16 July, 1834, he delivered a eulogy of Lafayette at Auburn.
The Whig party, which had originated in the opposition to the Jackson administration and the “Albany regency,” nominated him for governor on 13 September, 1834, in the convention at Utica. He was defeated by William L. Marcy, and returned to the practice of law in the beginning of 1835. On 3 October of that year he made a speech at Auburn on education and internal improvements. In July, 1836, he quitted Auburn for a time in order to assume an agency at Westfield to settle the differences between the Holland land company and its tenants. While there he wrote some political essays, and in July, 1837, delivered an address in favor of universal education. He took an active part in the political canvass of 1837, which resulted in a triumph of the Whigs. He was again placed in nomination for governor in 1838, and after a warm canvass, in which he was charged with havnig oppressed settlers for the benefit of the landcompany, and was assailed by anti-slavery men, who had failed to draw from him an expression of abolitionist principles, he was elected by a majority of 10,421. The first Whig governor was hampered in his administration by rivalries and dissension within the party. He secured more humane and liberal provisions for the treatment of the insane, a mitigation of the methods of discipline in the penitentiary, and the improvement of the common schools. His proposition to admit Roman Catholic and foreign-born teachers into the public schools, while it was applauded by the opposite party, drew upon him the reproaches of many of the Protestant clergy and laity, and subjected him to suspicion and abuse. His recommendations to remove disabilities from foreigners and to encourage, rather than restrict, emigration, likewise provoked the hostility of native-born citizens. His proposition to abolish the court of chancery and make the judiciary elective was opposed by the bench and the bar, yet within a few years the reform was effected. At his suggestion, specimens of the natural history of the state were collected, and, when the geological survey was completed, he prepared an elaborate introduction to the report, reviewing the settlement, development, and condition of the state, which appeared in the work under the title of “Notes on New York.” In the conflict between the proprietors and the tenants of Renselaerwyck he advocated the claims of the latter, but firmly suppressed their violent outbreaks. He was re-elected, with a diminished majority, in 1840. A contest over the enlargement of the Erie canal and the completion of the lateral canals, which the Democrats prophesied would plunge the state into a debt of forty millions, grew sharper during Governor Seward's second term, and near its close the legislature stopped the public works. His projects for building railroads were in like manner opposed by that party.
In January, 1843, Seward retired to private life, resuming the practice of law at Auburn. He continued an active worker for his party during the period of its decline, and was a frequent speaker at political meetings. In 1843 he delivered an address before the Phi Beta Kappa society at Union college on the “Elements of Empire in America.” He entered largely into the practice of patent law, and in criminal cases his services were in constant demand. Frequently he not only defended accused persons gratuitously, but gave pecuniary assistance to his clients. Among his most masterly forensic efforts were an argument for freedom of the press in a libel suit brought by J. Fenimore Cooper against Horace Greeley in 1845, and the defence of John Van Zandt, in 1847, against a criminal charge of aiding fugitive slaves to escape. At the risk of violence, and with a certainty of opprobrium, he defended the demented negro Freeman, who had committed a revolting murder, emboldened, many supposed, by Seward's eloquent presentation of the doctrine of moral insanity in another case. In September, 1847, Seward delivered a eulogy on Daniel O'Connell before the Irish citizens of New York, and in 1848 a eulogy on John Quincy Adams before the New York legislature. He took an active part in the presidential canvass, and in a speech at Cleveland described the conflict between freedom and slavery, saying of the latter: “It must be abolished, and you and I must do it.”
In February, 1849, Seward was elected U. S. senator. His proposal, while governor, to extend suffrage to the negroes of New York, and many public utterances, placed him in the position of the foremost opponent of slavery within the Whig party. President Taylor selected Seward as his most intimate counsellor among the senators, and the latter declined to be placed on any important committee, lest his pronounced views should compromise the administration. In a speech delivered on 11 March, 1850, in favor of the admission of California, he spoke of the exclusion of slavery as determined by “the higher law,” a phrase that was denounced as treasonable by the southern Democrats. On 2 July, 1850, he delivered a great speech on the compromise bill. He supported the French spoliation bill, and in February, 1851, advocated the principles that were afterward embodied in the homestead law. His speeches covered a wide ground, ranging from a practical and statistical analysis of the questions affecting steam navigation, deep-sea