Happy Birthday to Mr. William H. Seward, born May 16, 1801!! 
Why I just love me some William H. Seward:
1. Seward was a founding PROGRESSIVE member of the Republican party.
2. Seward defies “that’s just the way it was then, nothing you can do”. He defied the status quo and even went “underground” working with Harriet Tubman’s Underground Railroad. Seward’s surrounding neighbors, Susan B. Anthony (whose name has been hijacked by a hatriot group promoting of all people, Sarah Palin), Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Frederick Douglass, were constant reminders of “we can do better” and “we will do better”.
3. Seward was a best friend of Harriet Tubman, and helped run Underground Railroad with her and his wife and family. Seward also sold Harriet Tubman her home, which is still 2 blocks from his own home in Auburn, NY, and did so at a time when it was illegal to give property to blacks. Both Seward and Tubman are buried in the same cemetery in Auburn, NY with Tubman being one of first blacks allowed burial in once segregated cemetery and buried with full military honors.
4. Seward was Governor of New York and a strong abolitionist. Seward ran against Abraham Lincoln for President, lost but was appointed Secretary of State.
5. Seward wrote Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln added addendums but is often and errantly credited as its author.
6. The day after Seward’s attempted assassination and Lincoln’s assassination by degenerate Confederates was the day non-whites were to be granted full civil rights, to be signed by Lincoln. Lincoln’s successor, Johnson, was sympathetic to southern slave owners. After FOUR YEARS OF WAR with over 650,000 lives lost and Lincoln’s death, Johnson immediately reversed all of General William T. Sherman’s final victories and restored land and full rights and citizenship to Confederates (who were ousted from the Union), and allowed Confederate Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Ku Klux Klan to run this country from 1865 until 1986 (their last public hanging).
7. Seward’s son, William H. Seward, Jr. was also a Brigadier General in Union Army and fought in the Civil War, only to see his father and the Union Army’s efforts undone by Lincoln’s successor, Johnson. wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Henry_Seward,_Jr.
Seward’s political party has gravely changed with Dixiecrats-white separatists fully taking over GOP after Democrat President Lyndon Johnson passed both Civil Rights (1964) and Voting Acts (1965), but Seward will always be a reminder of that grave and destructive change, and that we can and should always strive to do better for all, not just for a “selected few”.
May William H. Seward and family rest in peace and never be forgotten.
