William Henry Seward (16 May 1801 – 10 October 1872) was Governor of New York (W) from 1 January 1839 to 31 December 1842 (succeeding William L. Marcy and preceding William C. Bouck), US Senator from 4 March 1849 to 3 March 1861 (succeeding John Adams Dix and preceding Ira Harris), and Secretary of State from 6 March 1861 to 4 March 1869 (succeeding Jeremiah S. Black and preceding Elihu B. Washburne).
Biography[]
William Henry Seward was born in Florida, Orange County, New York in 1801 to a slaveowning farming family. Seward became a lawyer before moving to Auburn, and he was elected to the State Senate in 1830 as an Anti-Mason. Four years later, he mounted a failed gubernatorial bid, but he won the 1838 election, and he served as the Whig Governor of New York from 1839 to 1842. He advanced the rights and opportunities of black residents and guaranteed fugitive slaves jury trials, and he also protected abolitionists. In 1849, he was elected to the US Senate, and his strong stances and provocative words against slavery brought him hatred in the American South.
American Civil War[]
Seward in 1865
Seward was re-elected to the Senate in 1855 and became one of the leading figures of the nascent Republican Party. In 1860, he ran in the Republican presidential primary, but his vocal opposition to slavery, his support for immigrants and Catholics, and his association with political boss Thurlow Weed led to him losing the primary to Abraham Lincoln, who he then supported. He became Lincoln's Secretary of State, and, although he failed to prevent the secession of the southern states, the formation of the Confederacy, and the start of the American Civil War, he deterred France and Britain from joining the war.
In April 1865, during the assassination of Lincoln at Ford's Theater, Seward was also targeted at his home by conspirator Lewis Powell. Injured in a recent accident a week earlier, Seward was bed-ridden, That night, on April 14, 1865, at about 10 minutes after 10 o’clock, as John Wilkes Booth makes his way to the President’s box at Ford’s Theatre, Powell pretended to deliver the medicine to him and Seward’s maître d’, William Bell, refused to let him in. After arguing with Bell, Powell walks up the stairs, where he was confronted by Seward's son Frederick, who ordered him to leave. Powell pistol-whipped Frederick, shoved aside Seward's daughter Fanny and stabbed Seward in the face and neck five times before escaping, not before injuring Seward’s other son Augustus, Dr George Robinson, and a clerk from the State Department. Two days later, Powell was captured after arriving at the boarding house of Mary Surratt. Eight conspirators were put on a military tribunal on May 10, 1865, where they were charged for being part in the conspiracy to assassinate William Seward, Abraham Lincoln, and Vice President Andrew Johnson. Out of four of the eight conspirators, Powell was sentenced to be hanged and on July 7, 1865, he was hanged, along with Surratt, David Herold, and George Atzerodt (who failed to assassinate Andrew Johnson). Seward survived his serious injuries, although he was permanently disfigured for life.
Reconstruction[]
Seward continued to serve as Secretary of State under President Andrew Johnson, and he was in accord with the President's gentle terms for the South's re-entry into the union, while he also argued that it should be the states that decided on the issue of granting the vote to freed slaves. Seward sided with Johnson on many issues, but his counsel was not valued as much as it had been under Lincoln. The Republicans became angry with both men due to their reluctance to grant rights to African-Americans, and Congress overrode Johnson's veto of the Civil Rights Bill, which granted citizenship to freedmen.
Seward, who had previously opposed American expansionism (namely the Gadsden Purchase and President James Buchanan's plan to purchase Cuba) due to the threat of expanding slavery, came to support expansionism after slavery was abolished at the end of the war. Seward even contemplated the purchase of Greenland and Iceland, believing that American trade would be helped by the purchase of overseas territory. From 1865 to 1866, he made failed attempts to purchase the Danish West Indies or Samana Bay in the Dominican Republic. However, his interest in whaling motivated him to seek the purchase of Russian America. In 1867, fearing that the British might take over the colony in a repeat of the Crimean War, or that the region would be overrun with American settlers, the resource-hungry Russian Empire agreed to sell Alaska to the USA for $7 million, and Thaddeus Stevens believed that the Alaska Purchase would be seen as one of Seward's greatest accomplishments. He went on to support President Johnson during his impeachment, and he left office at the end of his administration. He died in 1872.