Seward

Family business brought me to the town of Florida, New York yesterday, and look what I discovered in a small alcove adjoining the building in which I had business:

Yes, this is a monument to William Seward, Secretary of State for Lincoln during the Civil War. As the obelisk states, he was born here in 1801, but what it does not state is that it was to a father who owned slaves. Throughout his political career Seward himself was a mild abolitionist. At age 37 he became governor of New York, and was re-elected to a second term. Later he became a two-term United States Senator, and would run against Lincoln in the election of 1860, only to lose and become Lincoln’s choice for Secretary of State.

What many don’t know is that the night Lincoln was assassinated, April 14 of 1865, there was a simultaneous attempt on Seward’s life. Indeed, the conspiracy also sought to murder Vice President Johnson. One of Booth’s co-conspirators, Lewis Powell, broke into Seward’s home, under the pretense of delivering medicine to the Secretary of State, who was in bed recuperating from wounds received in a hunting accident a few days earlier. Powell nearly shot Seward’s son dead, threw his daughter across the room, and stabbed the old man a half-dozen times about the neck and face.

Seward survived, recovered, and lived another seven years, gaining notoriety as the man who purchased Alaska from the Russians two years later. Powell, incidentally, was apprehended the next day and hung along with the surviving conspirators two-and-a-half months later. Justice was much more swift in the 19th century.

This statue / monument to Seward was unveiled in 1930. I thought about having the Mrs. take a pic of me standing next to it, but it was starting to snow and the wife don’t like the cold …