William Henry Seward was an outspoken abolitionist as secretary of state under President Lincoln during the Civil War. So much so, that Lincoln’s assassins also tried to kill Seward that same evening. However, he went on to serve as secretary of state under Andrew Johnson, assisting in the reconstruction of the South after the Civil War. And it was Seward who was largely responsible for acquiring the Alaska Territory in 1867, a purchase unjustifiably ridiculed as “Seward’s Folly!” William Henry