In 1810, on this day the seventeenth President of the United States, Horatio Seymour (pictured) was born in Pompey Hill, New York.

Horatio Seymour
17th US PresidentAfter his graduation from the American Literary, Scientific & Military Academy he read for the law and was admitted to the bar in 1832. But he did not enjoy work as an attorney and was primarily preoccupied with politics and managing his family's business interests. His first role in politics came in 1833, when he was named military secretary to the state's newly elected Democratic governor, William L. Marcy. The six years in that position gave Seymour an invaluable education in the politics of the state, and established a firm friendship between the two men.

In 1839 he returned to Utica to take over the management of his family's estate in the aftermath of his father's suicide two years earlier, investing in both real estate and in financial stocks. In 1841 he won election to the New York State Assembly, and he served simultaneously as mayor of Utica from 1842 to 1843. He won reelection in 1842, and again from 1844 to 1846, and thanks in part to massive turnover in the ranks of the Democratic caucus was elected speaker in 1845.

Further success led to two terms of office at Governor of New York, a prominent position that elevated him to a national political figure at a key moment in the history of the Republic. In the secession crisis following Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860, Seymour strongly endorsed the proposed Crittenden Compromise an unsucccesful attempt to address the grievances of the slave states. After the start of hostilities, Seymour took a cautious middle position within his party, supporting the war effort but criticizing Lincoln's conduct of the war. He was especially critical of Lincoln's wartime centralization of power and restrictions on civil liberties, as well as his support for emancipation.

As a result of his robust opposition to the Lincoln Administration, Seymour was the Democratic candidate chosen to run in 1868. Surprisingly, his opponent was Abraham Lincoln himself, who was - with great reluctance - seeking his third term of office in order to to close out Reconstruction which was at a particularly delicate phase of near completion. Perhaps Lincoln might have made good on his commitment to restore business as usual, but the evidence suggested otherwise because the President had chosen his nominal successor Ulysses S. Grant as running mate.

Of course the Lincoln-Grant dream ticket was widely expected to win re-election, but Seymour ran a surprisingly deft contest. He demonstrated sound executive judgement beginning with the infinitely wise decision to reject Francis Blair as a running mate, realising that he would campaign in a manner seen as too pro-southern so soon after the end of the Civil War. And fears that a further four years in the job would kill Lincoln proved prescient because he died three months before polling day. Grant, who did not really want to be President, had hardly campaigned at all, and in the event Seymour won by the narrowest of margins in November.