Harriet Tubman & William Seward Schenectady Monument Photo Tour

Schenectady, New York west of Albany along the Mohawk River has several Civil War and Reconstruction sites. At the time of the Civil War, this industrial city had nearly 10,000 people, including native-born African Americans and whites, as well as a growing community of Irish immigrants. The city was an important part of the Erie Canal commerce hub in 1860, with significant railroad traffic as well. To mark the city’s association with abolition and the Civil War,  on May 17, 2019 a monument consisting of statues of New York Governor William Seward and Abolitionist and Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman was dedicated.

William Seward served as an anti-slavery senator during the 1850s, and was Secretary of State to both Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. Seward helped escaped enslaved woman Harriet Tubman settle on his property in Auburn, N.Y. in the Finger Lakes area. The two historic figures met with each other frequently and Seward’s wife became involved in the Underground Railroad.

 

Seward had a close connection to Schenectady, making its streets an appropriate place for the statue. William Seward had attended the city’s historic Union College in his teens, achieving Phi Beta Kappa there. Union college was founded in 1795. It was the first non-denominational college founded in the United States. In 1836, students founded the Union College Anti-Slavery Society.

Below is the marker at the base of the monument. The statues were created by Dexter Benedict of Fire Works Foundry in Penn Yan, Yates County. The monument was funded through private donations and the  local dolostone they are placed on was donated by Callanan Industries.

Harriet Tubman was enslaved in Maryland. She escaped slavery and lived in Philadelphia, where she became active in Underground Railroad activities. She made an estimated thirteen trips into slave states to free seventy Black people enslaved by whites. After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, she helped establish a Freedpeople Black colony in Ontario, Canada. During the 1850s, Tubman used her home in Auburn, N.Y. as her base of operations. During the Civil War, she traveled to the Carolinas to assist self-emancipated formerly enslaved African Americans and she guided Union raids into the territories still controlled by Confederate armies there to free Blacks.

Seward stayed on as Secretary of State after Lincoln’s assassination. Serving under President Andrew Johnson, Seward was renowned for negotiating the purchase of Alaska. Unfortunately, however, he was part of an administration that did not protect Black civil rights and that allowed former Confederates to hold elected offices and maintain power in the critical period right after the Confederate surrender. While domestic policy was outside of Seward’s portfolio, he alienated many Radicals by not standing against the “Reconciliationist” posture of the Johnson Administration.

In the photo below you can see Tubman and Seward looking at the Schenectady City Hall across the street from the library where the statues are placed.

The statues are in a small garden outside the Karen B. Johnson Schenectady County Public Library on Clinton Street. The library is a modern building with a large parking lot. It is across the street from the Schenectady City Hall and the central Post Office, with the result that many residents walk by the site every day. The three year campaign to create the monument was led by retired Union College. engineering professor Frank Wicks who worked with retired professors Twitty Styles and Carl George to gain support from the Schenectady community. According to Wicks, “This is conceived to show the human side of Seward. Seward and Tubman had very different lives, but there was this intersection.”

 

The City Hall across the street was designed by the internationally famous architecture firm of McKim, Mead, and White in the Federal style. It was constructed during the Great Depression, being completed in 1933. The photo below shows it soon after sunrise on a January morning when I was able to visit it before a conference.

The building has a Neo-Classical postico and a clock tower topped by a gold-leaf dome and weather vane.

 

Also across the street from the statues is the main Post Office for the city. The building was constructed in the Classical Revival in 1910 and expanded during the Depression.

Below you can see that the monument is right outside of the main entrance to the popular library. For the first two years of the monument’s existence, the COVID pandemic limited foot traffic to the library. Hopefully now that the pandemic is receding, more people will see this statuary set.

While the statues are in the civic center of Schenectady, there were only a few places to get food right nearby. However, if you walk from the monument to Jay Street and walk past City Hall, there are a half-dozen places to eat about two to three blocks down.

I drove to visit the site and found it conveniently off of the New York State Thruway. It was about a thirty minute ride from Albany on a weekday. People travelling by train will be happy to know that AMTRAK has trains to the brand-new Downtown Station, just three blocks from the monument. The statues are at the corner of Liberty and Clinton streets.

History travellers will appreciate seeing many pre-Civil War houses in the city. Especially interesting is the Stockade District, and entire neighborhood of Colonial and Revolutionary era homes. About seven minutes away by car is the Schenectady Civil War monument from 1875.

 

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