Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [196]
Unaware of these other communications, Seward assumed it was on his shoulders to save the Union, that he “held the key to all discontent.” After his appointment as secretary of state was made public on January 10, 1861, when he “came to be regarded somewhat extensively as a person representing the incoming administration and the Republican party,” the pressure of his position was immense. “By common consent,” Seward’s admirer Henry Adams later wrote, “all eyes were turned on him, and he was overwhelmed by entreaties from men in all sections of the country to do something to save the Union.” As members of Congress, the cabinet, and hundreds of nervous citizens approached him “with prayers and tears,” Seward became “virtually the ruler of the country.” Or so he thought.
Intuiting that the country needed a clear, strong Republican voice, Seward announced that he would deliver a major speech in the Senate on January 12. “Never in the history of the American Congress has there been witnessed so intense an anxiety to hear a speech as that which preceded the delivery of Mr. Seward’s,” a reporter for the Chicago Tribune wrote. “What gave so much interest and weight to the Senator’s words, was the belief that it was equivalent to a speech from Lincoln himself.”
“The families of nearly all the Senators and Cabinet officers were present,” another correspondent reported, and the crush to get in was so great that “extravagant prices were offered to the various doorkeepers to obtain admission.” As Seward began to speak, senators on both sides of the aisle sat in rapt attention, including Mississippi’s Jefferson Davis, who would soon resign the Senate to become the president of the Southern Confederacy. “No man was as usual engaged in writing letters, no one called for pages, no one answered messages,” a witness observed, “and every ear in the vast assembly was strained to catch his every word.”
Seward’s chief purpose was “to set forth the advantages, the necessities to the Union to the people…and the vast calamities to them and to the world which its destruction would involve.” He warned that disunion would give rise to a state of “perpetual civil war,” for neither side would tolerate an imbalance of strength or power. Opportunistic foreign nations would then move in, preying on the bickering factions. “When once the guardian angel has taken flight,” he predicted, “everything is lost.”
Listening from the packed galleries, a Boston reporter confessed that it was “difficult to restrain oneself from tears, when at the allusion of Seward to the great men of the country now dead and gone, and at his vivid portrayal of the horrors and evils of dissolution and civil war, we saw the venerable Senator Crittenden, who sat directly in front of Seward, shedding tears, and finally, overcome by his feelings, cover his face with his handkerchief.”
As he moved into the second hour of his speech, Seward offered the concessions he hoped might stem the tide of secession. He endeavored “to meet prejudice with conciliation, exaction with concession which surrenders no principle, and violence with the right hand of peace.” He began with Lincoln’s resolutions calling for a constitutional amendment to prevent any future Congress from interfering with slavery where it already existed and suggesting a repeal of all personal liberty laws in opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law. He then added several resolutions of his own, including the prospect of a Constitutional Convention “when the eccentric movements of secession and disunion shall have ended” to consider additional changes to the Constitution. When, after nearly two hours, he concluded his emotional remarks, the galleries erupted in thunderous