On April 5, i865, Seward was thrown from his carriage and severely injured. Nine days later, while lying ill at his home at Washington, he was attacked by one Lewis Powell, alias Payne, a fellow-conspirator of John Wilkes Booth, at the same time that Lincoln was assassinated. The secretary's son, Frederick W. Seward, and three other persons who came to his assistance, were also wounded by the assailant. Seward's wife, an invalid, received such a shock that she died within two months, and his only daugh ter, who witnessed the assault, never recovered from the effects of the scene and died within the year. Seward gradually regained his health, and remained in the cabinet of President Johnson until the expiration of his term in 1869. In the struggle between the Execu tive and Congress over the method of reconstructing the Southern States, Seward sided with Johnson and thus shared some of the obloquy bestowed upon that unfortunate president. His greatest work in this period was the purchase of Alaska from Russia, in 1867. After returning to private life, Seward spent two years in travel and died at Auburn on Oct. 1o, 1872.
His son, FREDERICK WILLIAM SEWARD (183o-1915), was born in Auburn, N.Y., on July 8, 183o, graduated at Union college in 1849 and was admitted to the bar at Rochester, N.Y., in 1851. From 1851 to 1861 he was one of the editors and owners of the Albany Evening Journal, and during his father's term at the head of the State Department he was assistant secretary of state. He
served in the New York Assembly in 1875, and from 1877 to 1881 was again assistant secretary of state. After 1881 he devoted his time to the practice of his profession and to lecturing and writing. He died at Montrose-on-Hudson, N.Y., on April 26, 1915.
The best biography of Seward is that by Frederic Bancroft, The Life of William H. Seward (190o) ; see also, The Life and Works of William H. Seward (Boston, 1883) , edited by George E. Baker ; William H. Seward: an Autobiography from i8or to 1834, with a Memoir of his Life and Selections from his Letters (1891), by his son, Frederick W. Seward ; William H. Seward's Travels around the World (1873), by his adopted daughter, Olive R. Seward ; Lincoln and Seward (1874), by Gideon Welles; William Henry Seward (Boston, 1899) , by T. K. Lothrop, in the "American Statesmen Series"; Seward and the Declaration of Paris, by Charles Francis Adams (1912) ; "Union Portraits: William H. Seward," Atlantic Monthly, vol. cxvi., pp. 322-334 (1915) ; Recollections of a War-Time Statesman and Diplomat, by Frederick W. Seward (1916) ; and "Seward's Far Eastern Policy," in American History Review, vol. xxviii., pp. (1922).