William Seward and the ‘National Mind’ (Guest Post by Jeffrey Ludwig)

In an earlier post, “Everywhere and Nowhere: William Seward, History, and Greenland,” I mentioned that William Seward marshalled information, ideas, and intellectuals in pursuit of “laying the foundations of a great empire.”^[1] He was neither the first nor the last statesman to appreciate the potential of yoking intellectuals to the service of power. Still, given Seward’s foundational role in American imperialism, his efforts at organizing ideas and information, shaping discourse, and deploying intellectuals merits a closer look.^[2] 

Admitted to Union College in Schenectady as a sophomore at age 15, Seward was studious to a fault. He used to rise at 3:00 every morning to spend as much time as possible in “severe study.”^[1] He graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1820 and delivered a valedictory commencement address. Seward also developed strong reading habits, an appetite for intellectual work, and something of a gift for the pen. These would never fade. Towards the end of his life, as one critic noted, Seward’s corpus of speeches and books were “creditable to his physical vigor of composition and his love of scholastic dialectics.”^[2] Had he not sought out a career in law and politics, Seward might have made a passable author.^[3]

He certainly surrounded himself with literary figures and intellectuals of his age. Seward befriended men of letters like Washington Irving, historians like George Bancroft, artists like Chester Harding, as well as such theatrical dynamos as, ironically, Edwin Booth and the great Charlotte Cushman.

In his political life, Seward urged his country to take seriously the task of fulfilling an intellectual destiny in tandem with its territorial one. Often in the same breath. His remarkable 1853 speech, “The Destiny of America,” simultaneously welcomed the expansion of the republic while warning that the country required increased education. Pleading for an investment in establishing American culture to be on par with Europe’s, the New York Senator lobbied for the need to “imbue the national mind with correct convictions.” Seward proclaimed that America was embarking on a “career of wealth, power, and expansion” and needed “higher intellectual attainments and greater virtue as a nation than we have hitherto possessed… It is well that we can rejoice in the renown of a Cooper, Irving, and a Bancroft; but we have yet to give birth to a Shakespeare, a Milton, or a Bacon. The fame of Patrick Henry and John Adams may suffice for the past; but the world will yet demand of us a Burke and Demosthenes.”^[1]

Seward tried to practice what he preached. As Governor of New York from 1839 to 1843, he championed democratizing access to education, especially for Irish immigrants, boosting schools and free libraries. He even made his own direct contributions to endowing the “national mind.” His gubernatorial zeal for the natural history of New York led to the creation of “Seward Surveys,” a meticulous compendium of data and information. The same impetus drove Governor Seward to author a Jefferson-ish Notes on the State of New York.

This near obsession for stockpiling knowledge never wavered. Upon taking the helm of the State Department in 1861, Seward created and published the Foreign Relations of the United States series. Opponents fumed that “Mr. Seward has introduced an unheard-of precedent… the folly arises from his pride of authorship.”^[1] Others later heralded Seward’s project for becoming “the longest-running public diplomacy program in U.S. history, and the largest, most productive documentary history program in the world.”^[2]

The purpose of FRUS was threefold. First, it justified wartime expenses to Congress. Second, as Seward wrote to Charles Frances Adams, “history would be incomplete without that account,” a nod to generating materials for the future “national mind.” Finally, the curation of FRUS enabled Seward to influence intelligence and shape discourse. Via strategic omissions, excisions, and redactions, Seward and his clerks edited to suit their purposes of selling the war internationally and to the American people.

From his first days in the State Department, Seward engaged in a global chess match with his Confederate counterparts in vying for European alliances. Here Seward was masterful. Controlling the messaging and winning hearts and minds was a necessary part of the job. To do this, Seward built an intelligence-gathering new team largely from scratch, assigning trustworthy ministers to key embassies, doubling the size of his consular service, and implanting an espionage ring across Europe.

The apotheosis for Seward’s “imbuing the national mind with correct convictions,” as he so memorably phrased it in 1853, came in the twilight of his career. After the war, an aging Seward orchestrated the purchase of Alaska during the nadir of Andrew Johnson’s presidency. The story of that other “folly” is familiar: Seward negotiating late into the night with the Russian Minister, emerging with a treaty draft and a 7.2 million dollar price tag, and soon enough finding himself the subject of national mockery for buying an “icebox,” “polar bear garden,” or “Walrussia.”^[3] Securing Alaska proved a real challenge. Serving under a deeply unpopular Johnson on the eve of impeachment, while Radical Republicans were advancing their own Reconstruction agenda against the White House, Seward had his work cut out for him.

