"Four generations of Millers and Sewards dwelled in Auburn, New York, between 1817 and 1860. William Henry Seward was a state senator and governor, and then a U.S. senator and secretary of state. Until recently, Henry (as he was known) Seward's public papers were the only accessible source on his life. Over a decade of excavation by students and librarians at the University of Rochester has now unearthed about 25,000 pages, including 5,000 letters, of family manuscripts that survive from the six decades that ended with Seward's death in 1872. These unprecedented survivals enable a fresh approach to the Sewards, one of America's first political families"-- Provided by publisher.
The Sewards of New York shines a light on one of the most important and fascinating political families of the nineteenth century. Through recently discovered family correspondence, Thomas P. Slaughter unveils the inner lives of the Seward family, tracing their joys and sorrows as the nation grappled with rapid expansion and deepening divisions on its path to the Civil War.
William Henry Seward, the family's most prominent member, was a state senator, governor, US senator, and secretary of state. Henry, as his family knew him, was often absent from their Auburn, NY, home, in Albany or Washington, DC, and so remained connected to the family through the long letters numbering in the thousands that they exchanged. These writings reveal Henry as a son, brother, husband, and father, as much as they show him as a politician and statesman. But it is his wife, Frances, who is the hub around which this family story revolves. Slaughter explores the extended Auburn family during a half century of profound change in American homes, marriage, and childrearing.
With an eye for the provocative and revealing, Slaughter takes us behind the curtain of the early Victorian era's private sphere. He, and the Sewards in their own words, portray life as it was lived by the influential and powerful, but also by many who lived more private lives that are now lost to us. The Sewards of New York paints a rich portrait of an extraordinary family that played a key role in nineteenth-century New York and national politics.
