The Second Inaugural Address was the seminal speech that President Abraham Lincoln delivered upon his second inauguration, in 1865. The nation was then a far cry from what it had been at the time of his first inauguration. After four years of conflict Union armies under Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman were poised for victory.
With good news imminent the president had every reason to be celebratory. Yet Lincoln deliberately avoided voicing patriotic sentimentality, painfully aware that the perils facing the county during the postwar era would prove as daunting as those of the present. His second inaugural address was short—fewer than 700 words—but profound. The president did not linger on the looming military victory over the South, nor did he blame the South for the evils of slavery, whose practice he condemned outright. Rather, he appealed to unity, Christian forgiveness, and national reconciliation, couching his message in religious terms leavened with biblical invocations. In this manner he eschewed military triumph and promoted a moral victory.
The inaugural speech, delivered before a crowd estimated at 40,000 people, lasted only seven minutes. Listeners were initially perplexed by Lincoln’s low-key delivery and stark brevity. Yet the last line of the speech summarizes his administration’s raison d’etre:
With malice toward none; with charity for aU; with firmness and right, as God gives us to see right. Let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne battle, and for his widow and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.
Lincoln’s words have since been regarded as among the most notable political addresses of all time. The entire speech is carved into the marble walls of the Lincoln Monument in Washington, D. C.
Further reading: Allen Jayne, Lincoln and the American Manifesto (Amherst, N. Y.: Prometheus Books, 2007); James Tackach, Lincoln’s Moral Vision: The Second Inaugural Address (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002);
Ronald C. White, Lincoln’s Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002).
—John C. Fredriksen
Semmes, Raphael (1 809-1 877) Confederate admiral Rear admiral for the Confederate States of America, lawyer, historian, and newspaper editor, Raphael Semmes is best known for his stewardship of the famed cruiser Alabama. Born on September 27, 1809, in Charles County, Maryland, Semmes attended the Charlotte Hall Military Academy. Appointed as a midshipman in the U. S. Navy in 1826, he found time between service in the Mediterranean and Caribbean Seas to study law and was admitted to the bar in 1834.
Semmes moved from Maryland to Cincinnati, where he married and began his family of six children. He served in the Mexican-American War of 1846 and later published a popular account of the event. Semmes and his family moved to Alabama, where he had bought property. When the war began, he resigned from the U. S. Navy and offered his services to President Jefferson Davis. His first assignment was to go north and buy supplies and ammunition from stores in New England and New York. Mission accomplished, he dropped in to view President Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration in Washington, D. C.
Commissioned a commander in the Confederate navy, Semmes outfitted the cruiser Sumter in New Orleans and began an 18-month stint as a commerce raider running the Yankee blockade. After great success, Semmes traveled overseas to take command of the CSS Alabama, one of the rebel ships built in Liverpool, England. Sleek, fast, and powerful, the Alabama destroyed or captured 69 vessels before it was destroyed by the Union’s Kearsarge off the coast of France in late spring of 1864. After a dramatic rescue at sea, Semmes returned home a hero and commanded the James River Squadron until the end of the war. Semmes applied for and received a presidential pardon in May 1865, but he was arrested on piracy charges upon his return to Mobile, Alabama. Cleared of all charges, Semmes worked as a judge, a teacher, a newspaper editor, and a lawyer. An accomplished writer, he published his story, Memoirs of Service: Afloat during the War Between the States in 1868. Raphael Semmes died on August 30, 1877, in Point Clear, Alabama.
Further reading: John M. Taylor, Confederate Raider: Raphael Semmes of the “Alabama” (Washington, D. C.: Brassey’s, 1994).
Seward, William H. (1801-1872) lawyer, politician
Lawyer, governor, senator, and secretary of state, William Henry Seward was one of the leading Republicans of his era. Seward was born in Florida, New York, on May 16, 1801. Graduating from Union College in 1820, he was admitted to the New York bar two years later. Son of a businessman and a county judge, Seward married a judge’s daughter, Frances Miller. They settled in Auburn, New York, to raise a family. Their son, Frederick William Seward, served as his father’s assistant secretary of state and close adviser during the most turbulent years of the elder Seward’s career.
