March 31st, 2025. On April 1st, 1861, 1861,

Secretary of State William Henry Seward wrote an astonishing letter to President

Abraham Lincoln. Less than a month after Lincoln had taken office,

Seward had little faith in the apparently uneducated president

from the Raw West and was angry that the cabinet had overruled him

to provision South Carolina's Fort Sumter rather than evacuating it.

Seward was convinced that he, rather than Lincoln, should lead the administration.

Seward complained that Lincoln had not yet established a policy, either domestic or foreign,

and said he had figured out the solution to the nation's political crisis, in which seven states,

South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas,

had seceded from the union in the weeks after Lincoln was elected president, but before he took

office. We must, Seward wrote, changed the question before the public from one upon slavery or about slavery

for a question upon union or disunion. The way to do that, he wrote, was to rally Americans

around the flag. To do so, he told Lincoln, I would demand explanations from Spain and France

categorically at once.

I would seek explanations

from Great Britain and Russia

and send agents into Canada,

Mexico, and Central America

to rouse a vigorous

continental spirit of independence

on this continent

...