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seated first.” Referring to Mary’s celebrated salons, Fanny archly added that it was “the only time on record that she ever refused to see company in the evening.” In fact, Mary detested Seward and had most likely contrived to snub the entire Seward family. From the outset, she had resisted Seward’s appointment to the cabinet, fearing that his celebrity would outshine her husband’s. “If things should go on all right,” she warned, “the credit would go to Seward—if they went wrong—the blame would fall upon my husband.” Contrary to Mary’s suspicions, it was Seward who received much of the censure incurred by the administration, as his fellow cabinet members tended to blame him more than Lincoln for whatever displeased them. Long after Seward had come to respect Lincoln’s authority, however, many observers, including Mary, mistakenly assumed that the secretary of state was the mastermind of the administration. “It makes me mad to see you sit still and let that hypocrite, Seward, twine you around his finger as if you were a skein of thread,” Mary fumed to her husband.

Furthermore, Mary resented the long evenings Lincoln spent at Seward’s Lafayette Square mansion rather than remaining home with her. Warmed by Seward’s fireplace and gregarious personality, Lincoln could unwind. Though he himself neither drank nor smoked, he happily watched Seward light up a Havana cigar and pour a glass of brandy. And while Lincoln rarely swore, he found Seward’s colorful cursing amusing. On one occasion, as Lincoln and Seward were en route to review the troops, the driver lost control of his team and began swearing with gusto. “My friend, are you an Episcopalian?” Lincoln asked. The teamster replied that he was, in fact, a Methodist. “Oh, excuse me,” Lincoln said with a laugh. “I thought you must be an Episcopalian for you swear just like Secretary Seward, and he’s a churchwarden!”

Lincoln and Seward talked of many things besides the war. They debated the historical legacies of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John Quincy Adams. Seward argued that neither Clay’s nor Webster’s would live “a tithe as long as J. Q. Adams.” Lincoln disagreed, believing that “Webster will be read for ever.” They explored the concept of “personal courage.” When Lincoln spoke admiringly of the intensity of a particular soldier’s desire to take on the enemy in person, Seward disagreed. “He had always acted on the opposite principle, admitting you are scared and assuming that the enemy is.” They traded stories and teased each other.

One night when John Hay was also present, another guest brought up the Chicago convention. Hay feared that reminding Seward of his loss was in “very bad taste,” but Lincoln used the remark to tell a humorous story about 1860. At one point, he related, the mayor of Chicago, John Wentworth, had feared that Lincoln was oblivious to shifting opinion in Illinois. “I tell you what,” Wentworth advised, referring to Thurlow Weed. “You must do like Seward does—get a feller to run you.” Both Lincoln and Seward found the story “vastly amusing.”

Lincoln’s buoyant mood plummeted an hour or so later that evening when he received General Thomas W. Sherman’s request for more troops before his advance upon Port Royal, South Carolina. Frustrated by repeated calls from every general for reinforcements, he told Seward he would refuse Sherman’s request and would telegraph him to say he didn’t have “much hope of his expedition anyway.” Now it was Seward’s turn to moderate the president’s reply, much as Lincoln had softened Seward’s language in the famous May 21 dispatch. “No,” Seward replied, “you wont say discouraging things to a man going off with his life in his hand.” Lincoln rejected Sherman’s request for more troops but expressed no pessimism about the mission.

The long evenings of camaraderie at Seward’s, where interesting guests wandered in and out, probably rekindled memories of Lincoln’s convivial days on the circuit, when he and his fellow lawyers gathered together before the log fire to talk, drink, and share stories. Between official meetings and