biography
| name: |
Seward, William H(enry)
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pronunciation:
[sooerd]
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1801–72)
|
| biography:
| US public official and cabinet officer, born in Florida, New York, USA. A lawyer, he joined the new Whig Party and served as governor of New York (1839–43) and as US senator (New York, 1849–61). Becoming increasingly more liberal, he moved to the new Republican Party for his second term as senator, and came to embody Northern anti-slavery sentiment. He caused a controversy with his claim (1850) that slavery should be excluded from new states by a ‘higher law than the Constitution’. Twice disappointed in his hopes for the Republican nomination (1856, 1860), he accepted the post of secretary of state in Lincoln's cabinet. After Lincoln squashed his attempts at imposing his own views and policies, Seward settled down to become an excellent secretary of state. He was wounded by one of the conspirators who killed Lincoln (1865), but recovered to continue serving under President Andrew Johnson. He asserted the Monroe Doctrine against French policy in Mexico (1866), and in 1867 bought the area of Alaska from Russia for $67 000 000, an action that was called Seward's Folly. He sided with President Johnson and his reconstruction policies, and with the end of the Johnson Administration (1869), he toured the world and retired to Auburn, NY. |
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