Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [488]
His conviction that we are one nation, indivisible, “conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” led to the rebirth of a union free of slavery. And he expressed this conviction in a language of enduring clarity and beauty, exhibiting a literary genius to match his political genius.
With his death, Abraham Lincoln had come to seem the embodiment of his own words—“With malice toward none; with charity for all”—voiced in his second inaugural to lay out the visionary pathway to a reconstructed union. The deathless name he sought from the start had grown far beyond Sangamon County and Illinois, reached across the truly United States, until his legacy, as Stanton had surmised at the moment of his death, belonged not only to America but to the ages—to be revered and sung throughout all time.
EPILOGUE
AGAINST ALL ODDS, Seward and his son Frederick eventually recovered from their frightful injuries, but the “night of horrors” took its ultimate toll on Frances Seward. Six weeks afterward, convinced that she had taken on the afflictions of her loved ones through “vicarious suffering,” she collapsed and died. Her funeral in Auburn was said to have brought together “the largest assemblage that ever attended the funeral of a woman in America.” In the months that followed, Fanny remained at her father’s side, trying to compensate for her departed mother until she herself fell desperately ill from tuberculosis. When she died two months short of her twenty-second birthday, Seward was inconsolable. “Truly it may be said,” the Washington Republican noted, “that the assassin’s blows passed by the father and son and fell fatally on the mother and daughter.”
Seward remained secretary of state throughout President Andrew Johnson’s term. While his attempts to mediate Johnson’s bitter struggles with the radicals in Congress failed, he took great pride in what was originally lampooned as “Seward’s Folly”—the purchase of Alaska. After retiring from public office, he spent his last years traveling. With Fred and Anna, he embarked on an eight-month journey to Alaska, California, and Mexico. Returning to Auburn, he immediately made plans for a trip around the world, visiting Japan, China, India, Egypt, Greece, Turkey, and France. He died peacefully in 1872 at the age of seventy-one, surrounded by his family. When his daughter-in-law Jenny asked if he had any deathbed advice to impart, he said simply: “Love one another.” Thurlow Weed, who served as a pallbearer, wept openly as the body of his oldest friend was lowered into the grave.
Stanton’s remaining days in the cabinet were acrimonious. His sympathy with the congressional radicals on Reconstruction brought him into open conflict with the president, who asked for his resignation. Refusing to honor Johnson’s request even after he was handed a removal order, Stanton “barricaded himself” in his office for weeks, taking his meals in the department and sleeping on his couch. He argued that his dismissal violated the Tenure of Office Act, recently passed by congressional radicals over the president’s veto, which required Senate consent for the removal of any cabinet officer. Johnson’s disregard for the Tenure of Office Act became one of the articles of impeachment lodged against him in 1868. When the impeachment failed by one vote in the Senate, Stanton finally submitted his resignation.
Although exhausted by the ordeal, Stanton had little time to rest. His fortune had been depleted during his tenure in the cabinet. After returning to the practice of law, he was overjoyed when President Grant nominated him to the Supreme