Dodgeville chronicle. [volume] (Dodgeville, Wis.) 1862-current, 1869-11-12
A Defense of Mr.. Seward.
BY REV. II. w. BELLOWS.

IT certainly was a very original and
bold thing for so great and so old states
man as Mr.. Seward, after eight years at
the helm of the State in It's stormiest
weather, and thirty years of strenuous,
anxious political life, in the Empire State
and the nation, to retire from Office, not
into the repose of his beloved home at
Auburn, nor into the soft and open arms
of an idle foreign life, as most weary
statesmen do, in all countries, but to
undertake, at the natural term of human
life, trans continental journey of some
thousands of miles, and to penetrate the
least known portions of our vast empire.
1t shows a persistency of purpose, an in
tensity of interest, a thirst for information,
and a desire for usefulness, most credit
able to this great servant of the State. 1t
indicates, too, that love of country which
no ingratitude or forgetfulness of his CO
temporaries seems to impair. No man
alive in America has done as much for it
as Mr.. Seward, either at home or abroad.
lie fought the dragon of slavery in the
Senate, almost single-handed, and slew it
with his sword, while others ran off with
the reputation of it. He led the Republi-
can party and was its real front and brains,
when Mr.. Lincoln was cruelty put over
his head in the nomination at Chicago
an event oyerruled by gracious Provi-
dence to our good, but none the less
treacherous and ungrateful to Mr.. Seward
at the time. He bore the disappointment
with gay and unmurmuring fortitude, and
became Mr.. Lincoln's own chiefest friend
and supporter. He stayed in office (hia
objectionable offense y under Andrew
johnson, for what common sense and
charity require us to believe were disin-
terested motives-to guide the ship of
State, and keep the new President, un-
tried but suspected, from wrecking the
national vessel: to perfect his own great
policy, and reap the fruits of his miracu-
lous skill and tolls in preventing England
and France from coming to the aid of the
Rebellion at a period when, for short
time, it had strength enough to imperil
our very existence, even when unrecog-
nized and unassisted. And because his
calm, far seeing, passionless mind could not
unite In all the hasty, tentative processes
OF Congress and public opinion, his great,
unequalled services were forgotten, and
only his independent yet cautious course
remembered against him No ingratitude
like this has ever before impugned the
justice and discrimination of the Ameri-
can people.
If Mr.. Seward had weakly desired to
bring into contrast the neglect and misap-
probation of his own countrymen with
the honor and applause Of other nations
he would have gone straight from this
place in the American Cabinet to London
Paris, Berlin, where uneXampled atten
tons, profound respect and public admira
ton have long awaited him, and where
the lofty appreciation of his diplomatic
peers would have attested his exalted ranl
as a statesman and his claims on the love
and honor of his own country. But Mr.
Seward is too wise and too patient a man
to take any such hasty revenge upon the
insensibility of his contemporaries. HI
quietly and securely waits for the smoke
and dust of the late awful connection tC
subside. His record is made, his services
have been rendered, and his work is toe
largely and inextricably wrought in with
the history of the last thirty years of oul
American life, to make it possible for pos.
terity to overlook it, or, for more than one
generation, to misjudge or underrate it
1t was wise in Mr.. Seward, in choosing his
route (for no statesman can afford to be
more popular in foreign countries than in
his OWN to shun the ovations of England
and the courts of the Continent. Just as
John Bright is too prudent ard too iealou:
of his important influence in England, tc
come to the United States and be borne or
the shoulders of our democracy from State
to State as a Tribune of the people d
triumph which would cost him dear al
home-so Mr.. Seward seeks Alaska, nc
California, and Oregon, distant par $ O.
his own country, as the scene of his labori
Gus relaxation instead of offering himsel1
to the homage of the foreign statesmen he
had enlightened or baffled, and the great
nations whose fury he has restrained or
turned into mild hesiHtion and saving
delay,