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Authors: Doris Kearns Goodwin
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support himself. “I could not submit to the shame of credit impaired,” he later wrote. Without notifying his parents, he accompanied a classmate to Georgia, where he found a good job teaching school. When his father discovered Henry’s whereabouts, he “implored [him] to return,” mingling promises of additional funds with threats that he would pursue the trustees of the school “with the utmost rigor of the law…if they should continue to harbor the delinquent.”
If his father’s threats increased his determination to stay, a letter from his mother, revealing “a broken heart,” prompted Seward’s return to New York. The following fall, after working off his debt that summer, he resumed his studies at Union. “Matters prosper in my favor,” he wrote to a friend in January 1820, “and I have so far been inferior to none in my own opinion.” He was back on track to become valedictorian, and his election as graduation speaker seemed likely. If denied the honor, he told his friend, “his soul would disdain to sit in the hearing of some, and listen to some whom he considers beneath even his notice.” His goals were realized. He graduated first in his class and was unanimously elected by classmates and faculty to be Union College’s commencement orator in June 1820.
From his honored place at Union College, Seward glided smoothly into the profession of law. In an era when “reading the law” under the guidance of an established attorney was the principal means of becoming a lawyer, he walked directly from his graduation ceremony to the law office of a distinguished Goshen lawyer, and then “was received as a student” in the New York City office of John Anthon, author of a widely known book on the legal practice. Not only did Seward have two eminent mentors, he also gained access to the “New York Forum,” a society of ambitious law students who held mock trials and prosecutions to hone their professional skills before public audiences.
Accustomed to winning the highest honors, Seward was initially chagrined to discover that his legal arguments failed to bring the loudest applause. His confidence as a writer faltered until a fellow law student, whose orations “always carried away the audience,” insisted that the problem was not Henry’s compositions, which were, in fact, far superior to his own, but his husky voice, which a congenital inflammation in the throat rendered “incapable of free intonation.” To prove this point, Seward’s friend offered to exchange compositions, letting Seward read one of his while he read one of Seward’s. Seward recalled that he read his friend’s address “as well as I could, but it did not take at all. He followed me with my speech, and I think Broadway overheard the clamorous applause which arose on that occasion in Washington Hall.”
During his stay in New York, Seward formed an intimate friendship with a bookish young man, David Berdan, who had graduated from Union the year after him. Seward believed that Berdan possessed “a genius of the highest order.” He had read more extensively than anyone Seward knew and excelled as a scholar in the classics. “The domains of History, Eloquence, Poetry, Fiction & Song,” Seward marveled, “were all subservient to his command.” Berdan had entered into the study of law at the same office as Seward, but soon discovered that his vocation lay in writing, not law.
Together, the two young men attended the theater, read poetry, discussed books, and chased after women. Convinced that Berdan would become a celebrated writer, Seward stood in awe of his friend’s talent and dedication. All such grand expectations and prospects were crushed when Berdan, still in his twenties, was “seized with a bleeding at the lungs” while sojourning in Europe. He continued traveling, but when his tuberculosis worsened, he booked his passage home, in “the hope that he might die in his native land.” The illness took his life
If his father’s threats increased his determination to stay, a letter from his mother, revealing “a broken heart,” prompted Seward’s return to New York. The following fall, after working off his debt that summer, he resumed his studies at Union. “Matters prosper in my favor,” he wrote to a friend in January 1820, “and I have so far been inferior to none in my own opinion.” He was back on track to become valedictorian, and his election as graduation speaker seemed likely. If denied the honor, he told his friend, “his soul would disdain to sit in the hearing of some, and listen to some whom he considers beneath even his notice.” His goals were realized. He graduated first in his class and was unanimously elected by classmates and faculty to be Union College’s commencement orator in June 1820.
From his honored place at Union College, Seward glided smoothly into the profession of law. In an era when “reading the law” under the guidance of an established attorney was the principal means of becoming a lawyer, he walked directly from his graduation ceremony to the law office of a distinguished Goshen lawyer, and then “was received as a student” in the New York City office of John Anthon, author of a widely known book on the legal practice. Not only did Seward have two eminent mentors, he also gained access to the “New York Forum,” a society of ambitious law students who held mock trials and prosecutions to hone their professional skills before public audiences.
Accustomed to winning the highest honors, Seward was initially chagrined to discover that his legal arguments failed to bring the loudest applause. His confidence as a writer faltered until a fellow law student, whose orations “always carried away the audience,” insisted that the problem was not Henry’s compositions, which were, in fact, far superior to his own, but his husky voice, which a congenital inflammation in the throat rendered “incapable of free intonation.” To prove this point, Seward’s friend offered to exchange compositions, letting Seward read one of his while he read one of Seward’s. Seward recalled that he read his friend’s address “as well as I could, but it did not take at all. He followed me with my speech, and I think Broadway overheard the clamorous applause which arose on that occasion in Washington Hall.”
During his stay in New York, Seward formed an intimate friendship with a bookish young man, David Berdan, who had graduated from Union the year after him. Seward believed that Berdan possessed “a genius of the highest order.” He had read more extensively than anyone Seward knew and excelled as a scholar in the classics. “The domains of History, Eloquence, Poetry, Fiction & Song,” Seward marveled, “were all subservient to his command.” Berdan had entered into the study of law at the same office as Seward, but soon discovered that his vocation lay in writing, not law.
Together, the two young men attended the theater, read poetry, discussed books, and chased after women. Convinced that Berdan would become a celebrated writer, Seward stood in awe of his friend’s talent and dedication. All such grand expectations and prospects were crushed when Berdan, still in his twenties, was “seized with a bleeding at the lungs” while sojourning in Europe. He continued traveling, but when his tuberculosis worsened, he booked his passage home, in “the hope that he might die in his native land.” The illness took his life
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