ABSTRACT
William H. Seward was by 1860 a moderate, and, as Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of state, was to be the most placatory member of the cabinet in his attitude to the southern states during secession crisis, and constant target for radical attack during the Civil War as a sinister conservative influence pervading the conduct of the administrations affairs. In states like Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina, the majority were as yet unconvinced that they had to make a choice between slavery and the Union. Pro-Union feeling remained strong even during the war; there are even counties in eastern Tennessee whose record of loyalty to the Republican party for over a century after the war can be bettered by no other part of the United States. Lincoln had not sought war, but he had rejected two possible means of averting it: a compromise which allowed the possibility of further extension of slavery, and peaceful acceptance of the dismemberment of the Union.
