William H. Seward & the Secession Crisis of 1860-1861 with (C. Evan Stewart)

William H. Seward & the Secession Crisis of 1860-1861 with (C. Evan Stewart)

In this episode of the American Civil War & UK History Podcast, host Daz was joined by author C. Evan Stewart to discuss his latest book, 
William Henry Seward: Quest to Save the Nation – During The Secession Winter (November 1860– April1861)

During the secession winter of 1860–1861, William H. Seward worked to prevent the breakup of the Union following the election of Abraham Lincoln. Believing compromise and moderation could calm tensions, Seward pushed for conciliatory measures toward the South while firmly opposing disunion as the nation moved closer to civil war.

Support the show link.
(https://www.buymeacoffee.com/Acwandukhistory

C. Evan Stewart's Website
www.cevanstewartauthor.com

ACW & UK History's Website.
https://www.acwandukhistory.com/

ACW & UK History's Pages.
https://linktr.ee/ACWandUKHISTORY

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

To keep up to date with everything for American Civil War and UK history, head over to our website ACW and UK History.com. And remember, this podcast has a PowerPoint presentation that goes along with the show. So if you would like to see the PowerPoint presentation, then head over to our YouTube channel at American Civil War and UK History. Cheers. Hello everyone, I'm Daz and welcome to American Civil War and UK History Podcast. This presentation is available as a video on our YouTube channel or as a podcast from wherever you get your podcast from. And if you're watching on YouTube, remember to hit the subscribe button and give us a big thumbs up. And please visit our website at www.acwandukhistory.com where you'll find podcasts, blog posts, and links to all of our social media pages. It is also available in the podcast description. And joining me today is author Evan Stewart. Welcome, Evan. Thank you so much. It's a real pleasure and honor to be with you. Okay, now so this today's discussion is about a book that Evan has written, and uh it's called William Henry Seward and its Quest to Save the Nation during the secession winter. Um, and of course, November 1860 to April 1861. But first, Evan, um, could you please tell everyone um um how and why you became interested in Henry uh William Henry Seward?

SPEAKER_00 1:26

So that's really because of two uh uh preeminent historians I studied with uh many years ago at Cornell University. Um and Seward was at the sort of at the epicenter of both of their um uh studies. One was a gentleman named Joel Silby who studied what was called the middle period of American history, the the pre, during, and after of the Civil War. And so Seward's preeminence as a political figure in that period uh was right at the center of Silby's studies. And Waldo Fieber, who was the country's leading diplomatic historian, and Seward, um, when he was a senator in the early 1850s from New York State, he delivered a series of speeches uh in the Senate, which laid out an architecture, uh, literally an intellectual architecture for America's expansion, not just to the West, not just the to the Pacific Ocean, but to China and Japan and the Asian markets. And um so he bought the Guano Islands for coaling stations in the United States. He bought Midway Island, he obviously bought uh Alaska. At the same time he was buying Alaska, he tried to buy uh Greenland. So that's shows you that buying Greenland is not didn't come up for the first time in 2026. It's been around for a while. Um, he also had a vision of the Panama Canal and uh also uh wanted to buy several islands in the Caribbean to establish the Caribbean as a uh essentially an American lake. So he was a brilliant theoretician of America's expansion. He didn't live to see all of it take place in his lifetime, but a number of his proteges who followed him uh literally filled in all the blanks that he had already uh set out that architecture and really America's expansion into a world global power is uh what William Henry Seward was talking about in 1852 and 1853.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

Excellent. Thank you, Evan. Okay, so let's get into it then. So why was um William uh Seward favorite to win the 1860 Republican number nomination? Now, a lot of people might not know that he actually stood for the Republican Party and wanted to be elected, and then uh, you know, at the same time as, of course, the famous Abraham Lincoln. So tell us how that that sort of goes down, please, mate.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

