William Henry Seward, Sr. (May 16, 1801&_160;– October 10, 1872) was a
Governor of New York,
United States Senator and the
United States Secretary of State under
Abraham Lincoln and
Andrew Johnson. An outspoken opponent of the spread of slavery in the years leading up to the
American Civil War, he was a dominant figure in the
Republican party in its formative years, and was widely regarded as the leading contender for the party's
presidential nomination in
1860&_160;– yet his very outspokenness may have cost him the nomination. Despite his loss, he became a loyal member of Lincoln's wartime cabinet, and played a role in preventing foreign intervention early in the war.
[1] On the night of
Lincoln's assassination, he survived an attempt on his life in the conspirators' effort to decapitate the
Union government. As Johnson's Secretary of State, he engineered the purchase of Alaska from Russia in an act that was ridiculed at the time as
"Seward's Folly," but which exemplified his character. His contemporary
Carl Schurz described Seward as "one of those spirits who sometimes will go ahead of public opinion instead of tamely following its footprints."
[2]Seward was born in Florida, Orange County, New York, on May 16, 1801, one of five children of Samuel Sweezy Seward and his wife Mary Jennings Seward. Samuel Seward, described as "a prosperous, domineering doctor and businessman,"[3] was the founder of the S. S. Seward Institute, today a secondary school in the Florida Union Free School District.[4]
Seward studied law at Union College, graduating in 1820 with highest honors. He was admitted to the New York State Bar in 1821.[5] In that same year, he met Frances Adeline Miller, a classmate of his sister Cornelia at Emma Willard's Troy Female Seminary and the daughter of Judge Elijah Miller of Auburn, New York. In 1823, he moved to Auburn where he entered into law partnership with Judge Miller, and married Frances Miller on October 20, 1824. They raised five children
Some years after his wife's death in 1865, Seward formally adopted his companion Olive Risley Seward (1841-1908) as his "daughter."
