When Sumner arrived in the Senate, he found William H. Seward, of New
York, already there. Seward, who had been admitted to the bar in 1822,
at the age of twenty-one, was carried into the New York legislature by
the anti-Masonic wave of 1830. Eight years later, he was the Whig
governor of the state, and in 1849 was sent to the Senate. There he soon
rivetted attention by his rebuke of Webster for condoning the Fugitive
Slave Law, and caught the reins of party leadership as they fell from
Webster's hands. It was then that he made his famous statement that the
war against slavery was waged under a "higher law than the
Constitution," and that the fall of slavery was inevitable.
In 1856, when the newly-formed anti-slavery party, known as the
Republican, met to name a national ticket, Seward was the logical
candidate, but refused to allow his name to be considered, and the
choice fell upon that brilliant adventurer, John C. Fremont. Fremont
was, of course, defeated, and Seward continued to be the leader of
Republican thought, and the chief originator of Republican doctrine.
Indeed, he was, in a sense, the Republican party, so that, four years
later, he seemed not only the logical but the inevitable choice of the
party for President. His most formidable opponent was Abraham Lincoln,
of Illinois, who had been carefully working for the nomination, and who
was blessed with the shrewdest of campaign managers.
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