So um it's a it's I'll I'll try to give you the uh reader's digest version because it's a very complicated story. He he was the country's leading Republican, uh no doubt about it. He was a presumptive favorite to win the nomination. Uh Abraham Lincoln was uh uh to put it mildly, what we Americans call a dark horse to be elected. Um and uh he lost the nomination principally for three reasons. First is that one of Lincoln's um campaign aides very cleverly got the Republicans to schedule the Republican convention uh in a quote, neutral place, which turned out to be not so neutral. It was Chicago, Illinois, Lincoln's home ground. And that allowed the Lincoln uh people to um uh create a lot of false tickets to the convention, which allowed them to dominate the interior of this building you're showing on your screen, the wigwam, where the Republican convention was held. And so that created a lot of um enthusiasm for Lincoln and the Seward men who had uh legal tickets couldn't get into the building. Uh, that's not the the most important. There are two other very important reasons why he didn't get to the nomination and why Lincoln did. Seward, when he was governor of New York in the 1840s, actually was very progressive on the issue of immigration. He was very welcoming of immigrants, particularly Irish Catholics, and did a lot to try to help those people with public education. This made him uh a lot of enemies among people who did not like immigrants. And they actually were a very powerful force in America in the 1850s called the Know Nothings. And as 1859 is turning into 1860, uh, those Know Nothings are basically moving into the Republican Party. And at the 1860 convention, um there was concern about whether the Republicans could carry three important states: Illinois, uh Pennsylvania, and um Indiana. And Lincoln, although he privately did not like the Know-Nothings, he publicly uh was very careful not to take a public position because he was very good friends with a number of Know Nothings and wanted to encourage them to become Republicans. So Lincoln um had no public position and was thus much more uh uh favored by the know-nothing voters, particularly in those states, those three states. And then the third reason, which dovetails into the second, is that Lincoln's campaign manager, a guy named David Davis, who Lincoln later appoints to the Supreme Court, um, literally bribed people in Indiana and Pennsylvania with cabinet seats uh to the presidential cabinet positions uh in exchange for their votes at the convention. So on the second and third ballots, um uh Lincoln Lincoln is way behind on the first ballot. On the second ballot, he comes pretty close to Seward, and on the third ballot, he goes over the top. And in those second and third ballots, uh Indiana and Pennsylvania go decisively for Lincoln, and that puts him over the top. So that's how Seward lost the nomination to Lincoln.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

And so what's the relationship like after that? Um, do they form a kind of uh friendship from this, or is there any an animosity from Seward towards Lincoln at that point?

SPEAKER_00 7:53

So uh good question. Seward was uh devastated. I mean, he he and his key political advisor, a guy named Thurlow Weed, had been planning for Seward to become president for 20 years. So he was devastated. Um, but he was a very practical politician, um, and he uh engaged in a very extensive campaign in the fall of 1860 to make sure that Lincoln would win. And uh Lincoln did win. And um but he was still uh having a little trouble adjusting to the idea that he wasn't the most important Republican in the country. Uh ultimately, after the war, and we can get into this period between the election and uh the start of the war, because that that's how that's when their relationship really changes. But um after the start of the Civil War, Seward makes it clear to Lincoln that he is not um interested in running for president, uh, either to succeed Lincoln in 1864 or in 1868. And uh as when politicians have that discussion with one another, that removes a very important barrier between them. And at that point, they become very good friends. And as I say in the book, um, Lincoln and Seward really was the friendship that helped win the Civil War. So it took a little while for Seward to uh his ego to adjust to being number two. Uh, but what once he got um set on that and and gave up his ultimate ambition to become president, they did become close friends.

SPEAKER_01 9:29

Excellent. And again, I just want to step back a teeny little bit before we get into the the campaign that you're talking about and that that period before the war starts. Just give us uh give people an overview and a sense of his uh political career before, because I know you said he was senator of New York, but it how has he always been a poly uh you know, um had his career always been political?

