WASHINGTON

Relief

MARCH 8

FOR MONTHS, INAUGURATION DAY HAD STOOD IN THE TEMPORAL distance as a day to be dreaded, girded for, and survived. It seemed an endpoint in itself, like an assignation for a duel: one dared not look beyond. First the inauguration had to take place; only then could the nation get back to constructing its future, with the helm of state securely in new hands. Now that March 4 had come and gone and no secret force had seized the Capitol and no assassin had leapt onto the East Portico, relief supplanted disquiet.

Without knowing it, on March 8, Frances and William Seward wrote each other a letter, she from freezing Auburn, New York, where the day before, the temperature had fallen below zero; he from an unusually warm Washington, where temperatures over the preceding five days had reached as high as eighty-three degrees. Frances opened with grim news about a family friend, fifty-seven years old, who lay ill and was not expected to survive, a victim, she believed, of worry over the inauguration. “Ethan Warden is still living,” she wrote, “but I think there is no ground for expecting his recovery—I believe his anxiety about you [on] the 4th injured him, but I went to see him Tuesday and found him composed and sensible though exceedingly feeble. He talked of you continually with reverence and affection. ‘Well the Governor is Safe’ were his first words.”

After a few more references to family matters, she turned to William himself. “Now that the season of our greatest apprehension has gone by I see the almost insurmountable difficulties by which you are surrounded,” she wrote. “Without being able to see how, I have faith and hope that you will be able to surmount them.”

WILLIAM’S LETTER TO FRANCES confirmed that now the hard work had begun. He had been to his office for nine hours on each of the previous two days, he wrote—his office consisting of two rooms on the northeast corner of a simple two-story brick building with six white columns on its north façade. A good portion of his day was spent parrying the crush of office seekers, “an hundred taking tickets where only one can draw a prize.” He placed his son Frederick, now assistant secretary, in an office across the hall; Frederick handled most of the patronage entreaties. “I do not know what I should do without him,” William wrote.

But his son could do little to ameliorate the overall strain of establishing a new government in the midst of a national crisis, especially when Seward saw himself as that government’s primary bulwark. “Last night,” William told Frances, “I broke down, and sent for Dr. Miller. I have kept my chamber today, except an hour, when I went on a necessary errand to the White House.

“I wish I could tell you something of the political troubles of the country; but I cannot find the time. They are enough to tax the wisdom of the wisest”—implying here that he was among the wisest. “Fort Sumter in danger,” he wrote. “Relief of it practically impossible. The Commissioners from the Southern Confederacy are here. These cares fall chiefly on me. The country will, before long, come to a severe trial of its patience and patriotism.”

Seward’s son felt his condition sufficiently serious as to merit a telegram to Frances, who was immediately alarmed. Even the press had got wind of it, with one source noting that he had been “detained from the Department by physical disability.” On the morning of March 9 Seward wrote to Lincoln, telling him, “I am yet kept indoors, but I would muffle up and ride to your House if necessary at anytime today.”

Seward appeared to be suffering from “a severe attack of lumbago,” according to a contemporary’s account. Although a century later lumbago would be rendered a comical term, in 1861 it was a diagnosis for disabling back pain believed to arise from any number of potential causes, among them rheumatism, gout, tuberculosis, tumors, intestinal inflammation, even syphilis (though this appears not to have been suspected in Seward’s case).

At ten o’clock Saturday morning, March 9, Frances wrote to Frederick in reply to his telegram. “My dear Son, We have your telegram this moment—I knew your Father must be ill if he was not super human.” She was ready to leave immediately for Washington, she told him: “Do send for me if your Father is not entirely well when this reaches you.”

She urged Frederick to keep nothing from her. She closed, “With best love to your Father and a prayer that he may not be crushed by upholding a nation—Do not fail to tell me the truth and the whole truth.”

Three days later Frederick wrote back to assure his mother that the intensity of work seemed about to lessen. “The pressure of visitors, applicants for office, is enormous, but the Department fortunately is much more defensible against intrusion either in person or by letter than a private house is, and I think after the first two or three weeks his life will be much more pleasant than while he was in the Senate. It would be one constant levee now”—a term for a formal reception—“if he would see everybody, but he sets apart three hours a day for the purpose and so gets some time for thought and for recreation, as well as for work.”

IN CHARLESTON THE LIKELIHOOD of war dominated conversation. One knowledgeable soul predicted “flagrant war” within three days. Even so, Edmund Ruffin began to experience a degree of tedium. “I already find the passage of time heavy, for want of some employment,” he wrote on March 5, the day after the inauguration.

He managed to acquire a permit to visit Confederate-held Fort Moultrie, “which now is a difficult matter, and rarely conferred.” Upon entering the fort, he was pleased to have his need for appreciation at least partially fulfilled. He was warmly greeted by the fort’s new commander, Col. Roswell S. Ripley, and noted in his diary that he “received much attention from him and other officers.” As he had done back in January, Ruffin also toured other Confederate batteries and found preparations for battle considerably advanced. The floating battery appeared to be nearly completed.

Flagrant war did not occur, however—much to Ruffin’s disappointment. Bored, he left the city on Saturday, March 9, to visit friends in the surrounding countryside and to inspect their farms. Three days later a rumor reached him that Lincoln had ordered Major Anderson to surrender Fort Sumter. Ruffin doubted this, but soon more reports arrived. The morning’s newspapers seemed to corroborate the news. One dispatch held that a messenger was on his way now from Washington to deliver the order.

Ruffin did not want to miss a moment’s action. Although still skeptical, he returned to Charleston the next day. He found the city awash with rumors of the imminent surrender but also got a whiff of something he found far more compelling. “Another report is that several ships of war, with soldiers, have set off for the south, and, as supposed, to reinforce Fort Sumter.”

He doubted this as well but loved the prospect. The resulting conflict would, he was certain, bring Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina into the Confederacy.

For the moment, however, Ruffin found conditions in Charleston far too peaceful. On Saturday morning, March 16, he boarded a steamer for a tour of the federal forts now under Southern control, led by South Carolina Secretary of War Jamison. On board he found “a large party of ladies as well as gentlemen,” including two former governors—all in a festive mood.

Ruffin once again wondered at the lack of violence thus far. He found it strange, and demoralizing. He was dismayed to learn that Major Anderson was still able to send and receive mail. It was said that Anderson and General Beauregard were actually friends.

After five days of stasis, Ruffin set off for North Carolina to see what he could do there to generate enthusiasm for secession. A convention was due to begin the next day. As always Ruffin hauled along one of John Brown’s pikes as a reminder of what Lincoln and the abolitionists of the North really planned for the South.