William H. Seward

William Henry Seward (1801–1872) was an American statesman who served as Governor of New York, US Senator, and Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson. A fiery opponent of slavery, Seward famously proclaimed in 1850 that there is 'a higher law than the Constitution' and predicted the 'irrepressible conflict' between North and South.

Narrowly losing the 1860 Republican presidential nomination to Lincoln, Seward became Lincoln's most trusted cabinet minister and intimate friend in the 'Team of Rivals'. He brilliantly managed Union diplomacy, averting British or French military recognition of the Confederacy during the Trent Affair. Surviving a brutal knife attack in his bed on the night Lincoln was assassinated, Seward negotiated the 1867 purchase of Alaska from the Russian Empire for $7.2 million, originally mocked as 'Seward's Folly' but later recognized as a geopolitical masterstroke.