SPEAKER_00 9:54

Well, he was he graduated uh at the at the top of his class at age in college uh at age 19. Uh so it sort of shows you he was an extremely bright man. He entered the practice of law and was a very successful lawyer, but he got the political bug, and so he first became a state uh in the Republican in the in that as a Whig in New York state politics and became a representative in the New York State legislature. From there he became a governor of New York. Uh, and as I referenced, he uh did some very significant things as governor. Then uh in 1849, he's elected to the Senate uh from from New York, and he spends 11 years in the Senate before he ultimately becomes Lincoln's uh Secretary of State.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

Yeah. And uh excellent, thank you. Um okay, let's talk about that period then. Um so after the election was won, obviously in November, uh why did Seward um advocate changing the Republican Party's focus from slavery expansion to saving the union?

SPEAKER_00 11:10

Great question, and that really is the heart of the book. So he and uh I mentioned this fellow before, Thurlow Weed, looked at looked at the Republican uh returns, election returns, and again, being very experienced politicians, they made the judgment that the Republicans had won the issue about slavery's expansion. In other words, slavery was not gonna expand because, especially into the U.S. territories, because the Republicans would be in charge of the national government and there was no way they were gonna allow um expansion into the territories. So they viewed that issue as having been settled. And what they now were concerned with, because both men, but my focus is principally obviously on Seward, came to the conclusion uh that the country was in an existential crisis. Seward knew all the people in Washington, he was the again the leading Republican in the country, the dominant Republican in this in the Congress. And immediately these the states in red, the so-called cotton states, they immediately start to secede, led by South Carolina. And uh so he, along with Weed, are looking at the election results in the upper border, so-called border states in the South. And they see that there's a lot of union, there were a lot of union votes, pro-union votes in that national election that was just held in November. And so they want to change the subject from let's stop talking about slavery and let's stop talking about expansion of slavery. We've won that argument. Now we've got to do something to try to keep the union together. Uh this is something that uh intellectually Lincoln was in agreement on. America was still a very uh new nation. It was a novel experiment in majoritarian democracy. Um, and if if this experiment failed, that meant democracy in the form that the Founding Fathers had created was was going to be a failure. So let's change the subject, says Seward, and start talking about union, because that's something that the men in the leading politicians in the Upper South, and he knew all these men, um, that's something that they're interested in, they're sympathetic with, and if we can work with them on issues relating to the union, they will stay in. And the hope is that if we can keep states like Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, for example, in the Union, ultimately these the states that seceded um won't be able to be a viable uh body for long, and ultimately they'll have to sort of come back with their tail between their legs and and come back into the union. Now that was the that was a theory, but first you had to keep the upper south in the in the union. So that's what he's concerned with during these months, right after the right after the election.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

And of course, as we know, that uh Seward is going to become um Secretary of State. So what what's the decision from Lincoln behind that? Is it as he's obviously you've you've said a couple of times he he what he was the most important Republican um um in in the eyes of many. So is that was that part of Lincoln's thinking when he uh put him into this position?

SPEAKER_00 14:51

Absolutely. You put your finger on it. Lincoln was trying to the Republican Party at this point is still a very young party. It's essentially four years old, and it's made up of very disparate groups of people. There's some people who used to be Democrats, there are people who used to be Whigs, there are people who used to be uh other other sorts, and so he's trying to have all these people stick together. But one thing he has to do is uh keep the most important Republican in the party part of his team. So giving him the most important job in the cabinet, which is the Secretary of State, uh, politically is quite savvy. It also makes a lot of sense because Seward has a lot of international experience. He spent the better part of 1959 traveling all over Europe, meeting with all the leading heads of state. So uh Lincoln would would later say to him after he arrives in Washington in late February of 1861, I'm counting on you to basically handle foreign affairs. I think I'm gonna be pretty busy handling all this other stuff. So you you handle the foreign affairs uh because that's that that's where your great expertise is. So it made sense politically, it made sense based on Seward's expertise, and uh it just made sense all around. So um, and Lincoln was a smart politician, no doubt about it.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

Absolutely. I totally agree with that. Um, okay, so as you've already said a bit, you've mentioned the Upper South. And uh, did Lincoln agree with Seward's thinking on that? And and how successful was Seward in keeping the Upper South in the Union until mid-April 1861.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

