Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1100404
THE CAPITOL DOME 46 from Minnesota in the north to Texas in the south, the country was a collection of sparsely-populated territo- ries and—at the westernmost extremity, bordering the Pacific Ocean—the equally lightly-settled states of California and Oregon. The only means of com- munication with those far-fl ung states and territories was the stagecoach, the popularly-named Pony Express mail service, and sporadic sail- and steam-vessel visits to river and coastal ports. Further clouding the western scene were the periodic pro- nouncements by some Califor- nians that, if they didn't like the way they were treated within the Union, then their state just might declare itself a republic and go its own way. When the lame-duck ir- ty-Sixth Congress returned to Washington in December of 1860, not only was the status of the South in question; so was that of the West. But in the mind of one U.S. senator, the West had already been won. Sen. William H. Seward (fi g. 3) of New York had been Lincoln's principal rival for the Republican presidential nomination. He also had played an important role back in 1850, when—in what some called the "War of the Giants"—he fervently supported California's peti- tion for statehood. And with the admission of the free state of Kansas in January 1861, he rose yet again in the Senate, to ask: "Kansas is in the Union, California and Oregon are in the Union,… What is the extent of the Territories which remain…How many slaves are there in it?" e answer, Seward declared, was 24—just two dozen slaves in all the Territories. The issue of slavery in the West, he con- tinued, "has ceased to be a practical question." 2 Seward's widely-reported speech helped secure the West for the Union as the slave-holding southern states began to secede. It also very likely further convinced President-elect Lincoln to select the New Yorker to be the next secretary of state. As states, soldiers, and siblings chose sides and the rebellion took form, at least some parts of the Fig. 2. is 1860 map of the United States, published by Duane Ruli- son, shows states that voted for Lincoln in red; all non-voting terri- tories in yellow; and states voting for one of the other three candi- dates in green. Fig. 3. William Henry Seward, photo- graphed as a senator in 1859 by Julian Vannerson (1827–?), was later nominated and confi rmed as secretary of state.