they may determine; in every event of peace or of war, with every consequence of honor or dishonor, of life or death."

It is impossible in so brief a sketch as this, to do justice to the Senatorial career of Mr. Seward. For twelve years he stood forth in the forum of the Senate as the champion of Freedom and Justice, and the advocate of every measure designed to advance the interests and welfare of the Union. He resisted with great power and eloquence the enactment of the slavery compromises of 1850, and the abrogation of the Missouri Compromise in 1854. He was largely instrumental in bringing California and Kansas into the Union, Free States. The Pacific Railroad and the establishment of mail communication with Europe and Asia were, to some extent, measures of his own and with which he was prominently identified. His speeches were heard with profound respect in the Senate, while the intelligent portion of the people of the Republic read them with instruction and delight.

As the Presidential election of 1860 approached, it became evident that the slave oligarchy was to be finally dethroned, and the party to which Mr. Seward had devoted his life was to be placed in power. Naturally, the people turned their eyes to him as the Republican candidate for the Presidency. A National Convention was held at Chicago in May, 1860. The first ballot in Convention showed one hundred and seventy-three votes for Mr. Seward, and one hundred and two for Mr. Lincoln, with one hundred and ninety for ten other candidates. On the last ballot, Mr. Seward received one hundred and eighty and Mr. Lincoln the combined vote of the remainder of the Convention, and was thus made the candidate of the Republican party. The States which persistently voted for Mr. Seward were Maine, Massachusetts, New-York, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, California, and Kansas. However much disappointed Mr. Seward's friends may have been, no trace of such feeling was ever betrayed by him. On the contrary, when the canvass seemed laggard and the result doubtful he at once, with his accustomed energy, entered the field as the most eloquent and powerful advocate of the cause and its candidate. His speeches in Maine, Massachusetts, New-York, Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, and Kansas, during the campaign, roused the people, and insured a triumphant success. Immediately after Mr. Lincoln was officially informed that he had been elected President, he tendered the chief place in his Cabinet to Mr. Seward. Every thing of a personal nature conspired to lead Mr. Seward to decline any further public service. But it is not in his nature to shrink from a great responsibility, especially from one which he is charged with having himself created.

On the fourth of March, 1861, he entered upon his duties as Secretary of State. Among his first public acts was an order to the Marshal of the District of Columbia, forbidding the long-accustomed use of the jail as a place for the safe keeping of fugitive slaves. In April, 1862, he negotiated a treaty with Lord

Lyons for the suppression of the slave-trade, which was ratified with unusual promptness and unanimity by the respective Governments of the United States and Great Britain.

In closing a despatch to Mr. Adams, dated April eighth, Mr. Seward says: "I have just signed, with Lord Lyons, a treaty which I trust will be approved by the Senate and by the British government. If ratified, it will bring the African slave-trade to an end immediately and for ever. Had such a treaty been made in 1808, there would now have been no sedition here, and no disagreement between the United States and foreign nations. We are indeed suffering deeply in this civil war. Europe has impatiently condemned and deplored it. Yet it is easy to see already that the calamity will be compensated by incalculable benefits to our country and to mankind. Such are the compensations of Providence for the sacrifices it exacts."

No less distinguished for ability and statesmanship is his satisfactory settlement of the international difficulty which arose from the seizure of Mason and Slidell, on board the British steamer Trent, by Commander Wilkes of the United States Navy.

He has recently submitted to Congress a plan to encourage and facilitate immigration a measure destined probably to be of inestimable importance to the welfare of this country. While he was Governor of New-York, he recommended, as already stated, a similar system, which is now in successful operation in that State, under the direction of the "Commissioners of Emigration." In the Senate of the United States and in the Cabinet he has always maintained broad and liberal views of foreign immigration, while he has never been able to approve of any scheme for the colonization abroad of the colored people of his own country.

But the time has not yet arrived for a full review of Mr. Seward's course as Secretary of State. That the success or failure of the rebellion depends very much on the wisdom and sagacity with which our foreign relations are treated is as unquestionable as that so heavy a responsibility could not have been intrusted to abler hands. Mr. Seward's previous character warranted what the experience of the last three years has demonstrated. His diplomatic correspondence, which Congress has published, shows something of the work he has performed. Although his sphere of labor has been almost entirely with foreign governments, the reflex influence of his published despatches upon the people at home has been scarcely less important. He has inspired their confidence in the darkest hours, enlightening their understandings as to the character of the war in all its phases, and stimulated them to renewed and greater endeavors. We can quote here but a few of the remarkable passages which have so affected all loyal hearts. The volumes already published comprise over three thousand printed pages of corre spondence.

