Blinded perhaps by his own sense of self-importance, Seward had misread his employer. What he did not recognize yet was that there was steel in this Illinois lawyer and that it glinted most keenly when adversaries challenged his resolve. “It is a little difficult to imagine what must have been the feelings of a President…on receiving from his principal councilor and anticipated mainstay of his Administration such a series of proposals,” Nicolay and Hay would later write in their biography of Lincoln. Another president might have fired Seward on the spot, but Lincoln certainly understood that
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