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Source: https://lennybendavid.substack.com/p/william-seward-abraham-lincolns-secretary
Lincoln's Secretary of State William Seward Visits the Holy Land 155 Years Ago
(Substack) Lenny Ben-David - Lincoln's Secretary of State, William Seward, who visited the Holy Land in 1859, returned in 1871 as part of an international tour, which he described in his 800-page travelogue, Travels Around the World. Seward wrote of his visit to Jerusalem 155 years ago: "The population of Palestine is estimated at only 200,000." In Jerusalem, "the Mohammedans are 4,000....The Jews are 8,000....The Armenians number 1,800...and the other Christians amount to 2,200." Seward describes how the Jews gathered at the Western Wall in Jerusalem every Friday night, "pouring out their lamentations over the fall of their beloved city, and praying for its restoration." He wrote of "the solemnity and depth of the profound grief and pious feeling exhibited by this strange assembly." He was invited to attend a Sabbath service at a new synagogue, believed to be the Hurva, where Seward and his party were seated on the dais. The Hurva Synagogue was destroyed by the Jordanian army in 1948 and rebuilt in 2010. After a Hebrew prayer was recited, "the rabbi came to Mr. Seward and informed him that it was a prayer for the President of the United States and a thanksgiving for the deliverance of the Union from its rebellious assailants. Then came a second...the rabbi informed us that it was a prayer of gratitude for Mr. Seward's visit to the Jews in Jerusalem, for his health, for his safe return to his native land, and for a long, happy life." The writer, a former AIPAC official and Israeli diplomat, is a research fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs.