Sumner’s anger was exacerbated by the feeling of betrayal from another longtime friend, William Seward. For decades, Seward had labored fiercely against slavery. He even used his property as one of the last stops on the Underground Railroad before Canada, and he had recently sold seven acres of his property to Harriet Tubman at a cheap rate for her family’s use. But Seward was always temperamentally different from most abolitionists. In the Senate, he had friendly relations with many slaveholders, including Jefferson Davis, until the start of the war.
