Biography

New York businessman. Abolitionist who supported free-state settlers in Kansas.  Called by the Senate into a committee investigating John Brown's attack on Harper's Ferry. Refused to testify and spent the next three months in prison. At the start of the war, he was released and  appointed U.S. Consul to La Rochelle, France. Spent the remainder of his life split between the U.S. and Europe. Frances "Fanny" Seward references the Senate considering his imprisonment in her 1860 diary.