exploration, the American fisheries, the duty on rails, and the Texas debt, to flights of passionate eloquence in favor of extending sympathy to the exiled Irish patriots, and moral support to struggles for liberty, like the Hungarian revolution, which he reviewed in a speech on “Freedom in Europe,” delivered in March, 1852. After the death of Zachary Taylor many Whig senators and representatives accepted the pro-slavery policy of President Fillmore, but Seward resisted it with all his energy. He approved the nomination of Winfield Scott for the presidency in 1852, but would not sanction the platform, which upheld the compromise of 1850. In 1853 he delivered an address at Columbus, Ohio, on '”The Destiny of America,” and one in New York city on “The True Basis of American Independence.” In 1854 he made an oration on “The Physical, Moral, and Intellectual Development of the American People” before the literary societies of Yale college, which gave him the degree of LL. D. His speeches on the repeal of the Missouri compromise and on the admission of Kansas made a profound impression. He was re-elected to the senate in 1855, in spite of the vigorous opposition of both the Native American party and the Whigs of southern sympathies. In the presidential canvass of 1856 he zealously supported John C. Frémont, the Republican candidate. In 1857 he journeyed through Canada, and made a voyage to Labrador in a fishing-schooner, the “Log” of which was afterward published. In a speech at Rochester, New York, in October, 1858, he alluded to the “irrepressible conflict,” which could only terminate in the United States becoming either entirely a slave-holding nation or entirely a free-labor nation. He travelled in Europe, Egypt, and Palestine in 1859.
In 1860, as in 1856, Seward's pre-emiment position in the Republican party made him the most conspicuous candidate for the presidential nomination. He received 173½ votes in the first ballot at the convention, against 102 given to Abraham Lincoln, who was eventually nominated, and in whose behalf he actively canvassed the western states. Lincoln appointed him secretary of state, and before leaving the senate to enter on the duties of this office he made a speech in which he disappointed some of his party by advising patience and moderation in debate, and harmony of action for the sake of maintaining the Union. He cherished hopes of a peaceful solution of the national troubles, and, while declining in March, 1861, to enter into negotiations with commissioners of the Confederate government, he was in favor of evacuating Fort Sumter as a military necessity and politic measure, while re-enforcing Fort Pickens, and holding every other post then remaining in the hands of the National government. He issued a circular note to the ministers abroad on 9 March, 1861, deprecating foreign intervention, and another on 24 April, defining the position of the United States in regard to the rights of neutrals. Negotiations were carried on with European governments for conventions determining such rights. He protested against the unofficial intercourse between the British cabinet and agents of the Confederate states, and refused to receive despatches from the British and French governments in which they assumed the attitude of neutrals between belligerent powers. On 21 July he sent a despatch to Charles F. Adams, minister at London, defending the decision of congress to close the ports of the seceded states. When the Confederate commissioners were captured on board the British steamer “Trent” he argued that the seizure was in accordance with the British doctrine of the “right of search,” which the United States had resisted by the war of 1812. The release of these prisoners, at the demand of the British government, would now commit both governments to the maintenance of the American doctrine; so they would be “cheerfully given up.” He firmly rejected and opposed the proposal of the French emperor to unite with the English and Russian governments in mediating between the United States and the Confederate government. He made the Seward-Lyons treaty with Great Britain for the extinction of the African slave-trade. The diplomatic service was thoroughly reorganized by Sec. Seward; and by his lucid despatches and the unceasing presentation of his views and arguments, through able ministers, to the European cabinets, the respect of Europe was retained, and the efforts of the Confederates to secure recognition and support were frustrated. In the summer of 1862, the army having become greatly depleted, and public proclamation of the fact being deemed unwise, he went to the north with letters from the president and secretary of war, met and conferred with the governors of the loyal states, and arranged for their joint proffer of re-enforcements, to which the president responded by the call for 300,000 more troops. Mr. Seward firmly insisted on the right of American citizens to redress for the depredations of the “Alabama,” and with equal determination asserted the Monroe doctrine in relation to the French invasion of Mexico, but, by avoiding a provocative attitude, which might have involved his government in foreign war, was able to defer the decision of both questions till a more favorable time. Before the close of the civil war he intimated to the French government the irritation felt in the United States