So uh there were times when Seward and Lincoln were in agreement, and there were times when there was not total agreement. Lincoln uh sat in Illinois for the better part of this period until he went on a train trip to uh Washington in late February, basically, uh not basically saying nothing publicly. Um and so there was this vast vacuum of nothing coming from the president-elect. Privately, he sent some letters to key members of the Illinois delegation in Congress saying, don't compromise on the issue about expansion of slavery. So what Seward was trying to do was trying to reach some accommodation that would somehow be viewed by these men in the Upper South as uh uh fig leaves or olive branches or what whatever uh offers of conciliation that could be used as uh uh basic notions of goodwill. And so a number of compromises are talked about during this period, uh putting back the so-called Missouri compromise, the Mason Dixon line, uh bringing in New Mexico as a as a slave state, which would not mean anything because um you can't really make you can't have cotton plant. I don't know if you've been in New Mexico, but you really can't have cotton plantations in New Mexico. Um and a number of these things are floated and uh they're uh attempted to uh again buy time, give time for the people in the upper south to um strengthen union sentiment. And at various times, Lincoln and uh Seward are in sync on this, and sometimes they're not. So, for example, Seward sends Lincoln a letter on January 27th saying essentially these messages that you're sending to your Illinois colleagues aren't helping a lot because I've got to give these guys in the Upper South something. And four days later, on February 1st, Lincoln sends back a letter in which he says, I really don't care that much about New Mexico. Now, this is the first instance that Lincoln has indicated that he has some flexibility on this issue about the expansion of slavery. Seward uses that to great effect. And he uses it in a way that uh is not necessarily quite pretty because he uses he uses a lot of very sophisticated and and not very pretty political tactics, like uh leading people on, telling things to them that he knows they want to hear but he doesn't necessarily believe, making them believe he actually agrees with them more than he actually does. And he uses all every trick in his book. He's a very experienced politician, and this works. Um people don't realize this, but Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arc Arkansas all vote not to secede during this period. And this is really all because of what Seward is doing. And um so that the time that he has been using to make gestures to these people, try to calm them down, encouraging union settlement, etc., has worked because these states are voting not to secede. Then Lincoln on his on this train trip I mentioned in late February makes uh some off-the-cuff impromptu comments uh which suggest that he's gonna be pretty uh hard-hearted about the South and not very conciliatory. This makes Seward's life much more difficult at that point. Seward then helps Lincoln actually escape being assassinated in Baltimore on the train trip to Washington. And then what when Lincoln gets to Washington, Lincoln shows him uh what he's been doing essentially these four months, which has been writing his inaugural address. And it's a very, as indicated by these off-the-cuff comments on the train, uh, it indicates a very hard, non-conciliatory, what Americans would call in your face to the South type of um um confrontational style. And Seward takes one look at this document and says, oh my God, this is uh Virginia and North Carolina are going to secede within days, if not a week, when they hear this thing. So he sits down and writes a six page single space letter to Lincoln, making 50 very significant changes to the document. And uh he also adds a very Lincoln's had proposed a very, again, very controversial. confrontational closing, uh challenging the up the the seceding states and basically threatening to to do whatever's necessary to enforce the federal will. And Seward sits down and writes a separate said that's not the way to end your inaugural test. You should write a much more friendly, conciliatory um uh closing and here's here's what I would suggest you write. So he he proposes a uh an ending paragraph. Lincoln adopts virtually all of these changes. And as I put in my book, because I put them side by side he takes what Seward has written on this this uh closing paragraph and turns what it's it's it's a well-written, lawyerly uh paragraph into some of the best English prose uh ever written. It's a it's a he turns it into an A plus an A minus into an A plus paper. And uh it's one of the most famous closing speeches in American history. And Seward doesn't even know that Lincoln is going to do any of these things until he actually hears the inaugural address. And that that makes Seward just change his mind. He had actually decided not to uh become Secretary of State and when he heard what what Lincoln had done and made adopted all his changes and made this very conciliatory ending he decided to stay and become Secretary of State.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

Now this shows you the kind of man Lincoln is thinking on his feet you know and uh because uh and also I'm this I find this fascinating because I always thought that Lincoln had taken a bit more of a softer approach towards the the the issue of of of the South at that time you know but there you go I didn't really know that.

