Seward conceded that while he was disheartened by the Whig Party’s current “lukewarmness on the Subject of Slavery,” he had no choice but to stay with the party he loved, and to hope for a more advanced position in the future. “To abandon a party and friends to whom I owe so much, whose confidence I do in some degree possess,” he wrote, “would be

He understood, he told Speed later, that in times of anxiety it is critical to “avoid being idle,” that “business and conversation of friends” were necessary to give the mind “rest from that intensity of thought, which will some times wear the sweetest idea threadbare and turn it to the bitterness of death.”

Like the ancient Greeks, Lincoln seemed to believe that “ideas of a person’s worth are tied to the way others, both contemporaries and future generations, perceive him.”

To Lincoln’s mind, the fundamental test of a democracy was its capacity to “elevate the condition of men, to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all.” A real democracy would be a meritocracy where those born in the lower ranks could rise as far as their natural talents and discipline might take

“I am young and unknown to many of you,” he continued. “I was born and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life. I have no wealthy or popular relations to recommend me. My case is thrown exclusively upon the independent voters of this county, and if elected they will have conferred a favor upon me, for which I shall be unremitting in my

He had established a national reputation based upon principle and a vision of national progress. He trusted that when his progressive principles once more gained favor with the masses, he would return to public life.

“there are few men in America who would have sacrificed so much for the cause of humanity—he has his reward in a quiet conscience and a peaceful mind.”

Horace Greeley editorialized that Seward would “henceforth be honored more for the three thousand votes he has lost, considering the causes, than for all he has received in his life.”

“You reproach yourself dear Henry with too much severity,” Frances wrote. “Never in those times when I have wept the most bitterly over the decay of my young dreams . . . have I thought you otherwise than good and kind. . . . When I realized most forcibly that ‘love is the whole history of woman and but an episode in the life of man’ . . . even