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Albany, NY – In today's Academic Minute, Professor David Perry of New Haven University explores the historical similarities between Hillary Clinton and William Seward.
David Perry is a lecturer in the Department of Education at New Haven University.
Prof. David Perry - Secretaries Clinton and Seward
In 1860 and almost 150 years later, in 2008, two New York Senators sought the nomination of their party for the Presidency of the United States. Both William Henry Seward and Hillary Rodham Clinton were defeated, but both subsequently served as Secretary of State, Seward in the cabinet of Abraham Lincoln and Clinton in that of Barack Obama. The similarities between the two secretaries of state end there, however.
Both their presidents went to war, but Seward initially worked against the policies of Lincoln. Clinton learned from history and worked with her president. When the Civil War broke out on April 12, 1861, South Carolina fired the first shot at Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor in order to prevent Lincoln from sending relief supplies there. Before Lincoln's relief attempt was initiated, Seward tried secretly to countermand the president's order. Seward got caught, but Lincoln decided not to fire him.
We know of no such duplicity on Clinton's part. In fact, Clinton's masterful efforts to build a coalition with England and France, as well as the states of the Arab League, supported her president's policy position that the United States should not appear to be an aggressor in the Libyan intervention. In contrast, Steward's diplomatic failure with the nations of Europe was such that England, which felt threatened by his foreign policy, formed a coalition with France to better contain the U.S. State Department and avoid what it saw as the possibility of a war with Europe.
While modern U.S. relations with England and France are sometimes less amiable than we would like, we can feel some relief that at least some in our current diplomatic corps may learned a few lessons from Civil War history.