154 Rcvicios of Books lines overlapping and interlacing, but still separately visible. For ten years — 1838 to 184S — his most important service was his leadership of the Whig party in New York and in the nation, a service prolonged for the Republican party until i860. Here, if anywhere, we shall see the character of his political party service. On these points, ;Ir. Bancroft's chapters V., VI., VII., while giving nothing new in substance, furnish ample materials. Here we may as well say that the first half of the author's first volume is much the most thorough part of his work. Despite a persistent, and to us unaccount- able, tendency to find unworthy or purely selfish purposes in what Seward did in party politics, to read into what he wrote or said sinister meanings or designs, Seward emerges from the author's ordeal, if not unharmed, at least with cleaner hands than any ruling politician of to-day whom we could name. His intimacy with Thurlow Weed, from which we verily believe has come most of the odium politiciun which has fallen upon Se- ward's head, does not appear in these volumes to deserve great reprehen- sion, though it is visited with constant criticism from Mr. Bancroft and elsewhere. Weed was simply an old-time, managing, editorial wire- puller — no very dangerous or monstrous character in any view, especially in view of bosses of to-day who shall be nameless here. Into the larger field into which he stepped through his entrance to the United States Senate, in 1849, Seward carried substantially the party methods he had used in New York. We here record our strong impres- sion, founded upon what these volumes disclose, saving Mr. Bancroft's personal opinions or comments, as well as upon a brief personal contact with Seward, and a much longer and closer acquaintance with Weed, that Seward's political and party work from 1849 to i860 was relatively clean and patriotic ; by which we distinctly mean that in methods and aims he was the equal of any of his contemporaries, and far superior to the ruling party leaders of any party in our country to-day. Mr. Bancroft's two volumes are equally divided between the two halves of Seward's career — his party leadership, and his service in official positions of national importance. The first volume closes with the con- clusion of the political presidential campaign of i860, the second volume opening with the critical winter of 1 860-1 86 1, that unfortunate and dangerous interregnum in our political system, but far more critical and dangerous in 1861 than ever before or since. Every reader of these vol- umes will see, as every reviewer has seen, the change of tone on Mr. Bancroft's part at this point. Hitherto he has magnified — it is not too much to say it — what he regards as Seward's faults, but with the fateful winter of 1860-1861 the tone changes, or seems to change, and Seward's rule of conduct and policy is now finely stated : "the highest statesman- ship consists in getting the best results from actual conditions" (II. 7). No apparent effort is thenceforward made to find ulterior or unworthy motives, and though it would not be fair to say that Mr. Bancroft any- where becomes Seward's excessive eulogist, we are no longer fretted by querulous or obtrusive criticism. Seward's bad foresight at this crisis
