FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO WILLIAM H. SEWARD¹William Henry Seward (1801–72) was a New York state senator (1830–32) and governor (1839–43) before serving as a U.S. senator (1849–51). He originally belonged to the Anti-Mason party, but became a leader of the Whig party during the 1830s and 1840s. By 1855 he moved his allegiance to the Republican party. During the Compromise of 1850, he first invoked the concept of “a higher law than the Constitution” to support abolition. As the decade progressed, he became more outspoken against slavery, characterizing the struggle as an “irrepressible conflict” between opposing forces. In 1856 and 1860 he unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential nomination. Instead, he became Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of state in 1861. His influence prevented European recognition of the Confederacy during the Civil War. In 1867 he was responsible for the purchase of the Alaska territory, known as “Seward’s Folly.” Frederic Bancroft, The Life of William H. Seward (1899; Gloucester, Mass., 1967); ACAB, 5:470–73; DAB, 16:615–21.

Rochester, [N.Y.] 31 [May] 1850.

Hon. W. H. Seward,

MY DEAR SIR,

Please accept my sincere thanks, for the donation of five dollars,²William Seward donated five dollars to the North Star sometime between 22 April and 27 May 1850. NS, 30 May 1850. which you have kindly made to my struggling press, and paper. I prize the gift all the more—and esteem the donor all the more—because while I honor him from the depths—of my soul I still have the independence to differ from him, and he has the toleration to allow of that difference without making it the cause of his withholding his sympathy for me in my humble efforts to