Horatio Seymour

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Horatio Seymour (May 31, 1810 – February 12, 1886) was an American politician.

He served as Governor of New York from 1853 to 1854, as well as from 1863 to 1864.

In the 1868 presidential election, he was the Democratic Party nominee for president. Seymour, a native of Pompey, New York, was admitted to the New York bar in 1832 but his family's interests were primarily concentrated on preserving his family's commercial interests.

Seymour, who served as a military secretary to Governor William L. Marcy, received the New York State Assembly's election.

He was elected speaker of the United Kingdom in 1845 and was affiliated with Marcy's "Softshell Hunker" party.

In 1850, Seymour was nominated for governor, but he was barely defeated by Whig nominee Washington Hunt.

He defeated Hunt in the 1852 gubernatorial election and spent a large portion of his tenure trying to reunify the disunified Democratic Party, despite losing his 1854 re-election bid partially due to this disunity.

Despite this humiliation, Seymour emerged as the party's most prominent national figure.

Seymour encouraged the Crittenden Compromise as a means of avoiding civil war as several Southern states threatened secession.

During the Civil War, he endorsed the Union war effort, but sluggishly chastised President Abraham Lincoln's leadership.

In 1862, he gained a second term as governor and continued to oppose many of Lincoln's policies.

Many delegates at the 1864 Democratic National Convention hoped to nominate Seymour for president, but Seymour declined to apply for the nomination.

He barely gained re-election in 1864 despite being beset by a variety of problems.

Seymour, a soldier, endorsed President Andrew Johnson's Reconstruction plans after the war.

There was no clear front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination at the 1868 Democratic National Convention, but Seymour remained extremely popular.

Seymour refused to propose himself as the convention's chairman as he did in 1864.

The convention nominated Seymour, who eventually resigned from running for president after twenty-two indecisive polls, but the convention accepted his candidature.

In the 1868 election, Seymour met General Ulysses S. Grant, the widely popular Republican Party nominee.

Grant gained a large majority of the popular vote, but his margin in the popular vote was not as large.

Seymour never sought public office again, but stayed involved in politics and encouraged Grover Cleveland's 1884 campaign for president.

Early life and education

Seymour was born in Pompey Hill, Onondaga County, New York. Henry Seymour, a merchant and politician, died on March 15, 1889-1859) of Matawan, New Jersey, was his mother, Mary Ledyard Forman (1785–1859), was the daughter of General Jonathan Forman and Mary Ledyard. He was one of six children, and Julia Catherine became the wife of Roscoe Conkling. He and the remainder of his family's family migrated to Utica, where they attended a variety of local schools, including Geneva College (later Hobart College). He was sent to the American Literary, Scientific & Military Academy in the fall of 1824 (Norwich University). Seymour read for the legislation in the offices of Greene Bronson and Samuel Beardsley's Utica after graduating in 1828. Though admitted to the bar in 1832, he did not enjoy practicing law as an advocate and was mainly preoccupied with politics and negotiating his family's business interests. In 1835, he married Mary Bleecker.

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Political career

Seymour's first political career came in 1833, when he was appointed military secretary to the state's newly elected Democratic governor, William L. Marcy at the rank of colonel. Seymour gained valuable insight into the state's politics while also establishing a strong friendship between the two men during his six years in office. In 1839, he returned to Utica to take over his family's trust in the aftermath of his father's suicide two years earlier, investing effectively in real estate, banks, mines, railroads, and other ventures. He gained election to the New York State Assembly in 1841, and he served as mayor of Utica from 1842 to 1843. He won the Assembly again in 1843 to 1844, but in part due to a lot of turnover in the ranks of the Democratic caucus, he was elected speaker in 1845.

Seymour was one of the more conservative Hunker faction, led by Marcy and Senator Daniel S. Dickinson, when the New York Democratic Party split between the two groups of Hunkers and Barnburners in the late 1840s. Following this division, the Hunkers, who favored Lewis Cass, and the Barnburners, who backed their leader, former President Martin Van Buren, became identified with Marcy's faction within the Hunkers, the so-called "Softshell Hunkers," who hoped to reunite with the Barnburners in the hopes of returning to the state's political division.

Seymour, the gubernatorial candidate of the reunited Democratic Party in 1850, was marginalized only by Washington Hunt, the Whig nominee. The Seymour and the Softs endorsed Marcy's candidacy for the presidency in 1852, but the Whites rallied for Franklin Pierce in 1852. In a gubernatorial rematch, Seymour was barely defeated Hunt in a unified Democratic Party, while Pierce, overwhelmingly elected president, Marcy was a good one for the Softs.

Seymour's first term as governor of New York was turbulent. In a special election in February 1854, he gained permission for a bill to fund the Erie Canal's expansion. However, factional uncertainty in the state Democratic Party dogged much of his tenure. The Hards, who determined to run their own gubernatorial candidate against Seymour in 1854, were alienated by the Pierce administration's use of the patronage power. In addition, the government's support for the controversial Kansas–Nebraska Act, with which Seymour was indirectly linked to Marcy's friendship, cost him many votes. With a bill establishing a statewide ban that Seymour vetoed as unconstitutional, lawmakers in control of the state legislature attempted to injure him even more politically. Despite Seymour's reelection prospects, the Democrats' rivalry between the regular Whig nominee Myron H. Clark and Know-Nothing Daniel Ullman seemed more dangerous to the Democrats' supporters than the candidacy of the Hard Greene Bronson. However, the anti-Democratic tide was too strong in the end, and Clark, who received only one-third of the vote, defeated Seymour by 309 votes.