in regard to its armed intervention in Mexico. Many despatches on this subject were sent during 1865 and 1866, which gradually became more urgent, until the French forces were withdrawn and the Mexican empire fell. He supported President Lincoln's proclamation liberating the slaves in all localities in rebellion, and three years later announced by proclamation the abolition of slavery throughout the Union by constitutional amendment. In the spring of 1865 Mr. Seward was thrown from his carriage, and his arm and jaw were fractured. While he was confined to his couch with these injuries President Lincoln was murdered and on the same evening, 14 April, one of the conspirators gained access to the chamber of the secretary, inflicted severe wounds with a knife in his face and neck, and struck down his son, Frederick W., who came to his rescue. His recovery was slow and his sufferings were severe. He concluded a treaty with Russia for the cession of Alaska in 1867. He negotiated treaties for the purchase of the Danish West India islands and the Bay of Samana, which failed of approval by the senate, and made a treaty with Colombia to secure American control of the Isthmus of Panama, which had a similar fate. Sec. Seward sustained the reconstruction policy of President Johnson, and thereby alienated the more powerful section of the Republican party and subjected himself to bitter censure and ungenerous imputations. He opposed the impeachment of President Johnson in 1868, and supported the election of General Grant in that year. He retired from office at the end of eight years of tenure in March, 1869. After a brief stay in Auburn, he journeyed across the continent to California, Oregon, British Columbia, and Alaska, returning through Mexico as the guest of its government and people. In August, 1870, he set out on a tour of the world, accompanied by several members of his family. He visited the principal countries of Asia, northern Africa, and Europe, being received everywhere with great honor. He studied their political institutions, their social and ethnological characteristics, and their commercial capabilities. Returning home on 9 October, 1871, he devoted himself to the preparation of a narrative of his journey, and after its completion to a history of his life and times, which was not half finished at the time of his death. The degree of LL. D. was given him by Union in 1866. He published, besides occasional addresses and numerous political speeches, a volume on the “Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams” (Auburn, 1849). An edition of his “Works” was published, which contains many of his earlier essays, speeches, and addresses, with a memoir by George E. Baker, reaching down to 1853 (3 vols., New York, 1853). To this a fourth volume was added in 1862, and a fifth in 1884, containing his later speeches and extracts from his diplomatic correspondence. His official correspondence during the eight years was published by order of congress. The relation of his “Travels Around the World” was edited and published by his adopted daughter, Olive Risley Seward (New York, 1873). Charles F. Adams published an “Address on the Life, Character, and Services of Seward” (Albany, 1873), which was thought by some to have extolled him at the expense of President Lincoln's fame, and elicited replies from Gideon Welles and others. Mr. Seward's “Autobiography,” which extends to 1834, has been continued to 1846 in a memoir by his son, Frederick W., with selections from his letters (New York, 1877). The vignette portrait represents Governor Seward in early life, and the other illustration is a view of his residence at Auburn. There is a bronze statue of Mr. Seward, by Randolph Rogers, in Madison square, New York.—His son, Augustus Henry, soldier, born in Auburn, New York, 1 October, 1826; died in Montrose, New York, 11 September, 1876, was graduated at the U.S. military academy in 1847, served through the Mexican war as lieutenant of infantry, afterward in Indian territory till 1851, and then on the coast survey till 1859, when he joined the Utah expedition. He was made a captain on 19 January, 1859, and on 27 March, 1861, a major on the staff. He served as paymaster during the civil war, receiving the brevets of lieutenant-colonel and colonel at its close.—Another son, Frederick William, lawyer, born in Auburn, New York, 8 July, 1830, was graduated at Union in 1849, and after he was admitted to the bar at Rochester, New York, in 1851, was associate editor of the Albany “Evening Journal” till 1861, when he was appointed assistant secretary of state, which office he held for the eight years that his father was secretary. In 1867 he went on a special mission to Santo Domingo. He was a member of the New York legislature in 1875, and introduced the bill to incorporate the New York elevated railroad and the amendments to the constitution providing for a reorganization of the state canal and prison systems, placing each under responsible heads, and abolishing the old boards. He was assistant secretary of state again in 1877-'81, while William M. Evarts was secretary. Union conferred on him the degree of LL. D. in 1878. His principal publication is the “Life and Letters” of his father (New York, 1877), of which the second volume is now (1888) in preparation. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume V, pp. 470-472.

