DIARY DAYS: Online selections from a six-volume diary kept by Fanny Seward, a daughter of Lincoln’s secretary of state, offer a glimpse into the Civil War–era White House.In observance of Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday this February 12, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation at Rush Rhees Library is posting a new addition to its “Lincoln and His Circle” Web site.
Fanny Seward, daughter of Lincoln’s secretary of state, William Henry Seward, kept a six-volume diary between 1858 and 1866. In the newly posted selection, she describes the brutal attack on her father by a co-conspirator of John Wilkes Boothe on the night Lincoln was assassinated.
The site, www.library.rochester.edu/rbk/lincoln, which was launched on Lincoln’s birthday in 2008, has attracted more than 168,000 visits. Featuring 72 letters written by Lincoln and 215 written to him, the site’s materials are drawn from the University’s William Henry Seward Papers, given to the University by the Fred L. Emerson Foundation of Auburn, N.Y.
In her diaries, Fanny gives an insider’s view of Washington social life in the Civil War era. She also offers intimate glimpses of the Lincoln family—including that the Lincolns, foreshadowing President-elect Obama and his family—welcomed a pet (or two, to be exact) while in the White House, accepting a gift of two kittens from the Seward family.
—Kathleen McGarvey
