William Alexander Graham (5 September 1804 – 11 August 1875) was a US Senator from North Carolina (W) from 25 November 1840 to 3 March 1843 (succeeding Robert Strange and preceding William Henry Haywood Jr.), Governor from 1 January 1845 to 1 January 1849 (succeeding John Motley Morehead and preceding Charles Manly), Secretary of the Navy from 2 August 1850 to 25 July 1852 (succeeding William Ballard Preston and preceding John P. Kennedy), and a member of the Confederate States Senate from 18 February 1864 to 10 May 1865 (succeeding Edwin Godwin Reade).
Biography[]
William Alexander Graham was born in Lincolnton, North Carolina in 1804, and he became a lawyer in 1825. From 1833 to 1840, he served in the House of Commons, and he served in the US Senate from 1840 to 1843 as a Whig. He went on to serve as Governor from 1845 to 1849 and as Secretary of the Navy from 1850 to 1852, serving under Millard Fillmore in the latter post. During the 1852 presidential election, he was the Whig Party's vice-presidential nominee on presidential nominee Winfield Scott's ticket, but they lost the election to the Democrat Franklin Pierce. He served in the State Senate from 1854 to 1866 and in the Confederate Congress from 1864 to 1865, and he was re-elected to the Senate in 1866, although he did not present his credentials due to North Carolina's not being readmitted to the union. He died in Saratoga Springs, New York in 1875.