- Governor of New York from 1839-43.
- He was picked by President Abraham Lincoln to be US Secretary of State in 1861. His diplomatic efforts were credited with preventing several European powers from recognizing the Confederacy as a legitimate government.
- US Senator from New York from 1849-61.
- An ardent anti-slavery activist, he abandoned the Whig Party in 1854 when it tried to compromise with the Jacksonian Democratic party on the slavery issue, and joined the newly formed Republican Party. The Whig Party collapsed soon afterward.
- In 1865 he was involved in a serious carriage accident and was confined to his bed to recuperate. Nine days after the accident, on the day that President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by a group of Confederate agents, one of them, Lewis Powell, burst into Seward's bedroom and stabbed him in the throat (Powell, along with seven other conspirators, was later hanged for his part in the assassination). Seward recovered and continued in his position as Secretary of State until 1869.
- Best-known for his negotiations with Russia to purchase what is now Alaska. Derided at the time by his opponents as "Seward's Folly", it has since been recognized as an incredibly shrewd purchase, given the untold billions of dollars in oil that has since been discovered there.
- U..S. Secretary of State, 1861-69.
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