The First Perilous Year, 1861

This chapter analyzes the bases and evolution of Lincoln and Seward’s personal friendship and professional partnership during the first year of the war. As Lincoln solidified his one-war policy and Seward implemented his purposeful bluster warning against European intervention in the American conflict, the two leaders responded to British and French recognition of the South’s status as a belligerent and instituted the North’s blockade of the Confederacy. Lincoln initiated his brilliant representation of the war’s international significance and assumed an increasingly active role as commander in chief, and Seward took the lead in the North’s decision to compromise and accept British demands in the dangerous Trent affair. All of this is set against British and French responses to the American war.