Seward served as Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of state

On the evening of Lincoln’s murder, Seward also was attacked, targeted for death by one of John Wilkes Booth’s accomplices. He survived a vicious stabbing and lived for another seven and a half years. On display in the Seward House is a tiny scrap of bloodstained bedsheet from the night of the assault.

The trappings of the home are evidence of an educated and well-traveled man of erudition, imagination and especially foresight, for it was Secretary of State Seward who negotiated the purchase of Alaska from the Russian Empire in 1867.

He paid $7.2 million for it – almost two cents an acre -- and was attacked by politicians, the media and the public for a foolish waste of government money – a “polar bear garden,” critics called Alaska – “Seward’s Folly” or “Seward’s Icebox.” Of course, now the sound you hear is Seward’s ghost laughing all the way to the Federal Reserve.