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William Maxwell Evarts

Also Known As William M. Evarts , Evarts

Former United States Secretary of State

Education

  • law school -
  • Graduated - Yale College

Overview

William Maxwell Evarts was an American lawyer and statesman from New York who served as U.S. Secretary of State, U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Senator from New York. He was renowned for his skills as a litigator and was involved in three of the most important causes of American political jurisprudence in his day: the impeachment of a president, the Geneva arbitration and the contests before the electoral commission to settle the presidential election of 1876.

During the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes, the reform-minded Evarts was an active member among the "Half-Breed" faction of the Republican Party, which emphasized support for civil service reform, bolstering opposition towards conservative "Stalwarts" who defended the spoils system and advocated on behalf of Southern blacks.

Early Life

William M. Evarts was born on February 6, 1818, in Charlestown, Massachusetts, the son of Jeremiah Evarts and Mehitabel Barnes Sherman. Evarts's father, a native of Vermont, a "lawyer of fair practice and good ability,"and later the editor of The Panoplist, a religious journal, and corresponding secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (during a time of "fervor in mission propagandism") who led the fight against Indian removals, died when William was thirteen. William's mother was the daughter of Roger Sherman, Connecticut founding father, a signatory to the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution. 

Evarts attended Boston Latin School, then Yale College. In his college class were Morrison Waite, later Chief Justice of the United States, Samuel J. Tilden, future New York Governor and Democratic presidential nominee and one of the contestants in the electoral commissions controversy in which Evarts acted as counsel for the Republicans, chemist Benjamin Silliman, Jr., and Edwards Pierrepont, later United States Attorney General. While at Yale he became a member of two secret societies, the literary and debate oriented Linonian Society and Skull and Bones; he later extolled the former and much later denounced all such secret societies. Evarts was one of the founders of Yale Literary Magazine in 1836.He graduated third in his class in 1837. 

After college he moved to Windsor, Vermont, where he studied law in the office of Horace Everett and taught school to save money for law school. He attended Harvard Law School for a year, where he "won the respect of Professors Joseph Story and Simon Greenleaf." Evarts completed his legal studies under attorney Daniel Lord of New York City and was admitted to the bar in 1841.

He married Helen Minerva Bingham Wardner in 1843. She was the daughter of Allen Wardner, a prominent businessman and banker who served as Vermont State Treasurer. They had 12 children between 1845 and 1862, all born in New York City.

Career

  • United States - Former Secretary of State

Reference

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