SEWARD, WILLIAM HENRY (1801-1872), American statesman, was born on May 16, 1801, in the village of Florida, New York. He graduated from Union college in 1820, was ad mitted to the bar at Utica, N.Y., in 1822, and in the following year began the practice of law at Auburn, N.Y., which was his home for the rest of his life. He soon attained distinction in his profession, but drifted into politics, for which he had a greater liking, and early became associated with Thurlow Weed. He was at first an adherent of Daniel D. Tompkins in State, and a National Republican in national politics. After 1828 he became allied with the Anti-Masonic party, attending the national con ventions of 1830 and 1831, and as a member of the organization he served four years (1830-34) in the State senate. By 1833 the Anti-Masonic movement had run its course, and Seward allied himself with the other opponents of the Jackson Democrats, be coming a Whig. In 1834 he received the Whig nomination for governor, but was defeated by William L. Marcy. Four years later he was renominated, was elected, was re-elected in 1840, and served from 1839 until 1843. As governor, Seward favoured a continuance of works of internal improvement at public expense. His administration was disturbed by the anti-rent agitation and by the M'Leod incident growing out of the Canadian rebellion of 1837. During this period he attracted much attention by his liberal and humane policy, promoting prison reform, and proposing to admit Roman Catholic and foreign teachers into the public schools of the State. Laws were passed during his term putting obstacles in the way of recovering fugitive slaves. Seward soon became recognized as the leader of the anti-slavery Whigs. He was one of the earliest political opponents of slavery, as distinguished from the radical Abolitionists, or the followers of William Lloyd Garri son, who devoted themselves to a moral agitation.
When the Whigs secured a momentary control of the State legislature in 5849 they sent Seward to the United States Senate.
The antagonism between free labour and slave labour became the theme of many of his speeches. In his first set speech in the Senate, on March II, 185o, in opposing the pending compromise measures, he attracted the attention of the whole country by his assertion that "there is a higher law than the constitution" regu lating "our authority over the domain" (i.e., the Territories).
When the Democrats, however, declared such language incendiary he tried to explain it away, and by so doing offended his friends without appeasing his opponents. In a speech at Rochester, N.Y., in 1858 he made the famous statement that there was "an irre pressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, be come either entirely a slave-holding nation or entirely a f ree labour nation." Although this idea had often been expressed by others, and by Seward himself in his speech of 1848, yet he was severely criticized, and four days later he sought to render this statement innocuous also.
In the election of 1852 Seward supported Gen. Winfield Scott, but not his party platform, because it declared the Compromise of 1850 a finality. He naturally opposed the Kansas-Nebraska bill of
1854, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and established the principle of popular sovereignty in the Territories. Subse quently he actively supported in the Senate the free-state cause in Kansas. In 1854-55, when it became evident that the Whig party in the North was moribund, Seward helped to lead its scat tered remnants into the Republican fold. As the recognized leader of the new party, his nomination by the Republicans for the presi dency in 1856 and in 1860 was regarded as certain; but in each instance he was put aside for another. The heterogeneous elements of the new organization could not be made to unite on a man who for so many years had devoted his energies to purely Whig meas ures, and he was considered less "available" than Fremont in 1856 and than Lincoln in 186o. After Lincoln was elected in 186o he chose Seward for his secretary of state. The new president was a man comparatively little known outside the state of Illinois, and many of his supporters, doubtful of his ability to deal with the difficult problems of 1861, looked to Seward as the most expe rienced man of the administration and the one who should direct its policy. Seward himself, apparently sharing these views, al though not out of vanity, at first possessed an unbounded con fidence in his ability to influence the president and his cabinet. He believed that the Union could be saved without a war, and that a policy of delay would prevent the secession of the border States, which in turn would gradually coax their more southern neigh bours back into their proper relations with the Federal Govern ment. In informal conferences with commissioners from the se ceded States he assured them that Fort Sumter should be speedily evacuated. Finding himself overruled by the war party in the cabinet, on April 1,1861, Seward suggested a war of all America against most of Europe, with himself as the director of the enter prise. Dangers from abroad would destroy the centrifugal forces at home, and the Union would be saved. When this proposal was quietly put aside by the president, and Seward perceived in Lin coln a chief executive in fact as well as in name, he dropped into his proper place, and as secretary of state rendered services of inestimable value to the nation. To prevent foreign states from giving official recognition to the Confederacy was the task of the hour, and in this he was successful. While he did not succeed in preventing the French occupation of Mexico or the escape of the Confederate cruiser "Alabama" from England, his diplomacy pre pared the way for a future adjustment satisfactory to the United States of the difficulties with these powers. While his treaty with Lord Lyons in 1862 for the suppression of the slave trade con ceded to England the right of search to a limited extent in African and Cuban waters, he secured a similar concession for American war vessels from the British Government, and by his course in the Trent affair he virtually committed Great Britain to the Ameri can attitude with regard to this right.