Seward served on the board of trustees of Young’s Female College from 1860 through 1886 and of the University of Georgia in Athens from 1865 through 1886. He continued to be involved in politics, serving as a delegate to the Georgia constitutional convention in 1865, the Democratic Conservative Convention in 1870 and the Georgia constitutional convention in 1877. He died in Thomasville on November 21, 1886, and was buried in that city's Laurel Hill Cemetery.