William Tecumseh Sherman is one of the true brilliant stars of the American Civil War. He was also entirely indifferent to political office—it was Sherman who said, when people were clamoring to have him run for President, “If nominated I will not run, if elected I will not serve.” Can’t beat that for blunt. It shut everybody up completely.William Seward engineered the purchase of Alaska in 1867, for approximately 4¢ an acre. It was widely derided as “Seward’s Folly” and “Seward’s Icebox”, but the acquisition has since proved its worth many times over.
Seward had contended with Abraham Lincoln for the Republican nomination in 1860, and of course lost it to him. After his election, Lincoln invited Seward to be his Secretary of State, a job he accepted. At first he was contemptuous of Lincoln, as were almost all the other members of the Cabinet, but he quickly recognized the President’s abilities and his devotion to honesty and the Union, and before the first year was out Seward was Lincoln’s greatest champion.
The assassination of Lincoln was part of a plot to kill not only Lincoln but Vice President Johnson and important members of the Cabinet as well, Seward among them. While John Wilkes Booth was shooting Lincoln at Ford’s Theater, his associate Lewis Powell fought his way into Seward’s home and slashed at him with a Bowie knife. He was in bed, recovering from a carriage accident, and the metal brace he wore on his neck saved him from death, stopping Powell’s knife just short of his jugular vein. While Seward recovered from his injuries, the news of Lincoln’s death was kept from him, but he figured out what had happened nevertheless. From his recovery room he could see all the flags of the capital at half staff, and he knew that Lincoln would have been the first to visit him had he been still alive to do so.
Honorable mention should also go to 
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on Jan-14-07
at 22:16:26 PST
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on Jan-14-07
at 19:44:24 PST
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on Jan-14-07
at 17:36:11 PST
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