Her World

Fanny Seward was a young girl who lived between 1844 and 1866. The years when she grew up were difficult and led to the Civil War. Fanny came from a powerful family and saw history happening around her all of the time. Because she kept a daily diary, she took notes!

Fanny saw America divided into two parts. Many southern states had slavery, but most northern ones did not and believed in freedom. Each section of the U.S. thought that their way of life was better. Over time, both parts of the country grew far apart on the issue. Fanny’s father, William Seward, a U.S. Senator from New York, wrote that an “irrepressible conflict” was coming. He saw it as a war over slavery.    

Fanny’s nickname was her father’s “shadow.” Nearly everywhere Mr. Seward went, Fanny went too! She traveled with her father on political campaigns, listened to his speeches, and even visited President Abraham Lincoln with him in the White House. Fanny understood life in both Washington D.C. and her hometown of Auburn, NY.

Fanny also learned a lot from her mother, Frances Seward. Mrs. Seward was an abolitionist who turned her home into a stop on the Underground Railroad. Passengers who wanted freedom often stayed in the home and hid until it was safe to travel further north. In addition, Mrs. Seward was friends with Harriet Tubman, whom Fanny would have met many times during her life. Harriet trusted Fanny’s family so much that she bought a nearby farm and lived there for the rest of her life. Fanny’s mother joined the women’s rights movement as well. She taught her daughter to believe that girls should have the same rights as boys and be treated the same. Not many people thought so in the 1850s!

Between the teachings from both of her parents, Fanny developed many ideas of her own. She shared her father’s beliefs in freedom, her mother’s values of equality, and her own original thoughts. She wrote many of these down in her diaries and letters!

Fanny also wrote about major events that happened during her childhood.  When she was only 2, her oldest brother went marching off to a war in Mexico. When she was 6, she watched her father become a senator and move to Washington DC. She visited him as often as he could, sometimes attending his speeches.

Fanny’s Father’s most famous speech was in 1850. Even though the American Constitution included slavery, Mr. Seward stated that “there was a higher law than the Constitution.” He and Fanny believed that slavery was evil and should be ended.

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was published when Fanny was 9 years old, and it became one of her favorite books to read. (She even had a special puzzle of the book that came in its own cabin). The book showed how poorly slaves were treated in the south. Many were beaten and forced to work long hours. Enslavers broke families apart by selling children from their parents. Across the north, readers of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” were angry. More people began to listen when people like Fanny’s parents called for slavery to end.

At the same time, slave-holders in the South fought against abolitionist ideas like the Sewards’. Some even threatened her father and the rest of her family. Many worried that war was coming between sections. Mr. Seward gave his “Irrepressible Conflict” speech near Fanny’s 14th birthday. 

When Fanny was 16, her father decided to run for President. Even his friends worried that he was so radical that he would never win enough votes in the election. Instead, Abraham Lincoln won the race. He surprised a lot of people by asking Mr. Seward to help him govern by becoming his Secretary of State. Mr. Seward said yes!

Fanny spent the next few years in Washington. She soon came to know and love President Lincoln, just like her father would. When she turned 17, she also watched the Civil War begin.  Two of her brothers fought as Union soldiers against the Confederate Army. 

In her diary, Fanny described her unique experience of the war and visiting the Union camps outside of Washington. One of her brothers was badly wounded in the battle and for a long time Fanny thought he had died.

“The clouds seem to darken above the Union.”

— Fanny’s Diary, Dec 31, 1860

At the age of 20, Fanny saw an assassination attempt on her father. The man who tried to kill Mr. Seward was an ex-Confederate soldier who didn’t want the Union to win the Civil War. He was in cahoots with John Wilkes Booth, who murdered President Lincoln on the same night.

Fanny was often sick, and she passed away at the age of 21 from tuberculosis and typhoid fever. Tuberculosis killed more people in the 1800s than anything else. Fanny never lived to see her father buy Alaska for the United States, or to question the effects of westward expansion on the country’s native peoples. She never read “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, saw the Statue of Liberty, or drank a Coca-Cola. She never lived to see the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Lives Matter Movement, or even the passing of the Fourteenth Amendment. This stated that all people born or naturalized in the United States were citizens (including former slaves). 

Fanny passed away over fifty years before women gained the right to vote across the country. Fanny’s thoughts on women’s rights may have led her to be a powerful suffragette. Although she never became an author in a world of men, she did place her own mark on history.