Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [101]
Nor did she spare him whenever she detected a blatantly conciliatory tone in his speeches or writings. While she conceded that “worldly wisdom certainly does impel a person to ‘swim with the tide’—and if they can judge unerringly which way the tide runs, may bring them to port,” she continued to argue for “a more elevated course” that would “reconcile one to struggling against the current if necessary.”
In Charles Sumner, Frances found a politician who consistently chose the elevated course she favored, even though he was often isolated as a result. Sumner, a bachelor, who, like Chase, was said to look like a statesman, with imperious, well-chiseled features, would often dine with the Sewards when Frances was in town. When she returned to Auburn, they kept up a rich correspondence. Sumner valued her unflagging confidence particularly during his early days in the Senate when his unyielding position on slavery provoked anger and ridicule. Though his attempt to repeal the Fugitive Slave Act in August 1852 garnered only 4 votes in the Senate, not including Seward’s—who, like other antislavery men, refused to support it on the grounds that it would torpedo Scott’s chances for the presidency—Frances stood loyally by her friend. “This fearless defense of Freedom must silence those cavilers who doubted your sincerity,” she wrote. “It is a noble plea for a righteous cause.”
That November, when the Southerners’ candidate, Franklin Pierce, crushed Scott in what Northern Whigs considered “a Waterloo defeat,” Frances fell into a state of despair. Her confidence in the mainstream political system gone, she was tempted, she told her husband, to join the abolitionists. Seward persuaded her to hold back, arguing that it would do “more harm than good” if the Seward name were attached to the abolitionist cause.
Try as he might, Seward could not persuade Frances to stay with him for more than a few months at a time in Washington. Her decision to remain in upstate New York, especially in the wretched summer months, was not unusual, but even when the weather began to cool as autumn set in, Frances remained in Auburn. “Would that I were nearer to you,” he lamented from Washington on his fifty-fourth birthday; but he accepted that his “widened spheres of obligation and duty” prevented him from realizing his wishes.
Had Frances Seward enjoyed good health, the course of their marriage might have been different; everywhere Seward went he rented sumptuous homes, hopeful that she and the children might join him. Burdened with a fragile constitution, Frances was increasingly debilitated by a wide range of nervous disorders: nausea, temporary blindness, insomnia, migraines, mysterious pains in her muscles and joints, crying spells, and sustained bouts of depression. A flashing light, a bumpy carriage ride, or a piercing sound was often sufficient to send her to bed. As her health deteriorated, she found it more and more difficult to leave her “sanctuary” in Auburn, where she was attended by her solicitous extended family.
Doctors could not pinpoint the physical origin of the various ailments that conspired to leave Frances a semi-invalid. A brilliant woman, Frances once speculated whether the “various nervous afflictions & morbid habits of thought” that plagued so many women she knew had their origin in the frustrations of an educated woman’s life in the mid-nineteenth century. Among her papers is a draft of an unpublished essay on the plight of women: “To share in any kind of household work is to demean herself, and she would be thought mad, to run, leap, or engage in active sports.” She was permitted to dance all night in ballrooms, but it “would be deemed unwomanly” and “imprudent” for her to race with her children “on the common, or to search the cliff for flowers.” Reflecting on “the number of invalids