SPEAKER_00 24:01

So fantastic reaction to South Carolina's he being Lincoln uh to South Carolina secession and the other so-called cotton states he said we've been hearing this these southern um people say this for 30 years I mean he didn't really take it that seriously and he also looked at the election results and saw that there was a lot of union sentiment in especially the Upper South so he he he did not take it as seriously as Seward did this crisis. That's what I'm saying he sat in Illinois for four months saying nothing publicly and he he thought that this was uh would essentially blow over now once he gets to Washington and he gets a better idea of how serious this is uh he his initial reaction is to agree with Seward and for the month of March uh particularly on the decision about what to do about Fort Sumter s Lincoln and is in agreement with Seward not to try to resupply Fort Sumter because that that's a tr that's a hair hair trigger I don't know whether you're familiar with uh with uh weapons but that's a hair trigger if you try to resupply Fort Sumter the Southerners have made it clear the seceding Southerners they're gonna start a war they're gonna fire on Fort Sumter and that's gonna start a war. They've made that very clear and so Seward says well don't do that I I don't know you've ever been to Charleston Harbor but Fort Sumter is militarily indefensible and it has no military significance to the federal government. So why do we care about that? And during March Lincoln agrees with that but then as March turns to April he changes his mind.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

Yeah and again and we'll get on to that in a second but at this point in in in in March then do do they ever you know is it ever coming into their mind that this could turn into a war when you use the word could yes it could did they know it would no so one of the things about when you write history if you're gonna do it honestly which I've tried to do here is you can't write knowing what you know happened.

SPEAKER_00 26:33

In other words we we know that the war happened right we know the North won right even as late as March 1861 there was obviously a chance that there'd be a civil war but Seward was doing his everything he could even after Lincoln inaugurated and I detail this in copious uh uh depth in my books everything he could to support these Southern men in Virginia and North Carolina and Tennessee and give them ammunition to fight off this concept of of uh joining the seceding states Fort Sumter becomes this important really almost ridiculously important uh symbol especially to the uh the people in the in South Carolina and the other states that have seceded that if if we send we the federal government send in ships to try to resupply Fort Sumter that constitutes what the what the seceding states called coercion this was a key word during this period if the federal government tries to coerce the seceding states that's going to cause a war and even among the union men in the Upper South they they thought well if in fact the federal government does try to coerce South Carolina and these other states we may we may not be able to stop the tide of secession in our states and we likely have to go in with those states. So Seward's point is let's not quote coerce uh South Carolina on this issue about Fort Sumter because it makes no again it's inde you can't defend it it has no military significance.

SPEAKER_01 28:26

And he says let's let's instead of Fort Sumter let's pick a different fort in the South to resupply and that's a fort called Fort Pickens which is about a mile off of the coast of Florida it's militarily defensible and it has great strategic value uh during during the Civil War for example uh American ships are going up and down the Atlantic coast enforcing uh a quarantine against southern ships getting to England and France with cotton so let's resupply that fort it's not as important it to as a symbol in the South we can easily resupply it and let's let's do that instead Lincoln agrees with that and then as I said he changes his mind yeah and I was going to ask you about that in a minute but I love your your the the way you put that about again we know what happened but we've got to try and think that they didn't know what was going to happen. I like that point that you added in there. Okay so why does Lincoln change his mind and send supply ships to Fort Sumter which we know is going to be the trigger point right so uh there's probably not as with most things in history there's probably not just one answer.

