Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [316]
Though the proceedings were to be kept secret, Preston King felt compelled to acquaint Seward with the situation. That evening, he went to Seward’s house. Finding his old colleague in the library, he sat down beside him and told him all that had transpired. Seward listened quietly and then said, “They may do as they please about me, but they shall not put the President in a false position on my account.” Asking for pen and paper, he wrote out his resignation as secretary of state and asked his son Fred and King to deliver it to the White House.
Lincoln scanned the resignation “with a face full of pain and surprise, saying ‘What does this mean?’” After listening to Senator King’s description of the overwrought emotions that had created “a thirst for a victim,” Lincoln walked over to Seward’s house. The meeting was painful for both men. Masking his anguish, Seward told Lincoln that “it would be a relief to be freed from official cares.” Lincoln replied: “Ah, yes, Governor, that will do very well for you, but I am like the starling in [Laurence] Sterne’s story, ‘I can’t get out.’”
Lincoln straightaway understood that he was the true target of the radicals’ wrath. “They wish to get rid of me, and I am sometimes half disposed to gratify them,” he told Browning two days later. He described the chatter setting forth Seward’s controlling influence over him as “a lie, an absurd lie,” that one “could not impose upon a child.” Seward was the one man in the cabinet Lincoln trusted completely, the only one who fully appreciated his unusual strengths as a leader, and the only one he could call an intimate friend. Still, he could scarcely afford to antagonize the Republican senators so essential to his governing coalition. He had to think through his options. He had to learn more about the dynamics of the situation.
Seward was greatly “disappointed,” Welles sensed, “that the President did not promptly refuse to consider his resignation.” The hesitation compounded the pain of the unexpected assault from his old colleagues on the Hill, leaving him noticeably “wounded, mortified, and chagrined.” Fortunately, Frances had journeyed to Washington the week before to look after their son Will, who had contracted typhoid fever in his army camp six miles from the capital. Fanny, who had just turned eighteen, remained in Auburn with Jenny and the baby. The two women were due to leave Auburn for Washington a few days later to join the family for Christmas.
As Fanny and Jenny were packing their things, Fred sent a hurried telegram to Fanny: “Do not come at present.” Fred, too, had offered his resignation as assistant secretary of state, and Frances followed his telegram with a letter telling Fanny that her father “thought he could best serve his country at present by resigning,” and that they were all leaving shortly for Auburn. Disconcerted by her father’s abrupt departure, Fanny worried greatly. “It seemed to me that if he were to leave,” she noted in her diary, “the distracted state of affairs would prey upon his spirits all the more. I had a vague fear that he would come home ill, and longed to see him with my own eyes, safe. Spent a restless & uncomfortable night.”
In some ways, Seward had exacerbated his own situation. His gratuitous comments about the radicals had made him enemies on Capitol Hill. Charles Sumner was particularly offended by a careless remark in one of the secretary’s dispatches to London, suggesting that the mind-set of the men in Congress was not so different from that of the Confederates. Furthermore, it is not unlikely that Seward’s pridefulness had led him occasionally to make immodest claims regarding his influence in the administration. Yet, despite such indiscretions, he was steadfast and loyal to the president. Having relinquished his own future ambitions,