Chapter: “John Quincy Adams. - William H. Seward. - Salmon P. Chase,” by Henry Wilson, in History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 1872.

Just one year from the disappearance of Mr. Adams from the theatre on which he had borne so prominent and important a part were elected to the Senate of the United States William H. Seward of New York and Salmon P. Chase of Ohio. Both were deeply inspired by the spirit of freedom, and had labored earnestly in its behalf. Both were men of large capacity, superior culture; laudable ambition; and tireless industry; and their entrance upon this new and broader sphere of action was welcomed by the antislavery men of the nation with high and exciting hopes that they" would prove worthy champions of a noble cause. Nor were these hopes doomed to disappointment.

In the election of 1848, the Democratic party of New York had been riven iii twain and completely routed. The Whigs had elected all but one of its thirty-four members of Congress. They had secured four fifths of the legislature, and Hamilton Fish had been elected governor by a plurality of one hundred thousand. . Mr. Seward had done much to retain the antislavery Whigs of that and other Northern States, notwithstanding the rejection of the Wilmot proviso by the national convention. During the presidential canvass he said little of platforms or candidates, but spoke with signal ability in behalf of the Union, equal rights, the diffusion of knowledge, the development of the country, and the abolition of slavery.

During this canvass he addressed a convention in Cleveland, Ohio, and presented the issues growing out of the existence of slavery with singular boldness and distinctness of utterance. At the same time he described with philosophic accuracy and with marvelous force and felicity of language the distinction between the party of freedom and the party of slavery. He declared the antagonistic elements of American society to be freedom and slavery. “Freedom," he said,” is in harmony with our system of government and with the spirit of the ages and' is therefore passive and quiescent. Slavery is in conflict with that system, with justice, and with humanity, and is therefore organized, defensive, active, and perpetually aggressive. Freedom insists on the emancipation and elevation of labor; slavery demands soil moistened with tears and blood." Resulting from these elements, the American people were divided, he affirmed, into the party of freedom and the party of slavery. “The party of slavery,'' he said,” upholds an aristocracy founded on the humiliation of labor as necessary to the existence of a chivalrous republic. The party of freedom maintains universal suffrage, which makes men equal before the laws, as they are in the sight of a common Creator. The party of slavery cherishes ignorance because it is the only security for oppression. . The party of liberty demands the diffusion of knowledge because it is the safeguard of republican institutions. The party of slavery declares that institution munificent and approved of God, and therefore inviolable. The party of freedom seeks complete and universal emancipation."

Admitting that the Whig party had fallen from its ancient faith and was comparatively unsound, he claimed that it was the truest and most faithful of the two parties, the one or the other of which must prevail. He gave expression to the pregnant thought that the Whig party was as faithful to the interests of freedom as the “inert conscience " of the American people would permit it to be, and he urged the duty of making it more faithful. " Slavery," he said,” can be limited to its present bounds, it can be ameliorated, it can be and must be abolished; and you and I can and must do it." Maintaining that the strength of slavery did not lie in the Constitution of the United States, nor in the constitutions and laws of the slaveholding States, but in the erroneous sentiments of the American people, he urged the men of Ohio to " inculcate " the " law of freedom and equal rights of man under the paternal roof, and to see to it that they are taught in the schools and in the churches. “Reform your own code," he continued; "extend a cordial welcome to the fugitive who lays his weary limbs at your door, and -defend him as you would your paternal gods; correct your own error, that slavery bas any constitutional guaranty which may not be released and ought not to be relinquished. Say to slavery, when it shows its ' bond ' and demands its ' pound of flesh,' that if it draws one drop of blood its life shall be the forfeit."

These sentiments, thus decided, not to say defiant, were expressed in dignified language, with forensic art and the adroitness of the statesman, who made the manner strengthen and enforce the matter of his discourse. He counselled, too, their inculcation with a spirit of moderation and benevolence, and not of retaliation and fanaticism; and he expressed the be­lief that by so doing they would bring the friends of the country into an effective aggression upon slavery, and that when the public mind should will its abolition a way would be opened to do it. He urged them not to overlook the attainable in their efforts to secure the unattainable, and to “remember that no human work is done without preparation."

Source:  Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Volume 2.  Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, 164-166.


SEWELL, Louisa, Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (BFASS), Boston, Massachusetts

(Yellin, Jean Fagan and John C. Van Horne (Eds). The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women’s Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994, p. 50)


SEXTON, Pliny, Palyra, New York, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1852-1864.


SEYMOUR, Aseph, New York, abolitionist leader

(Sorin, Gerald. The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971)


SEYS, John, Reverend, Maryland, clergyman, missionary.  Traveling agent of the Maryland State Colonization Society.  Later worked for the American Colonization Society in Ohio. 

(Campbell, Penelope. Maryland in Africa: The Maryland State Colonization Society, 1831-1857. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1971, pp. 199, 200, 201, 204, 209)



Sources:
Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volumes I-VI, Edited by James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888-1889.