SPEAKER_00 29:53

Uh there are multiple answers um one of them let me just drop back a bit to give you a broader context Lincoln's inaugurated on March 4th 1861. He spends that entire month dealing with people uh begging him for federal jobs literally that's all he does he has a session at the end of March with the editor of the New York Times where he says I I haven't had time to do anything but meet with all these people who want jobs and just to give you some flavor for how how awful this was on just one day in March of 1861 there were a thousand people this is on one day a thousand people in the White House demanding jobs. That's just one day right so Lincoln is besieged with all this I won't call it nonsense but here you have the country falling apart and all these other people want to talk about is I I want a postmastership in uh Iowa or something. You know it's like please give me a break. But um so he's besieged with this he's has no executive experience he doesn't know anybody in Washington. He has a group of uh cabinet secretaries who both really don't like each other at all and are very very uh uh jealous of each other's influence with the president and he's uh not sleeping well he has migraine headaches at one point he collapses on the floor in the White House he literally comes crashing down on the floor um during this period so he's not in the best shape mentally or physically at this point so I think people need to understand that um so why does he change his mind well one of the one of the problems here is one of his cabinet officials a guy named Montgomery Blair has a a brother-in-law gustavo fox who used to used to be a low-level guy in the Navy and somehow uh Montgomery Blair brings this guy into a cabinet meeting and and he makes this pitch to the to the president that he he can lead a resupply mission to Fort Sumter and it'll work and this is absolute lunacy but anyway Lincoln sort of believes this I mean it's really crazy and this is even after Major Anderson who's the U.S. commander uh at Fort Sumter has wired the State Department after meeting with this guy Fox that this guy Fox has no idea what he's talking about. He's basically a moron and uh he's completely wrong he'll never be able to resupply the fort and his ships will be fired on before they can even get into the harbor so Lincoln uh I don't sort of puts that over to one side. So he's getting very bad advice that's that's one one thing. Secondly uh there's a very important wing in the Republican Party that doesn't want to compromise at all with the South. A fellow named Charles Sumner, sort of the leader of this group uh senator from Massachusetts uh any compromise with these bad guys in the South these slave owners just unacceptable we've got to teach them a lesson. So Lincoln's worried about again this new party very fragile coalition of people he's worried about uh them going off the reservation excellent thank you right uh but the last thing I'll just say is oh yeah carry on sorry uh so the I think the trigger point Lincoln never lived it to um write his memoirs obviously the trigger point is at the very end of March uh the head of the army a guy named Winfield Scott brings um Lincoln a memo and the memo says we ought to give up both Sumter and Pickens and then goes on to explain that in his judgment this from a political standpoint is the most efficacious way to deal with the the problems that are facing the country and and the way to keep the Upper South in the in the Union Lincoln literally blows his top it's the only instance I'm aware of at any time in his public life where he like Mount Vesuvius he he literally flames are coming out of his nose his eyes his ears his mouth he blows his top he threatens to fire Scott on the on the spot and he does this in front of his cabinet and the cabinet seeing this they start to all change their their view prior views and now three weeks before they'd all been in favor of giving up for Sumter now watching Lincoln blow his top they all with the exception of Seward and one other man they all changed their minds. So now Lincoln has the cabinet of the view uh to resupply Sumter and he has this nitwit Mr Fox who thinks uh that this can be done without triggering well can be done I I shouldn't say without triggering war it can be done and um so Lincoln uh authorizes Fox to go to New York City and pull together a flotilla of of ships to go to Fort Sumter.

SPEAKER_01 35:49

Now obviously we know April the 12th 1861 they are going to fire upon Fort Sumter now what's Seward's reaction when they hear the news from Sumter and how is does that strain their relationship a little bit with the you know one side wanting to and one side not wanting to resupply well I would say no Seward right up to uh the the ships as they're leaving New York Harbor they're also sending ships to resupply Fort Pickens which which happens without incident by the way as Seward had predicted Seward is still bringing Southern Unionists from North Carolina and Virginia into the White House to meet with uh Lincoln to try to persuade him to change his mind uh but sort of like with Caesar and the Rubicon the die was cast once those ships left New York Harbor um but when the sh when the uh when Sumter's fired upon um everyone knew what was going to happen.

SPEAKER_00 37:01

I mean Lincoln made that decision this is very important Lincoln made that decision knowing it would start the Civil War and so Seward also is not surprised that it was fired they were fired upon uh the fort was fired upon and this was going to lead to a war. But he gets he's a very important advisor to Lincoln on this advising him on the need to call up troops there's an important cabinet meeting on how many troops to call up he advises Lincoln Lincoln says maybe I should call Congress into session. Congress at that point met very rarely the first time was actually scheduled to meet would be the following December and uh Seward says I don't think it's a very when Charles first Charles I called for a special session of Parliament remember what happened to him maybe I don't need to tell you what happened to Charles I but he lost it he lost his head.

