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for the arrival of his train in Kalamazoo, and when he disembarked, crowds followed him along the streets to the place where he would sleep that night. The next day, thousands more assembled on the village green to enjoy a brilliant “procession of young men and women on horseback, all well mounted, children with banners, men with carts and wagons,” that preceded the formal speeches. Still craving more, the crowd followed the entourage back to the train station, where Seward appeared at the window to speak again. To the discomfort of the elder Charles Francis Adams, Seward suggested that he, too, stick his head out of the window for some final words. “All of this reminded me of a menagerie,” Adams confessed in his diary, “where each of the beasts, beginning with the lion, is passed in review before a gaping crowd.”

In St. Paul, Minnesota, a correspondent reported, Seward’s arrival was “a day ever memorable in the political history of our State.” Early in the morning, the streets were “alive with people—the pioneer, the backwoodsman, the trapper, the hunter, the trader from the Red River,” all of them standing in wonder as a “magnificent Lincoln and Hamlin pole” was raised. A procession of bands and carriages heralded the arrival of Seward, who spoke for nearly two hours on the front steps of the Capitol.

Reporters marveled at Seward’s ability to make every speech seem spontaneous and vital, “without repetition of former utterances,” surpassing “the ordinary stump speech in fervency…literary quality, elevation of thought, and great enthusiasm on the part of the auditors.” It often appeared “the whole population of the surrounding country had turned out to greet him,” one correspondent noted. “Gov. Seward, you are doing more for Lincoln’s election than any hundred men in the United States,” a judge on board the Mississippi boat told him. “Well, I ought to,” Seward replied.

Charles Francis Adams, Jr., who was twenty-five at the time, could not figure “where, when, or how” Seward was able to prepare “the really remarkable speeches he delivered in rapid succession,” for “the consumption of liquors and cigars” during the journey was excessive. “When it came to drinking, Seward was, for a man of sixty, a free liver; and at times his brandy-and-water would excite him, and set his tongue going with dangerous volubility; but I never saw him more affected than that—never approaching drunkenness. He simply liked the stimulus.” Amazingly, Adams remarked, despite Seward’s drinking, his capacity for work was unimpaired.

Young Adams was mesmerized by Seward, whom he considered the most “delightful traveling companion” imaginable. “The early morning sun shone on Seward, wrapped in a strange and indescribable Syrian cashmere cloak, and my humble self, puffing our morning cigars,” Adams recorded in his diary after an overnight journey by rail to Quincy, Illinois. The two smokers had adjourned to the baggage car, “having rendered ourselves,” in Seward’s words, “‘independent on this tobacco question.’”

Seward’s grand tour received extensive coverage, complete with excerpts from his speeches, in newspapers across the land. From Maine, Israel Washburn wrote that he was astonished at the “integrity & versatility” of the speeches. He considered the speech in Detroit “the most perfect & philosophical—the St. Paul the broadest, the Dubuque the warmest, the Chicago the most practical & effective…but, of all the speeches…I like the short one at Madison—it seems to me to be the most comprehensive & complete, the grandest & highest.”

At home in Auburn, Frances Seward received dozens of letters praising her husband’s performance. “I am sure you must be most happy,” Seward’s old friend Richard Blatchford wrote. “He has shown throughout a depth of power, eloquence & resonance of thought and mind, which we here who know him so well, are not a little taken a-back by.” Sumner told Frances that as he read each speech, he “marveled more & more. I know nothing like such a succession of speeches by any American.” Frances took pride in her husband’s accomplishments