Seward, William

Seward, William (1801–72) U.S. secretary of state, state governor, and U.S. senator, born in New York. As governor of New York, Seward promoted education and internal improvements, advocated humane reform of the prison system and mental health care, and was outspokenly antislavery. In 1849 Seward moved to the U.S. Senate, where he opposed slavery's extension into the Western territories and fought vigorously against the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Fiercely ambitious, Seward was considered the favorite to win the presidential nomination of the new Republican party in 1860, but in the end he lost to Abraham Lincoln, who was seen as less polarizing. Seward stayed loyal to the party and was named Lincoln's secretary of state. His goal was to preserve the Union, to which end he favored supporting Virginia Unionists by relinquishing Fort Sumter, but Lincoln demurred; he moved to reprovision the fort, and hostilities broke out. As secretary of state, Seward worked to keep European powers from recognizing or aiding the Confederacy and to prevent British shipbuilders from selling ships to the South. Seward clashed with President Andrew Johnson, who took office on Lincoln's assassination in April 1865; the two disagreed over Reconstruction, on which Seward was more moderate; he supported the Thirteenth Amendment but adopted a conciliatory tone toward the formerly secessionist states and toward former slaveowners. Seward opposed the Fourteenth Amendment because of its limits on participation in government by Confederates. His foreign policy was progressive; his most famous act was the acquisition from Russia of Alaska in 1867, a purchase known at the time as “Seward's Folly.” He also supported the construction of the Panama Canal.

Both a moral leader and a hard-nosed pragmatist, Seward is considered, along with John Quincy Adams, the nation's greatest secretary of state.