William H. Seward – 1801-1872

Seward was an attorney, politician, and abolitionist who served in the cabinet of Abraham Lincoln as secretary of state. He survived an assassination attempt by one of John Wilkes Booth’s co-conspirators and during the administration of Andrew Johnson, negotiated the purchase of Alaska from the czar of Russia in 1867. The acquisition was widely mocked as “Seward’s folly” by Americans who could see no value in a “frozen wasteland.”