Wm. H. Seward is now about sixty-two years of age. He is a man of clear and comprehensive intellect; a learned and able lawyer; an erudite scholar, and thoroughly versed in all the arts of political chicanery and management. In private life, his conduct is, so far as we know, irreproachable; in connection with the schemes and movements of party politics, he has ever been looked upon as selfish and contriving; subtle in design, unscrupulous in action; prepared to do and to dare all things necessary to the gratification of his criminal and lawless ambition.
There is scarcely a single one of all the dangerous political factions which have made their appearance at different times in the Empire State, with which he has not had more or less connection, from Anti-Masonry to Black Republicanism; nor has there been one of them with which he has been affiliated, in which he did not become conspicuous as a plotter and intriguer. His ambition for power is most intense; his temperament is cold to frigidity; he has never been known to give way for a moment to the generous impulses which sometimes, with ordinary men, are seen to scintillate in acts of amiable levity, or to blaze forth in deeds of startling indiscretion. He has been heard in the National Senate, more than once, to profess that many years had elapsed since he had been seen to become angry or irritated, even for a moment, and that he had been able so thoroughly to discipline and control the inner man, as not to be, in the least degree, subject to feelings of resentment or indignation, under language of decrial and denunciation, however caustic, or accusations of public delinquency, however gravely urged. As the Governor of New York, now almost twenty years ago, he signalized his hostility to the Fugitive Slave Law then in force, and waged a remarkable contest with the then Governor of Virginia, upon this exciting subject, in which he displayed that earnest desire which has ever since actuated him, to obtain high public promotion by appealing to the anti-slavery feeling of the North against the South and her domestic institutions.
It is a notorious fact that Mr. Seward was able, by his extraordinary address and plausibility, so far to captivate the confidence and friendship of Gen. Taylor, that in a single month he succeeded in controlling the distribution of official patronage all over the Republic, and especially in the States of the North and Northwest, to tho entire nullification of the influence of Mr. Clay, Mr. Webster, Mr. Fillmore and all the more upright and patriotic members of the Whig party. It was authentically ascertained, and proved before the National Senate, that he had his official spies and agents throughout the Northwest for the purpose of finding out and reporting to him the individuals who, if clad in the robes of office, would be most likely to obey his behests and execute his schemes. When absent from Washington, as was also fully established by documentary testimony, he had his Vicar-General in that city to make recommendations, in his name, of persons for official position; and these recommendations chiefly through the potential instrumentality of the celebrated Thomas Ewing, then Secretary of the Interior, were uniformly obeyed. This condition of affairs at last became so obnoxious and so alarming, that certain members of the National Senate, including several of the most eminent Whig and Democratic statesmen of the nation, resolved to submit to it no longer.—Gazette.
Nashville Union and American, Nashville, TN