Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [47]
Four years Seward’s senior, Thurlow Weed could see at a glance that his new acquaintance was an educated young man belonging to the best society. Weed himself had grown up in poverty, his father frequently imprisoned for debt, his family forced to move from one upstate location to another. Apprenticed in a blacksmith’s shop at eight years old, with only a few years of formal schooling behind him, he had fought to educate himself. He had walked miles to borrow books, studying history and devouring newspapers by firelight. A classic example of a self-made man, he no sooner identified an obstacle to his progress than he worked with discipline to counteract it. Concerned that he lacked a native facility for remembering names and appointments, and believing that “a politician who sees a man once should remember him forever,” Weed consciously trained his memory. He spent fifteen minutes every night telling his wife, Catherine, everything that had happened to him that day, everyone he had met, the exact words spoken. The nightly mnemonics worked, for Weed soon became known as a man with a phenomenal recall. Gifted with abundant energy, shrewd intelligence, and a warm personality, he managed to carve out a brilliant career as printer, editor, writer, publisher, and, eventually, as powerful political boss, familiarly known as “the Dictator.”
Weed undoubtedly sensed in the younger Seward an instinct for power and a fascination with politics that matched his own. In an era when political parties were in flux, Weed and Seward gravitated toward the proponents of a new infrastructure for the country, by deepening waterways and creating a new network of roads and rails. Such measures, Seward believed, along with a national banking system and protective tariffs, would enable the nation to “strengthen its foundations, increase its numbers, develop its resources, and extend its dominion.” Eventually, those in favor of “the American system,” as it came to be called, coalesced behind Henry Clay’s Whig Party.
Weed’s star rose rapidly in New York when, with Seward’s help, he launched the Albany Evening Journal, first published in March 1830. The influential Journal, which eventually became the party organ for the Whigs (and later, for the Republicans), gave Weed a powerful base from which he would brilliantly shape public opinion for nearly four decades. Through his newspapers, Weed engineered Seward’s first chance for political office. In September 1830, Seward secured the nomination for a seat in the state senate from the seventh district. That November, with Weed managing every step of the campaign, Seward won a historic victory as the youngest member to enter the New York Senate. He was twenty-nine.
Albany had nearly doubled in size since Seward had first seen it, but it was still a small town of 24,000 inhabitants. Originally settled by the Dutch, the state’s capital boasted a stately array of brick mansions that belonged to wealthy merchant princes. The year before Seward’s arrival, ground had been broken for the country’s “first steam-powered railroad.” This sixteen-mile track connecting Albany with Schenectady was “the first link in an eventual nationwide web of tracks.”
The legislature consisted of 32 senators and 128 representatives, most of whom boarded in either the Eagle Tavern on South Market Street or around the corner on State Street, at Bemont’s Hotel. Such close quarters, while congenial to politicians, were ill suited to families—especially those, like Seward’s, with small children. Consequently, Seward decided to attend the four-month winter session alone.
“Weed is very much with me, and I enjoy his warmth of feeling,” Seward confided to Frances after he had settled into Bemont’s, describing