Seward overcame by capitalizing on a method that defined his career: prevailing upon the “national mind,” through effective lobbying and education. He initiated “a robust press campaign.”^[1] Deploying his allies within the media, specifically the editors of the New York Times and New York Commercial Advertiser, Seward triggered a cascading effect among national and regional papers. Many followed the lead of the New York dailies in praising the treaty for opening up markets in Asia, augmenting U.S. fishing and whaling rights, unlocking new natural resources, and blocking British interests in the Pacific Northwest. Before long, editors like Lloyd Pearsall Smith of Lippincott’s Magazine were approaching Seward to “harmonize” their alignment “with the views of the [State] Department.”^[2] Seward usually took the time to meet such solicitous editors in person, often supplying them with maps and data on Alaska for their use in publication.

Seward also courted individual correspondents by inviting favorites to cover the dinner parties he hosted in Washington while seeking to win Senate votes for the treaty. As the wine flowed, Seward regaled skeptical guests “with a lucid presentation of the region’s enormous geographical expanse and the tangible benefits of the Alaska territory.”^[3] Thus, the United States added Alaska in large part to the intellectual life of William Seward.

In alignment with the press campaign, Seward’s State Department quickly churned out its own pro-Alaska intelligence. The most distributed pamphlet, Purchase of the Russian Possessions in North America by the United States, was reminiscent of the FRUS. Seemingly an omnibus of facts about timber, minerals, climate, fisheries, fur, and other resources, the publication included plenty of spin. It featured letters of support from wartime heroes like Commodore John Rogers and Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs, and General Henry Halleck. “I can conceive of no greater boon,” Meigs extolled. “The treaty will crown our generation with the praises and thanks of future ages.”^[1] Wrapping their case in patriotism, Seward and his allies distributed thousands of copies of Purchase across the country.

But Seward went beyond a postwar cult of military celebrity, lining up intellectual specialists behind him, notably the naturalist Spencer Baird. While Baird had never personally visited the Alaskan territories, he brought well-credentialed prestige to Seward’s venture. The first curator of the Smithsonian Institution and a widely published author, he represented the reigning voice of scientific expertise. His endorsement of the Alaska deal brought a new air of respectability to Seward’s report.  Synthesizing field reports from Smithsonian agents sent to Alaska, Baird’s contribution was to document conditions, which he cast in a roseate hue. He marvelled at “exhaustless numbers of fish,” “large quantities of coal,” and how “furred animals… abound in great numbers.” More speculatively, Baird alluded to “surface washings of gold” apparently discernible in “in the headwaters of streams.”^[2]

Indeed, Seward won support for his purchase by cementing newspaper support, disseminating information, and by valuing the role of scholars and specialists in public life. All in service to “the national mind.”

^[1] [State Department], Purchase of the Russian Possessions in North America by the United States, 1867.

^[2] Ibid.

^[1] Joseph Fry, Lincoln, Seward, and U.S, Foreign Relations in the Civil War Era (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2019), 174. According to Fry, Seward’s Alaska campaign “closely resembled his artful public diplomacy during the war… and demonstrated that he remained surprisingly energetic, mentally acute, and politically astute” 173.

^[2] Ernest Paolino, The Foundations of American Empire: William Henry Seward and U.S. Foreign Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), 114.

^[3] Fry, 174.

^[1] The State Department’s Office of the Historian has produced an excellent history of the series: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus-history. For Seward’s part in the part process, the reader is directed to Chapter Two: “The Civil War Origins of the FRUS series, 1861-1868”: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus-history/chapter-2

^[2] This according to State Department Historian Stephan Randolph in his foreword to the FRUS history: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus-history/foreword

^[3] Lee Farrow, Seward’s Folly: A New Look at the Alaska Purchase (Fairbanks, AK: University of Alaska Press, 2017), 53.

^[1] See Seward “The Destiny of America” (Columbus, OH: 14 September 14 1853).

^[1] Frederick Seward, Ed., William H. Seward: An Autobiography (New York: Derby and Miller, 1891) 35.

^[2] Quoted in Glyndon Van Deusen, William Henry Seward (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 565.

^[3] The books he did write, including a biography on his hero John Quincy Adams, a best-selling travel narrative, and the first volume of his three-part autobiography are lucid and occasionally charming.

^[1] A phrase Seward used as a Senator in 1858, maintaining reservations about territorial expansion as it related to the extension of slavery. Seward “Freedom in Kansas” (Washington DC: 3 March 1858).

^[2] For more on the question of whether Seward deserves to be considered a father figure type in the historiography of American imperialism see David Sim, “The Empire of the World? Getting Right with William Seward,” US Intellectual History Blog (9 August 2014).