John Brennan and I had a joke about the medal - Robinson and Powell look like they're waltzing around Seward's bed rather than fighting. Seward looks so calm - like he's sleeping. And yes, the gun is depicted on the floor, but it always looked to me as if the Whitney revolver is more or less a derringer rather than a pistol.

Powell's nose appears to be too aquiline and he has long sideburns. Doesn't look a thing like him IMHO. Also, the hat is not shown on the floor and he's not wearing the overcoat - just the frock. Oh, well - you can't have everything! HA!

   

When Lindsey and I visited the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield in 2011, they had a copy of Robinson's medal on display:





I also own one that I got off of eBay a few years ago. If you are patient you can still get them for pretty cheap. Here's one that just sold a few days ago for $50.

Oddly enough, Seward was pretty calm during the assault. He was a pretty calm fellow to begin with and then there were the drugs he was given as a result of his carriage accident.

"But he saw nothing of his assailant until a hand appeared above his face, and than his thought was, "What handsome cloth that overcoat is made of!" The assassin's face then appeared, and the helpless statesman only thought, "What a handsome man!" (Payne was a fine-looking fellow.) Than came a sensation as of rain striking him smartly upon one side of his face and neck, then quickly the same upon the other side, but he felt no severe pain. This was the assassin's knife. The blood spouted. He thought, "My time has come," and, falling from the bed to the floor, fainted."

http://beck.library.emory.edu/iln/browse...7.1344.005

Maybe because Seward was anyway always "prepared for sudden death"?

New York Times Editor Henry J. Raymond wrote: "Free from the faintest impulse of revenge himself, he could not appreciate its desperate intensity in the hearts of others. Mr. Seward, with his larger experience and more practical knowledge of human nature, had repeatedly told him that so great a contest could never close without passing through an era of assassination - that if it did not come as a means of aiding the rebel cause, it would follow, and seek to avenge its downfall, and that it was the duty of all who were responsibly and conspicuously connected with the Government, to be prepared for this supreme test of their courage and patriotic devotion. Mr. Seward himself, had acted upon this conviction, and had stood at his post always prepared for sudden death."

(02-09-2014, 05:19 AM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote: Maybe because Seward was anyway always "prepared for sudden death"?

New York Times Editor Henry J. Raymond wrote: "Free from the faintest impulse of revenge himself, he could not appreciate its desperate intensity in the hearts of others. Mr. Seward, with his larger experience and more practical knowledge of human nature, had repeatedly told him that so great a contest could never close without passing through an era of assassination - that if it did not come as a means of aiding the rebel cause, it would follow, and seek to avenge its downfall, and that it was the duty of all who were responsibly and conspicuously connected with the Government, to be prepared for this supreme test of their courage and patriotic devotion. Mr. Seward himself, had acted upon this conviction, and had stood at his post always prepared for sudden death."

That's probably one reason why Seward recovered and Mrs. Seward didn't. She wrote to Mr. Alward on May 11:

"It will yet be a long time, if our dear ones recover, before we can leave here. I make no calculations for the future. This baptism of blood seems to have obliterated much of my previous existence."

Is there any evidence that Seward received death threats either before or during his term as Secretary of State? He was hated by many for his abolitionist views, so it would seem that he had a file of assassination warnings also.

Also, I have always thought that Mrs. Seward was frail both physically and emotionally and preferred to stay in the Auburn environment where she felt safer. Just the noise of D.C. during the Civil War would have been very hard on any sheltered woman.

I read she once had almost an affair early in their marriage due to his frequent abscensces. Does anyone know more? Especially what his reaction was (if he ever found out about this)?

(02-09-2014, 06:32 PM)L Verge Wrote: Just the noise of D.C. during the Civil War would have been very hard on any sheltered woman.

I feel her pain - Fido

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