George Robinson and his Family

[Linda Anderson]

According to Walter Stahr in Seward: Lincoln's Indispensable Man ..."James Speed, who was the Attorney General in early 1865, recalled Seward telling him after the fall of Richmond that 'if there were to be assassinations, now was the time.'"

Frances Seward suffered from many ailments including "...chills and fever, sick headache, paroxysms of coughing...Bright lights, loud noises and large numbers of people gave her a sick headache..." Sensitivity and Civil War by Patricia Carley Johnson.

William Seward's first love was politics and he was rarely home in Auburn. He went to Europe for five months in 1833. "...it is clear from later letters that sometime during this winter [Seward's friend Alfred] Tracy crossed the line between friendly familiarity and inappropriate intimacy with Frances. Exactly what happened cannot be reconstructed-it seems unlikely there was any physical relationship-but one day Frances came to her husband in tears, handed him a set of letters from Tracy, and asked him to decide whether she had acted improperly. Seward burned the letters without reading them, wrapped his wife in his arms, and assured her that he loved and trusted her. For some reason he did not confront Tracy-that would not come for several months-and indeed he continued in the interim to write Tracy friendly letters."

In late 1834 Seward wrote to Frances that "Tracy offered her the 'feelings and love' which Seward should have offered her as her husband..."

Tracy wrote to Seward "regretting that they were no longer as close as they had been when they first met. 'Commend me to your dear wife,' Tracy wrote on December 29, 'for she knows the strength and purity of my love and will not doubt its constancy.'"

Seward wrote back the same day that "he had forgiven Tracy for his offense, but not forgotten it, and that they would part as mere friends, nothing more."

Seward: Lincoln's Indispensable Man