William H. Seward rose rapidly in New York State politics, advancing from Whig Party leader in the state senate to the governor’s office while still in his 30s. After his second gubernatorial term, Seward built his legal practice only to return to politics again in 1849, when he advanced to the U. S. Senate.
Seward quickly established himself as a powerful figure in Congress, one associated particularly closely with abolitionism. He is known during the 1850s for two controversial remarks. During a debate over the Compromise of 1850, Seward urged senators to ban slavery in the territories entirely. Replying to Southern attacks that such a ban was unconstitutional, Seward asserted that there was a “higher law” than the U. S. Constitution.
Echoing the rhetoric of abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison, Seward earned a reputation in some circles as a radical abolitionist—a reputation that would prove both incorrect and damaging to his career. Again, in a speech at Rochester, New York, Seward denigrated compromise with slave owners, declaring that North and South were engaged in an “irrepressible conflict” between two fundamentally different views of America’s future.
When the Whig Party collapsed following the Kan-sas-Nebraska Act, Seward joined the new Republican Party, instantly becoming the leading candidate for the 1860 Republican presidential nomination. But Seward’s flirtation with abolitionism, still largely unpopular in the North, alienated more moderate Republicans. During the 1860 Republican Convention, Seward watched his support ebb while Abraham Lincoln’s swelled. Despite the disappointment, Seward actively campaigned for Lincoln throughout the fall and accepted Lincoln’s invitation to serve as secretary of state.
By 1861 Seward had been in politics for nearly 30 years. Lincoln, in contrast, had served a single term as an Illinois congressman. Seward made the mistake of assuming that the inexperienced president would gratefully rely on his seasoned cabinet member to craft the new administration’s key policies. Alarmed at what he took to be Lincoln’s vacillation in the face of imminent Southern rebellion, Seward sent the president his recommendations for a more robust policy. The United States, Seward suggested, ought to abandon Fort Sumter, South Carolina, while arresting rebels throughout the United States.
Meanwhile, Lincoln should rally the country around the Monroe Doctrine and challenge Spanish and French meddling in the Americas.
Once at war, the people would forget their regionalism and rally to the flag. Such a policy, Seward concluded, would need a strong hand to guide it—presumably, his own. Seward misread the depth of Southern commitment to secession and seriously misjudged Lincoln himself. Lincoln’s reply, while cordial, made it clear that Lincoln himself would be making the decisions.
Despite the awkward start, Seward proved himself to be an essential and loyal member of Lincoln’s cabinet. He promptly dispatched Charles Francis Adams, son and grandson of presidents, to counter Confederate diplomacy in London, issuing veiled (and not so veiled) threats to go to war if the British recognized the Confederacy. In one sense, these threats were little more than bluff; the United States could not have simultaneously defeated the British and the Confederacy both. However, remarked Seward to French diplomats, though the United States might lose such a war, its enemies would know they had been in a fight. Strong words, combined with more tactful diplomacy, worked. Despite their economic interest in continued cotton exports, neither British nor French governments could afford to add a protracted conflict in North America to their obligations elsewhere in the world.
William H. Seward (Library of Congress)
Seward handled three diplomatic crises with particular success. First, he persuaded French and British governments to withhold recognition from the Confederacy and to respect the Union blockade of Southern ports. Second, he forced the British to cease outfitting Southern privateers such as the Alabama, though the so-called Alabama claims were not settled until well after the war’s end. Finally, Seward released two Confederate spies, captured from a British vessel in the Trent affair. Making this concession over the loud objections of congressional Republicans won Seward the respect of the British government officials, who came to see the American secretary of state as tough and shrewd—but a man with whom they could work.
At the end of the war Seward was injured in a carriage accident and was bedridden when both he and his son, Frederick, became the victims of an assassination attempt by Lewis Paine, one of the coconspirators with John WiLKES Booth. On the evening of April 14, 1865, Paine’s attempt on the lives of Seward father and son failed, while Booth’s ASSASSINATION OF Abraham LINCOLN succeeded.
