The impulse for expansion upon which Buchanan floated his
political raft into the presidency was not a party affair. It was
felt by men of all party creeds, and it seemed for a moment to be
the dominant national ideal. Slaveholders and other men who had
special interests sought to make use of it, but the fundamental
feeling did not rest on their support. American democracy, now
confident of its growing strength, believed that the happiness of
the people and the success of the institutions of the United
States would prove a loadstone which would bring under the flag
all peoples of the New World, while those of the Old World would
strike off their shackles and remold their governments on the
American pattern. Attraction, not compulsion, was the method to
be used, and none of the paeans of American prophets in the
editorials or the fervid orations of the fifties proposed an
additional battleship or regiment.

No one saw this bright vision more clearly than did William H.
Seward, who became Secretary of State under Lincoln. Slight of
build, pleasant, and talkative, he gave an impression of
intellectual distinction, based upon fertility rather than
consistency of mind. He was a disciple of John Quincy Adams, but
his tireless energy had in it too much of nervous unrest to allow
him to stick to his books as did his master, and there was too
wide a gap between his beliefs and his practice. He held as
idealistic views as any man of his generation, but he believed so
firmly that the right would win that he disliked hastening its
victory at the expense of bad feeling. He was shrewd, practical--
maliciously practical, many thought. When, in the heat of one of
his perorations, a flash of his hidden fires would arouse the