Despite his demise as the former governor of the Union's largest state, Seymour emerged as a leading figure in national party politics. In 1856, he was seen as a potential compromise presidential nominee in the event of a deadlock between Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan until he wrote a letter definitively ruled out. Some considered Seymour a compromise nominee for the Democratic nomination at Baltimore's reconvening convention in 1890. Seymour wrote a letter to the editor of his local newspaper announcing that he was not eligible for either president or vice president, and he did not propose him for either president or vice president. Both 1856 and 1860, Seymour favoured Stephen A. Douglas's nomination for the presidency. He accepted his nomination for the Senate in 1861, essentially a vain achievement considering that the Republican majorities in the state legislature brought a Republican win a long way to an end.

: 171–173, 215–216, 231

Seymour strongly supports the recommended Crittenden Compromise in the secession crisis following Abraham Lincoln's assassination in 1860. Seymour took a cautious middle position within his party at the start of the Civil War, supporting the war campaign but criticizing Lincoln's conduct during the conflict. Seymour was particularly critical of Lincoln's wartime centralization of control and limitations on civil rights, as well as his support for emancipation.

Edwin D. Morgan, the sitting governor of 1862, declared that he would not seek a second term. Recognizing the symbolic value of a victory in the Empire State, the Democratic Party selected Seymour as the best candidate available. Although Seymour accepted the nomination with reluctance, he leapt into the election, campaigning around the state in the hopes that a Democratic win would suspend the Radical Republicans' activities in Washington. He finished a close match against Republican nominee James S. Wadsworth, the first in a string of victories for the Democratic ticket in the state this year.

: 244–255

Seymour's second term was much more tumultuous than his first one. Seymour, the governor of the country's largest state from 1863 to 1864, was one of the most influential Democrats of President Obama. He resisted the Lincoln administration's adoption of the military draft in 1863 on constitutional grounds, prompting several to question his support for the war. He also opposed a bill that granted votes to the soldiers on legal grounds, vetoing the bill as it reached his desk. Although not opposed to the cause, he preferred to establish voting rights through a constitutional amendment that was gaining simultaneously in the state legislature; yet, opponents also portrayed his veto as a threat to the troops. His decision to pay the state's foreign creditors using gold rather than greenbacks alienated "easy money" supporters, while his opposition to a bill granting traction rights on Broadway in Manhattan earned him the opposition of Tammany Hall. The Republicans also accused him of treason and support for the Confederacy in trying to conciliate the rioters during the New York Draft Riots of July 1863.

: 283–336

Seymour's position as governor was gradually eroded as a result of the increasing complexity of issues. Republicans swept the 1863 state midterm elections, winning all of the major offices and taking control of the State Assembly in what was seen as a rebuke of his policies. Seymour himself was disqualified for reelection in a tight contest led by Republican Reuben Fenton in the state elections the following year.

: 350–359, 381

Seymour's reputation as a national Democratic leader grew during and immediately after his second term as governor. In 1864, he served as permanent chairman of the Democratic National Convention, where many delegates to the two front runners, namely George B. McClellan, a War Democrat, and Thomas H. Seymour (no relation to Horatio) prompted many to abandon Seymour as a compromise candidate. He refused to be nominated, but McClellan was eventually chosen. Seymour, as a result of the war, joined other Democrats in promoting President Andrew Johnson's Reconstruction plans and was a vocal critic of Radical Reconstruction, which emphasized the recognition of civil and political rights for freed slaves.

: 359–370, 383–391

There was no definite contender for the Democratic nomination in the 1868 presidential election. George H. Pendleton, the Democratic vice president of the United States, received a large following in the race, but fiscal conservatives in the party were alienated by his proposal to pay off federal debt using greenbacks. Seymour was approached again about his nomination, preferring that either Indiana Senator Thomas A. Hendricks or US Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase be named instead.

Seymour served as permanent chairman at the convention once more. Balloting began on June 7 in North Carolina, whereupon the former governor reiterated his refusal to accept the nomination. Hendricks appeared to be in the process of receiving the nomination when the Ohio delegation's leader suddenly switched his delegation's votes to Seymour two days later. Despite Seymour's protests that he did not want to be the nominee, the delegations amended their votes and gave the nomination unanimously to him.

: 411–431

Seymour decided to run for office after being compelled to do so. He faced a challenging opponent, namely General Ulysses S. Grant, who received the blessing of a united Republican party and the majority of the country's press. Although Seymour generally agreed that presidential candidates did not actively campaign, he did take a tour of the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic states in mid-October. Seymour's campaign ran for a conservative, limited government, and he opposed the Republicans' Reconstruction proposals in Congress. Seymour's campaign was also marked by pronounced calls to bigotry, repeated attempts to promote GM as the "Nigger" candidate and Seymour as the "White Man" candidate. By contrast, the Republican campaign was the first in which they "waved the bloody shirt," emphasizing Seymour's support for mob violence against African-Americans. Despite Seymour's victory in the popular referendum, the Fifteenth Amendment to the federal Constitution was passed by a margin of 214 to 80, but also directed New York State to reinstate voting rights for such people.

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