The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson

Author:Erik Larson [Larson, Erik]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2024-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

Washington

Relief

March 8

For months, Inauguration Day had stood in the temporal distance as a day to be dreaded, girded for, and survived. It seemed an endpoint in itself, like an assignation for a duel: one dared not look beyond. First the inauguration had to take place; only then could the nation get back to constructing its future, with the helm of state securely in new hands. Now that March 4 had come and gone and no secret force had seized the Capitol and no assassin had leapt onto the East Portico, relief supplanted disquiet.

Without knowing it, on March 8, Frances and William Seward wrote each other a letter, she from freezing Auburn, New York, where the day before, the temperature had fallen below zero; he from an unusually warm Washington, where temperatures over the preceding five days had reached as high as eighty-three degrees. Frances opened with grim news about a family friend, fifty-seven years old, who lay ill and was not expected to survive, a victim, she believed, of worry over the inauguration. “Ethan Warden is still living,” she wrote, “but I think there is no ground for expecting his recovery—I believe his anxiety about you [on] the 4th injured him, but I went to see him Tuesday and found him composed and sensible though exceedingly feeble. He talked of you continually with reverence and affection. ‘Well the Governor is Safe’ were his first words.”

After a few more references to family matters, she turned to William himself. “Now that the season of our greatest apprehension has gone by I see the almost insurmountable difficulties by which you are surrounded,” she wrote. “Without being able to see how, I have faith and hope that you will be able to surmount them.”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.