Black History Month: William Henry Seward

Look in your average American history book, and any reference you find to William Henry Seward will probably be because a) he negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia, and/or b) he was the Secretary of State under President Lincoln.

Few of those books would focus on Seward's abolitionists beliefs.

(For the record, I am not related to William Seward.  Seward is my married name.  My husband's grandfather Seward came from England in the early 1900's.)

William Henry Seward was born in Florida, New York, on May 16, 1801.  His father, Samuel, was the town postmaster, and he was a slaveowner.  At the time, slavery was legal in New York State; it was abolished in 1827.  Seward went to school with the children of his father's slaves and later, he said he preferred the atmosphere of the slave kitchen to that of his father's parlor.  Later, he wrote in his autobiography, "I early came to the conclusion that something was wrong with slavery and that determined me to be an abolitionist."

In 1820, he graduated from Union College.  Two years later, he was admitted to the bar.  After moving to Auburn, New York, he became a junior partner to Judge Elijah Miller.  Soon, he would also be Miller's son-in-law. He fell in love and married Miller's daughter Frances.  They both believed that slavery was wrong, and that was the core belief that brought them together.

Seward supported the rights of African-Americans and, throughout his career, stayed opposed to slavery.  He called for a gradual ending of slavery throughout the United States; his wife, however, wanted immediate abolition and emancipation of all slaves.  Both Sewards used their wealth to support the abolition movement, and they also financially supported Frederick Douglass' North Star newspaper, based in Rochester.

He served two terms as governor of New York, between 1839 and 1843, and it was during that time that he gained a national reputation as an outspoken abolitionist.  When southern states asked for fugitive slaves to be returned, Seward refused.

Seward was elected to the Senate in 1849, and his repeated statements that slavery was morally wrong angered Southerners.  While he acknowledged that, under the Constitution, slavery was legal, he denied that the Constitution recognized or protected slavery.  In 1850, he remarked that "there is a higher law than the Constitution".

During the 1850's, the Sewards used their house at Auburn, New York as a safe house for runaway slaves.  It was a deliberate act of civil disobedience.  They used two rooms in the house as hiding places.

In 1859, the Sewards helped Harriet Tubman, who led hundreds of slaves to freedom, buy seven acres of land on their property.  There, Tubman built a home where she lived until she died.

Seward's role as President Lincoln's Secretary of State is much better known.  Seward didn't like Lincoln very much at first, but as they continued to work together, Seward came to respect Lincoln and was known as Lincoln's right-hand man.  They became close friends because of their collaboration.  He worked with Lincoln on the Emancipation Proclamation, and negotiated an 1862 treaty, the Lyons-Seward Treaty, which outlined measures by which the United States and Great Britian would end the Atlantic slave trade.

Abraham Lincoln was not the only one attacked on April 15, 1865.  Lewis Powell, a confederate of John Wilkes Booth, was assigned to attack Seward as part of a plot that included killing Lincoln. Powell stabbed Seward, who was confined to bed due to a carriage accident, several times in the face and neck.  Seward carried the scars for the rest of his life.

Seward would go on to serve as Secretary of State under President Andrew Johnson.  He died on October 10, 1872.  Thus ended the life of a man whose moral opposition to slavery helped end its practice.


Sources used:

McLean, Maggie, "Frances Seward", Civil War Women
"William Henry Seward", Seward House Historic Museum

Black History Month: William Lloyd Garrison

"I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD."

With those words, on January 1, 1831, William Lloyd Garrison threw down the gauntlet.  

He opened the year of 1831 with the first issue of The Liberator, a newsletter that came out of New England.  The cause he was so earnest about, and from which he wouldn't retreat? The end of slavery.  

It is said that "the pen is mightier that the sword", and although William Lloyd Garrison wasn't using a literal pen in publishing The Liberator, his "penned" words helped fight and win the battle to end slavery in the United States.

He was born December 10, 1805 in Newburyport, Massachusetts.  When he was three, his father abandoned the family, and Garrison and his siblings were raised by his mother.  At 13, he began an apprenticeship as a writer and editor under the editor of the Newburyport Herald.  Two other attempts, at shoemaking and cabinetmaking, had ended in failure. Young Garrison's true gift lay not in physical labor, but in the use of words.

He was 20 when he finished his apprenticeship, and he bought a newspaper, renamed it the Newburyport Free Press, and started writing. The paper went out of business after six months, and Garrison then moved to Boston.  

While working as printer and editor, Garrison met Benjamin Lundy, editor of the Genius of Emancipation. Lundy was a Quaker, and he'd been raised to oppose violence and the enslavement of others.  Lundy was 19 and living in Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia) when he became aware of slavery's brutality, and determined to be a part of ending slavery. 

Lundy offered Garrison a job at his paper, and Garrison accepted.  The job was Garrison's initiation into the abolitionist movement.

As part of Garrison's involvement with abolition, he'd joined the American Colonization Society.  He believed, at first, that the group's goal--to have blacks move to the west coast of Africa--was a worthy cause.  But the longer he remained a member, the more he realized what the group really wanted.  They wanted fewer free slaves in the United States. Encouraging free blacks to go to Africa, Garrison concluded, would only support slavery.  

So he left the American Colonization Society and started his own paper.  That paper, The Liberator, was responsible for Garrison's reputation as an abolitionist.  His goal:  show people that slavery is immoral.  Once they see slavery is immoral, they'll join you in helping you end it.  Garrison needed plenty of help in his effort, and one source of that help was free African-Americans, who made up about 75 percent of his readers.  

Garrison paid a heavy price for his earnestness and his insistence on being heard. 

In 1833, Garrison founded the American Antislavery Society, dedicated to the cause of abolition.  But since he was a pacifist, and he wasn't willing to take political action to achieve his goals, several people left his group and formed their own organization.

On one occasion, in Boston, he was dragged through the streets and almost killed.

Someone placed a bounty of $4,000 on his head.  

In 1854, he burned a copy of the US Constitution because it allowed slavery.  He also wanted the Union to be dissolved, rather than saved; and called for the North to secede from the United States and sever all ties with the South.

But he continued to publish, and to speak, and to be heard.  Thirty-five years later, after 1,820 issues, Garrison published the final issue of The Liberator in December, 1865, proclaiming "my vocation as an abolitionist is ended".  He hadn't missed a single issue. He'd lived long enough to see the 13th Amendment passed, outlawing slavery forever.  

Garrison swore that he would not equivocate, he would not excuse, he would not retreat, and he would be heard.  

And in the end, he was.

Sources used:

Ushistory.org: William Lloyd Garrison and The Liberator

Biography.com: William Lloyd Garrison

Ohio History Central: Benjamin Lundy
Accessible Archives: The Liberator