lowing the war there was a reaction
against Seward. When Nicolay and Hay published the Thoughts they
appeared to give him the coup de grace. Of late years it has almost been
the fashion to treat him contemptuously. Even Mr. Bancroft has been very
cautious in his defense. This is not the place to discuss his genius
or his political morals. But on one thing I insist, Whatever else he
was-unscrupulous or what you will-he was not a fool. However reckless,
at times, his spread-eagleism there was shrewdness behind it. The idea
that he proposed a ridiculous foreign policy at a moment when all his
other actions reveal coolness and calculation; the idea that he proposed
it merely as a spectacular stroke in party management; this is too much
to believe. A motive must be found better than mere chicanery.

Furthermore, if there was one fixed purpose in Seward, during March and
early April, it was to avoid a domestic conflict; and the only way he
could see to accomplish that was to side-track Montgomery's expansive
all-Southern policy. Is it not fair, with so astute a politician as
Seward, to demand in explanation of any of his moves 'he uncovering
of some definite political force he was playing up to? The old
interpretation of the Thoughts offers no force to which they form a
response. Especially it is impossible to find in them any scheme to get
around Montgomery. But the old view looked upon the Virginia compromise
with blind eyes. That was no part of the mental prospect. In accounting
for Seward's purposes it did not exist. But the moment one's eyes are
opened to its significance, especially to the menace it had for the
Montgomery program, is not the entire scene transformed? Is not, under
these new conditions, the purpose intimated in the text, the purpose to
open a new field of exploitation to the Southern expansionists in
order to reconcile them to the Virginia scheme, is not this at least
plausible? And it escapes making Seward a fool.

21. Lincoln, VI, 23~237.

22. Welles, 1,17.

23. There is still lacking a complete unriddling of the three-cornered
game of diplomacy played in America in March and April, 1861. Of the
three participants Richmond is the most fully revealed. It was playing
desperately for a compromise, any sort of compromise, that would save
the one principle of state sovereignty. For that, slavery would
be sacrificed, or at least allowed to be put in jeopardy. Munford,
Virginia's Attitude toward Slavery a