That the nature of the great conflict was well understood by Mr. Seward, even before it broke out in war, is clearly seen in one of his earliest despatches, in these words: "The object of the revolution is to create a nation built upon the principle that African slavery is necessary, just, wise, and beneficent, and that it may and must be expanded over the central portion of the American continent and islands without check or resistance, at whatever cost and sacrifice to the welfare and happiness of the human race." To Mr. Dayton he writes, in May, 1861: "You cannot be too decided or too explicit in making known to the French government that there is not now, nor has there been, nor will there be, any, the least idea existing in this Government of suffering a dissolution of this Union to take place in any way whatever. The thought of a dissolution of the Union, peaceably or by force, has never entered into the mind of any candid statesman here."

After the President had issued his proclamation of freedom, Mr. Seward wrote: "The interests of humanity have now become identified with the cause of our country. It is hoped and believed that after the painful experience we have had of the danger to which the Federal connection with slavery is exposing the Republic, there will be few indeed who will insist that the decree which brings this connection to an end either could or ought to have been further deferred."

In view of prevailing apprehensions of war with France or England, Mr. Seward says: 66 We do no such injury to our cause, and no such violence to our national self-respect, as to apprehend that the Union is to be endangered by any foreign war that shall come upon us, unprovoked and without excuse.

It is indeed a fearful drama which the Almighty Ruler of nations has appointed us to enact. But it does not surpass the powers he has given us to sustain the performance. Not only friendly nations, but human nature itself is interested in. its success, and must not be disappointed."

Mr. Seward has been able, in addition to his public and professional labors, to devote some portion of his time to literary efforts; among which we may name his Orations on John Quincy Adams, La Fayette, and O'Connell, his Addresses at Yale College, Columbus University, Plymouth Pilgrims' Celebration, and the American Institute. These, with several discourses on Agriculture, Education, Internal Improvements, etc., have established his reputation as an author and an orator. His Messages to the Legislature while Governor, his numerous speeches in the Senate of New-York and in the United States Senate, and his forensic arguments, together with the orations, addresses, and discourses just named, and also many of his speeches in the election campaigns of 1844 to 1860, have been published in four large octavo volumes, entitled The Works of William H. Seward.

A

GEORGE H. THOMAS.

MONG the few officers of the army from the Southern States who, having received an education at the National Military Academy, have remained true to the Union which had reared and educated them-the Abdiels of our civil war,

"Faithful among the faithless found"

Major-General George H. Thomas deserves prominent and honorable mention.

He was born in Southampton County, Virginia, July thirty-first, 1816. His father, John Thomas, was of English descent, and his mother, Elizabeth Rochelle, was of that Huguenot stock which in the seventeenth century left country and kinsfolk for the sake of its holy faith. The family was wealthy and influential, and young Thomas received a good education, and at the age of nineteen became deputy to his uncle, James Rochelle, Clerk of Southampton County, and commenced the study of law in his office. From some cause his attention was soon after turned to military life, and having received in the spring of 1836, through the influence of his family, an appointment as cadet at West-Point, he entered the Academy in the following June, at the age of about twenty years. He maintained a fair position as a student in the Academy, graduating twelfth in a class of forty-five, in June, 1840, and receiving at once a commission as Second Lieutenant in the Third artillery. In November of the same year he joined his regiment in Florida, where the Seminole war was then in progress. In November, 1841, he was brevetted first lieutenant "for gallant conduct in the war against the Florida Indians." In January, 1842, Lieutenant Thomas was ordered with his company to New-Orleans barracks, and in June of the same year to Fort Moultrie, Charleston. On the seventeenth of May, 1843, he was promoted to a first lieutenancy, and in December of the same year ordered to duty with company C, Third light artillery, then stationed at Fort McHenry, Baltimore. In the spring of 1844, he was again on duty at Fort Moultrie.

On the first indications of a war with Mexico, July, 1845, Lieutenant Thomas was ordered with his company to Texas, to report for duty to General Zachary Taylor. This artillery company and the Third and Fourth regiments of infantry, U. S. A., were the first United States troops which occupied the soil of Texas.