Seward recovered and remained secretary of state after Lincoln’s death, crafting an American FOREIGN POLICY whose expansionism and hemispheric ambitions prefigured those of Theodore Roosevelt half a century later. Citing the Monroe Doctrine, Seward pressured Napoleon III to withdraw French troops from Mexico, where they had established an “empire” at the start of the CIVIL War.
Seward urged Congress to authorize the building of a canal across Panama and to annex the Danish West Indies, Hawaii, Midway, and Santo Domingo. With the exception of Midway, Congress was unwilling. Many Northerners believed that the Civil War had erupted over the disposition of territories conquered from Mexico in 1848, and most wanted national resources devoted to RECONSTRUCTION. Even so, Seward’s policies, while dormant in the 1870s, would catch fire again in the 1890s.
Congress did approve one of Seward’s initiatives, however, authorizing $7 million to purchase Alaska from the Russian Empire. Seward’s opponents derisively labeled the undeveloped Arctic wilderness “Seward’s Folly” and “Seward’s Icebox.” Seward, however, correctly predicted that the region’s value to the United States would not be apparent for another generation. It became so in 1898, when gold was found in the Klondike.
Seward remained loyal to Andrew Johnson through the president’s impeachment trial. Supporting Johnson’s generous and gentle treatment of white ex-Confederates, Seward urged RADICAL REPUBLICANS to show the defeated opponents the mercy they now deserved. Seward displayed little interest in the problems faced by the freed-people. Seward had believed slavery to be wrong, but he also believed Africans to be inferior to Europeans and their subordinate status to be inevitable and natural.
These views alienated Seward from the mainstream of Republican opinion; Republican president ULYSSES S. Grant had little use for a Johnson administration loyalist. This time, Seward’s retirement from public life proved permanent. Seward died at his home in Auburn, New York, on October 10, 1872.
See also ABOLITION; FILIBUSTERING; IMPEACHMENT
OF Andrew Johnson.
Further reading: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005); John M. Taylor, William Seward: Lincoln’s Right Hand (New York: HarperCollins, 1991); Glyndon G. Van Deusen, William Henry Seward (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967).
—Tom Laichas
Seymour, Horatio (1810-1886) lawyer, politician Horatio Seymour was GOVERNOR of New York during the CIVIL War. Born in Onondaga, New York, on May 31, 1810, Seymour was educated at the Geneva Academy (Hobart College) and a military academy at Middletown, Connecticut. He gravitated toward law and gained admission to the bar in 1832 before serving as secretary to Governor William L. Marcy. A moderate Democrat, Seymour made a name for himself in various capacities before his own election as governor in 1853. Over the next seven years he initiated improvements in his state while condemning both abolitionism in the North and secessionism in the South.
In 1860 Seymour supported STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS for the presidency and, after Douglas’s defeat, the CRITTENDEN COMPROMISE to end the SECESSION crisis. Relations with new president Abraham Lincoln proved stormy. Seymour resented—and resisted—the strong Federal measures imposed on states as a wartime expedient, namely, Lincoln’s policies of CONSCRIPTION for acquiring manpower, suspension of HABEAS CORPUS, and EMANCIPATION of slaves. However, despite his reputation as among the most ardent Northern proponents of STATES’ RIGHTS and the most conspicuous of the anti-administration governors, he championed the Union and the war. Although labeled a “COPPERHEAD,” Seymour remained deeply committed to preserving the Union, and in 1862 he was again elected governor.
After the infamous New York City draft riots of July 1863, Seymour was quick to marshal state forces to restore order, but thereafter he insisted that the president keep him abreast of changes in conscription policies to avert violence. Seymour was voted out of office in 1864, and four years later his bid for the presidency was crushingly defeated by Gen. ULYSSES S. Grant. He died in Utica, New York, on February 12, 1886.
Further reading: Harold Holzer, State of the Union: New York and the Civil War (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002).
—John C. Fredriksen
World History
