Seward’s wife, also displeased, was more direct in her criticism. “My dearest Henry,” she wrote. “Eloquent as your speech was it fails to meet the entire approval of those who love you best.” His friends, she wrote, would have preferred “that you had not spoken at all.” She found the speech morally offensive and had no reservations about telling him so. “Compromises based on the idea that the preservation of the Union is more important than the Liberty of nearly 4,000,000 human beings cannot be right—The alteration of the Constitution to perpetuate slavery—the enforcement of a Law to recapture
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