SPEAKER_01 37:59

Yeah so Lincoln said that's good advice I guess I'll wait to call Congress and just use my wartime powers as granted to me in the uh Constitution so um no he he was uh right on board there the the one thing that surprised Seward when the war started um was that this the North very similar to the way America reacted after Pearl Harbor the North almost un almost to a man was unanimous in uh that uh the South had to be taught a lesson and uh they're all for the everyone was let's go uh enlist let's go uh for 90-day enlistment let's go teach these guys a lesson uh Seward had had thought principally because of his close ties with the business community in New York City which had very close ties with with the South especially the cotton industries um he thought that uh that there'd be a lot of people not all that interested in going to war with the South but the initial reaction of the North was extremely uh positive and they thought this would be a quick war we'd have a couple battles and teach those uh slaveholders a l a thing or two and then it would be all over of course that optimistic view of the Civil War turned out to be horribly wrong um but um that's that's what people believed at the time and of course there's always that belief it'll be over by Christmas everyone you know so yeah um okay so um again you know going back to you know everything we've been talking about um to to what extent if any could of the civil war been avoided um and you know obviously you like you said seward worked really hard to try and avoid this do you think it could have been avoided um what what my book is not uh it is not counterfactual history so uh I don't I don't speculate as to whether Seward's if if Lincoln had followed exactly what Seward was is advocating uh I don't know what the answer would be um what Seward's plan was was to try to get to the congressional elections in these upper south states now congressional elections at that time were not held in November they were held at different times based upon different state laws the Virginia elections for example were in May of 1861 Virginia was obviously the most important uh upper south state Seward's hope and his plan was if we can get to those elections and elect a cross the board union ticket which looked quite likely I mean the the anti-secession vote in um Virginia was more than two to one uh so there that looked pretty for for a politician that's a pretty huge margin so if we if you could get to those elections and get those people in Congress uh then we'll s then we'll see what what happens.

SPEAKER_00 41:30

But could the could the could the lower south have been brought back in the Union without the loss of blood? I I have no idea. I mean what's but what Seward was trying to do is to try to see if that could happen. And uh be because as I said once a war starts you never know how it's gonna you you may think it's gonna go one way uh but that history tells us that that's never that's never the case. And of course this was a war where 7000 Americans died. That's two percent of that's two percent of the population and an an another equal number at least lost their arms or legs or some other body part. It's just horrific a horrific type of casualties um sort of akin to what the Soviet Union lost in World War II. And no one predicted as I said no one predicted that at the outset. The South thought it would be a quick quick victory for them as well. So nobody saw that this would be four years of just absolute carnage that would essentially destroy the South for a hundred years. I mean the South was devastated by this economically and in every other way. And it so Seward was trying trying to try everything he could to avoid it but could that have happened? He thought it was certainly worth the effort uh he never put down on a piece of paper that I've and I've seen every piece of paper I think there's a 50% chance of this working or 70% chance of this working he was he was just working around the clock trying to maximize every possibility that his plan could work. But he wasn't he wasn't seeing 12 moves down the chessboard he was trying to get to these congressional elections and see what would happen after that. That that was his plan. His his plan was not and in 1862 we'll do this and in 1863 we'll do this it was he was his plan was to try to keep these union men uh conciliated and and uh part of part of the country and And then see where that that would lead. Whether that would have avoided a civil war, who knows?

SPEAKER_01 44:06

Excellent. Thank you, mate. Okay, let's talk about your book, Evan. Now, obviously, you've you've you've said that you've got to uh look at some you know, a lot of source material we're putting this together. How was that for you to be able to read some of that stuff and and go through that?

