William H. Seward seemed destined to be elected President in 1860. That's what he and his supporters thought, so it came as a rude awakening when the Republican presidential nomination was rudely robbed from them from a country rube from Illinois. Seward "may have felt that his failure to secure [the presidential nomination] was due to an accident rather than to Mr. Lincoln's fitness for the place to which he was installed," journalist Noah Brooks wrote in a biography of his friend Abraham Lincoln. "We cannot say what was the estimate which Lincoln put on the qualifications of Seward for the Presidential office; but we may be sure that Seward once thought himself the greater man of the two. Undoubtedly he was not alone in holding that opinion. Many patriotic and intelligent men thought Seward was not only the greatest man in the new administration, but they expected and believed that he would be the author and director of its policy."1
The last months of the Administration of President James Buchanan presented a perfect opportunity for Senator Seward to project his pivotal position in national life. Attorney General Edwin M. Stanton confidentially explained Buchanan Administration actions to Seward. Seward's political confident Thurlow Weed conferred with President Lincoln on patronage policy. And the nation listened carefully to Seward's public pronouncements on the Senate floor and worried about what they meant to the secession crisis. "From his seat in the Upper House the Senator became, in certain respects, the eyes and ears, as well as the tongue, for the coming administration," wrote Lincoln biographer Alonzo Rothschild. His utterances were eagerly scanned by the people for indications of its policy, while the President-elect was no less keen for the confidential letters in which his prospective Secretary kept him informed as to the temper of parties and persons in the Capital."2
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