What are you reading now?

[Linda Anderson]

(08-27-2014 01:56 PM)Angela Wrote:  

(08-26-2014 05:45 PM)LincolnToddFan Wrote:  I agree with Gene. I believe the lingering trauma of the assassination attempt, combined with the deaths of his wife and his beloved Fanny kind of took the spark out of Seward.

I need to hunt down the source of a statement I once read that he made where he said he should have died with Lincoln, because his work had basically been done at that point.

That quote you mentioned - I think I remember this as well. I cannot remember where I read it but it was also/included Seward mentioning that he never envied Lincoln for anything but the way he died?
It was back in the day when I did not take notes, yet I never found it again.

I found a reference to the same sentiment in William Henry Seward: Lincoln's Right Hand by John Taylor. The source is William H. Seward, Vol 3, p. 537-538.

"Lincoln's partner" Leonard Swett wrote to "Mr. Benjamin B. Snow and Others, of Committee" that he would not be able to attend the unveiling of Seward's statue in Auburn.

"I had the pleasure of an intimate personal acquaintance with Mr. Seward during the period in which he was Secretary of State to Mr. Lincoln, and remember especially the intimate and friendly relations that existed between the two...

"I recall also an incident which once occurred subsequently in the State Department, when Mr. Seward was Secretary of State in Mr. Johnson's cabinet.
"I was sitting there opposite him so that the gash of the assassin's knife was prominent before me. I said, 'Mr. Seward, I do not wish to be impertinent, but I do want to look critically at your throat.' He immediately took off his cravat, unbuttoned his collar, and showed how the knife had pieced him, and how by a hair's breadth it had missed the great artery of life.
"As I sat down Mr. Seward said, 'I have always felt that Providence dealt hardly with me in not letting me die with Mr. Lincoln. My work was done, and I think I deserved the reward of dying there. How much better to have died than to prolong my life, in the miserable business of patching up Johnson's Cabinet.'"