SPEAKER_00 44:23

Uh so it was it was great. Um this is my fourth book, so I've done a lot of original archival work before. Uh, but this was particularly good because this the way politicians communicated with one another in this time period, the 1850s, 1860s, was really by letter. I mean, people don't write letters today, but they really wrote letters then saying what they meant. And they wrote two types of letters, private letters and public letters. So I talked about Lincoln before not taking a public position on immigration. Um he wrote private letters, but when he wrote on the top of them, this is private, that meant no one could mention what was in the letter, no one could, you couldn't show it to anyone, etc. Public letters were very different. But in any event, uh so Seward's letters, for example, his wife did not like Washington, D.C. Uh during the two decades he was in Washington. She very infrequently came to Washington. Very smart lady. Uh, she was actually uh far more uh of an abolitionist, she was wasn't uh an abolitionist about slavery. So she was to the left, if you will, of Seward on that issue. Very smart lady. Uh and they wrote letters constantly to one another, very important source of information. His letters with Thurlow Weed, very important source of information. His letters with Lincoln, uh, very important source of information. Um interestingly, uh one of Seward's very good friends in the Senate was Jefferson Davis, who would later become head of the Confederacy. Uh Seward had an ability to get along with virtually everyone. He was a very charming fellow, a great rock en tour. He loved to entertain, and everyone loved to come to his house for dinner parties. So um going through all this archival stuff where people are actually really expressing what they're thinking uh and what they intend to do and and why. Um so uh uh some of the most revealing um letters about uh Seward's plan are letters back uh to the the um British Foreign Uh Service Office in London by the British Ambassador. Uh Seward had many meetings during this this secession winter with the British ambassador, explaining to him in pretty significant detail exactly what he was trying to do and why. And so we we don't need to just uh take Seward's word for it. Here's a discussion or a series of discussions he had with the British ambassador, which we reported right back to London.

SPEAKER_01 47:22

Fantastic. And uh so any plans, um, Evan, for um a follow-up uh on Seward during the war war itself?

SPEAKER_00 47:34

No. Um the reason the reason I'm engaged in this new career as a writer, I was a lawyer for almost 48 years, uh, is I like to write books about things that people don't know and haven't that uh haven't been written about. So Seward's uh uh uh career as Secretary of State, one of the great secretaries of states in our history, um, that's that's a story that's been told more than once, many, many times. And so I I have no interest in retelling a story that's been told by uh many other people. Uh and there's nothing really, I don't think there's nothing new to really talk about. This book has a lot of new stuff uh that people have either ignored or been very critical of Mr. Seward, saying he was an appeaser, or he coming coming to terms or tried to come to terms with southern uh uh slaveholders is evidence of a moral defect. Really uh I think almost laughable uh observations because America was uh created in a compromise with slavery. Constitution is a document that's a compromise with slavery. The Missouri Compromise was a compromise with slavery, the 1850 uh compromise was a compromise with slavery. So um, so I like to tell stories that haven't been told before. Um and so my next book is again a story that's not been told before. Uh the book after that's a story that's not been told before. My my first book's a story that's not been told before. That's what I find interesting, not not telling stuff that's already been told lots of times. Well, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 49:23

Excellent. No, I've I mean I've learned a lot just from this, so yeah, fantastic. So, Evan, where can people get your uh your fantastic new book from? And is it available now? It is.

SPEAKER_00 49:34

Uh so the easiest thing, and uh I'd like to give a plug to my daughter because she's very high-tech and I'm not. She created a wonderful website, cevanstewart author.com. And anyone who goes to that website will see the Seward book and my other three books. And all you do is hit a button uh and order it, and it'll arrive the following day. There you go.

SPEAKER_01 50:01

Yeah, excellent. Well, thank you, mate. And I will make sure, of course, there is a link in the podcast subscription for that. So, people please go and um get Evan's great book and and give that a look. Because as he said, you know, stuff that hasn't been told is is fantastic. Um, I like that sort of thing myself, you know. So yeah, it's fantastic, Evan. Thank you so much. So um, yeah, I would like to thank you for coming on and talking to me about your fantastic new book. Um, so thank you very much. Well, thank you. It's been a real pleasure. And all that is left to say at this stage, my friend, is cheers.

SPEAKER_00 50:39

Back at you.