William Henry Seward

in New York politics. For forty years there had been no governor who was not a Democrat; but though the Whigs had now carried the State, the Senate was still Democratic, and could control both the legislation and appointments to office. It was not till 1840 that Seward's own party had command, and in the last year of his second term (1842) he was again confronted by a hostile, not to say vindictive, majority in both branches of the legislature. During his four years as governor, the State spent many millions in public improvements. The Erie Canal was enlarged, new canals were built, and state aid was given to railways and other similar enterprises. For only a small part of this legislation were the Whigs really responsible.Most of it they received as an inheritance from their Democratic predecessors.1 The Erie Canal was De Witt Clinton's scheme, and its success, from the outset, was so overwhelming that it is not strange that it gave rise to all sorts of similar schemes, of varying merit and demerit. Seward was an ardent, perhaps an indiscriminate advocate of all these. He believed in internal improvements, in constructing either by the State itself, or with the aid of the State, all manner of ways of communication by land and by water, railways and canals, from north to south, from east to west, between tide-water and the lakes, through the great valleys of central New York, to the coal and iron fields within and on her borders. Some of the works which ...