Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- THE PRESIDENT AND PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES
- JAMES BUCHANAN
- WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD
- WILLIAM H. HAYWOOD
- HUGH WHITE
- JOHN Y. MASON
- ABBOTT LAWRENCE
- THOMAS H. BENTON
- SAMUEL D. HUBBARD
- MARTIN VAN BUREN
- ROBERT C. WINTHROP
- ROGER B. TANEY
- JOHN M'LEAN
- DANIEL WEBSTER AND RUFUS CHOAT
- EDWARD A. HANNEGAN
- JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
- ALBERT GALLATIN
- OREGON AND CANADA, REMARKS ON
- CHARLES JARED INGERSOLL
- EDMUND GAINES
- MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY
- JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN
- HENRY CLAY
- RIGHT REV. JOHN HUGHES, CATHOLIC BISHOP OF NEW YORK
- NOTE ON THE CORPS DIPLOMATIQUE AT WASHINGTON
- ON COMMERCE
- ESSAY ON FREE TRADE, BY THE AUTHORESS
- THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN OREGON
- NOTES ON THE MEXICAN WAR
WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- THE PRESIDENT AND PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES
- JAMES BUCHANAN
- WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD
- WILLIAM H. HAYWOOD
- HUGH WHITE
- JOHN Y. MASON
- ABBOTT LAWRENCE
- THOMAS H. BENTON
- SAMUEL D. HUBBARD
- MARTIN VAN BUREN
- ROBERT C. WINTHROP
- ROGER B. TANEY
- JOHN M'LEAN
- DANIEL WEBSTER AND RUFUS CHOAT
- EDWARD A. HANNEGAN
- JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
- ALBERT GALLATIN
- OREGON AND CANADA, REMARKS ON
- CHARLES JARED INGERSOLL
- EDMUND GAINES
- MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY
- JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN
- HENRY CLAY
- RIGHT REV. JOHN HUGHES, CATHOLIC BISHOP OF NEW YORK
- NOTE ON THE CORPS DIPLOMATIQUE AT WASHINGTON
- ON COMMERCE
- ESSAY ON FREE TRADE, BY THE AUTHORESS
- THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN OREGON
- NOTES ON THE MEXICAN WAR
Summary
I shall again allude, in the succeeding portion of this work, to Governor Seward; but he is a remarkable personage, and deserves peculiar notice. Many men possess superior talents, in particular and individual matters; but it is rare to meet with a mind so generally comprehensive, and a heart so full of various feeling. The law is his profession; but politics are a profession in the United States; and the influences of these two mighty powers, so universal throughout the Republic, are constantly to be distinguished reciprocating upon each other in the motives and actions of this devoted lover of his country and of her institutions. Sympathy with his race, both with the mass and the individual, with the virtuous and for the degraded, with the happy and the unhappy, with the white man and the black; sympathy intense, unresting and universal, is the secret of Seward's character. Where weeps the destitute, there his voice is heard; where pines the oppressed, there his spirit lingers near; where groans the outcast, perchance the murderer, there also he is present, seeking to palliate, if not to save. I regard his perception of the springs of action as intuitive, and have, on more than one occasion, listened to his delineation of the criminal's progressive course in vice, with gratified and curious interest; he has sometimes shown me that even in the perpetration of the most hideous crimes, the offender may yet be human.
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- The Statesmen of America in 1846 , pp. 32 - 64Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009