advised
an amendment to the Constitution "to the effect that the Federal
government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of
the State, including that of persons held to service." Very good! The
convention might be expected to accept this, and after this, of course,
there would come up the Virginia Compromise. Was it a practical scheme?
Did it form a basis for drawing back into the Union the lower South?

Seward's whole thought upon this subject has never been disclosed. It
must be inferred from the conclusion which he reached, which he put
into a paper entitled, Thoughts for the President's Consideration, and
submitted to Lincoln, April first.

The Thoughts outlined a scheme of policy, the most startling feature
of which was an instant, predatory, foreign war. There are two clues to
this astounding proposal. One was a political maxim in which Seward had
unwavering faith. "A fundamental principle of politics," he said, "is
always to be on the side of your country in a war. It kills any party to
oppose a war. When Mr. Buchanan got up his Mormon War, our people, Wade
and Fremont, and The Tribune, led off furiously against it. I supported
it to the immense disgust of enemies and friends. If you want to sicken
your opponents with their own war, go in for it till they give it
up."(19) He was not alone among the politicians of his time, and some
other times, in these cynical views. Lincoln has a story of a politician
who was asked to oppose the Mexican War, and who replied, "I opposed
one war; that was enough for me. I am now perpetually in favor of war,
pestilence and famine."

The second clue to Seward's new policy of international brigandage was
the need, as he conceived it, to propitiate those Southern expansionists
who in the lower South at least formed so large a part of the political
machine, who must somehow be lured back into the Union; to whom the
Virginia Compromise, as well as every other scheme of readjustment yet
suggested, offered no allurement. Like Lincoln defeating the Crittenden
Compromise, like the Virginians planning the last compromise, Seward
remembered the filibusters and the dreams of the expansionists,
annexation of Cuba, annexation of Nicaragua and all the rest, and he
looked about for a way to reach them along that line. Chance had
played into his hands. Already Napoleon III had begun his ill-fated
interference with the affairs of Mexico. A rebellion had just taken
place in San Do