Posterity Letters of Great Americans to Their Children

William Henry Seward to William Henry Seward, Jr. "How good and virtuous and just ought we to be and how thankful to God that we have blessings secured by the virtue and sufferings of our ancestors." One of the most important political figures of the mid-nineteenth century, William Henry Seward was governor of New York, then senator, then secretary of state under Abraham Lincoln. As a leading voice in the condemnation of slavery, it was he who delivered the courageous line on the floor of the Senate evoking a "higher law." Later, in 1867, it was Seward, the ever devoted proponent of American expansion and progress, who secured the purchase of Alaska for the United States. With thick, disheveled hair and a prominent nose, Seward, according to Henry Adams, looked like a "wise macaw." Charming and relaxed, he was a welcomed guest and a favorite among the Washington hostesses. In the fall of 1848, he was running for the first time for a seat in the United States Senate. He campaigned in his home state, New York, and traveled about the East Coast speaking on behalf of the Republican Party. Here, with his characteristic broad sense of time, William Seward, the grandson of a Revolutionary War colonel, writes to his son Willie, a nine-year-old boy at home with persistent eye troubles. [October 7, 1848] Wilmington in the State of Delaware, Monday My dear Boy I am very much obliged to you for your letter which gives me much interesting information. I will try to procure in New York a filter which will purify the water of the new pump. I have been at many places in Pennsylvania where I wished that you were strong enough to be with me. When you grow strong enough I shall want you to travel with me. I saw on the banks of the Schuylkill, Valley Forge the place where General Washington had his camp during one of the most severe winters which occurred during the American Revolution. His camp extended four miles long with two entrenchments in front and high mountains on the one side and a deep creek on the other. From the mountain in rear he could see with his spy glass the British army in Philadelphia seventy miles off. He was almost destitute of ammunition to protect himself. The Congress was not able to supply him with money, the army was in deplorable want of bread and meat clothes and shoes. They suffered exceedingly. The poor horses and dogs died of hunger and diarrhea and death extended to the men, a dozen were buried in a day and in one place, scarcely beneath the frost in the surface of the ground. The farmer now often turns up the bones of the lost men when plowing his fields. Mrs. Washington was a good woman, she spent the winter in the camp and she served and consoled the sick and dying. It was by such sacrifice that Liberty was obtained for the American people. How good and virtuous and just ought we to be and how thankful to God that we have blessings secured by the virtue and sufferings of our ancestors. I hope you will get Peter Parley's history of the Revolution and ask Ma to read to you the account of the Revolution and then I hope you will resolve to be a good man like General Washington that all people may love and bless you. I saw canal boats on railroad cars in Pennsylvania loaded with freight, and what is very strange is that as the boats are too long for the curves of the Rail Roads, they build the boats into three pieces, and when they get on the mountains they put them together with hooks and let them down into the Canal and float them to Lake Erie. Yet they do not take in a drop of water. Can you guess how this is done? Your affectionate father William H. Seward. Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Margaret L. Stanton ". . . I feel that . . . I am making the path smoother for you and Hattie and all the other dear girls." Elizabeth CLawson, Dorie McCullough is the author of 'Posterity Letters of Great Americans to Their Children', published 2004 under ISBN 9780385503303 and ISBN 038550330X.