5 Sept. 1804–11 Aug. 1875
See also: William Alexander Graham, Research Branch, NC Office of Archives and History,
Under the supervision of a devoted father, now a widower, young Graham enjoyed the pleasures of a rural boyhood, learned the rudiments of plantation and furnace management, and prepared for a professional career. He attended classical schools in nearby Lincolnton and Statesville before completing preparatory education in the Hillsborough Academy. In January 1821, after an examination by Professor William Hooper, he was admitted to The University of North Carolina. An active member of the Dialectic Society, Graham was an able, industrious student who shared first honors in the distinguished class of 1824.
Subsequently, as was customary for aspiring lawyers in that day, he studied with an established attorney. Graham's mentor was the eminent Thomas Ruffin, of Orange County, who later became an outstanding jurist and chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. By March 1828, having received county and superior court licenses, Graham had established a practice as a member of the highly competitive Hillsborough legal community. Within a few years he became one of the more successful members of the North Carolina bar, maintaining a lucrative practice until his death. In time he owned three plantations worked by slave labor, although agriculture was never his primary interest.
It was always necessary that Graham earn a livelihood for himself and his numerous family, but clearly the law and agriculture were secondary in importance to his abiding preoccupation with public affairs. Prompted by a sense of noblesse oblige, he entered public life in the early 1830s just as new political alignments were emerging. Graham joined with other opponents of Andrew Jackson to form the Whig party. Associated with the Federal wing of that party in the state and nationally, he embraced Henry Clay's American System—supporting a national bank, a judicious tariff, federally financed internal improvements, and the distribution of excess treasury funds to the states. Despite the vicissitudes of sectional controversy and political change, he remained a conservative but ardent Unionist. However, with other Southern Unionists, he was destined to experience grave disappointments as secession, Civil War, and Reconstruction became realities.
If officeholding is any criterion, few North Carolinians have enjoyed public confidence for so long as Graham. This fact is more notable because his aristocratic bearing seems incompatible with the rise of democracy which paralleled his years in politics. He was borough representative from Hillsborough in the legislatures of 1833, 1834, and 1835; and, after the constitutional reforms of 1835, he represented Orange County as a member of the House of Commons in the 1836, 1838, and 1840 legislative sessions. He was speaker of the House of Commons in the latter two sessions. From December 1840 to March 1843, he represented North Carolina in the U.S. Senate. There he generally supported Clay in his dispute with "His Accidency," President John Tyler, but not to the extent of endangering the national Whig party. Displaced by a Democratic legislature elected in 1842, Graham ran successfully for governor in 1844, defeating Michael Hoke, a formidable western Democrat. He was easily reelected in 1846. Thus he was North Carolina's governor from January 1845 to January 1849. Much of his attention was absorbed by the Mexican War, of which he disapproved; nevertheless, Governor Graham supported the national commitment and raised and officered a politically controversial North Carolina regiment. An able administrator, his governorship was characterized by concern for humanitarian causes and internal improvements, especially railroad development.
After declining European diplomatic appointments offered by Zachary Taylor, Graham agreed to become secretary of the navy in July 1850, when Millard Fillmore formed a cabinet that supported the proposed compromise measures then before Congress. Initially his role was largely political, as he promoted passage and acceptance of the Compromise of 1850. He viewed the compromise as the final resolution of long-standing sectional controversies. To both North and South he advocated moderation, advising the North that faithful execution of the Fugitive Slave Law was essential to perpetuation of the Union. Although he knew little of naval affairs and never fully grasped the significance of contemporary technological advances, Graham was an experienced administrator. He relied heavily on knowledgeable advisers such as career officer Matthew Fontaine Maury. Secretary Graham was the moving spirit in several notable activities including a constructive program of personnel reforms, exploration of the Amazon basin, and the Perry expedition to Japan. The authoritative naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison has characterized Graham as one of the best navy secretaries in the nineteenth century.
After the election of Abraham Lincoln, Graham, who was sounded unofficially about a post in the new cabinet, counseled patience and conciliation. He urged North Carolinians to rely on the Constitution as a sufficient guarantor of their rights, advising that there would be time enough to seek proper remedies after an overt, illegal action by the national government. In February 1861, with the Confederacy a reality, Graham led Union men in defeating a statewide referendum to call a convention to consider disunion. However, after the firing on Fort Sumter and Lincoln's call for troops, he accepted the inevitable, declaring that "blood was thicker than water." Although he abhorred secession, he was overwhelmingly elected to represent Orange County in the Constitutional Convention of May 1861. In opposition to the original secessionists, now in the ascendancy, Graham stood unsuccessfully for the convention presidency and supported an abortive resolution upholding the right of revolution as the appropriate response to tyranny. Only when there seemed no honorable alternative did William A. Graham cast his vote for secession.
Having done his best to prevent disunion, Graham supported the Confederate cause to the extent his principles allowed. With Thomas Ruffin, he negotiated the terms by which North Carolina would enter the Confederate States of America; and he remained an active participant in the deliberations of the Convention. But the Civil War was troublesome to him and to many other Southern Unionists. On the one hand, five of his sons were Confederate officers and innumerable relatives and friends were involved militarily. (Three nieces were married to Confederate generals "Stonewall" Jackson, Daniel Harvey Hill, and Rufus Barringer.) Their commitments had to be adequately sustained by his political and economic efforts; but, on the other hand, the rights of the states and the citizenry had to be protected against the encroachments of a government at war. Herein lay the fatal flaw—how could a nation predicated on state sovereignty command the unity necessary to win the war? Graham became the champion of personal liberties, constitutional government, and states' rights. As such, he was a frequent critic of the Davis administration. He sometimes found himself in strange company. He was allied with old-line Whigs, Americans, and former southern rights Democrats—most surprisingly, perhaps, his erstwhile adversary William W. Holden.
In the spring of 1862, in order to replace Governor John W. Ellis who had died in office the previous July, Holden, indefatigable editor of the North Carolina Standard, encouraged Graham to run for governor and praised him in extravagant terms editorially. Graham declined, but joined Holden and many old Unionists in electing the popular Zebulon B. Vance. Subsequently, he and Holden were among Vance's most intimate advisers. Eventually the three men diverged in their views, and each came to represent a discernible segment of North Carolina opinion. While protecting the state's interests, Vance became convinced that honor required a fight to the finish. Meanwhile, by the summer of 1863, Holden was disenchanted to the extent of promoting a movement looking to separate peace initiatives by individual states. Both men sought the endorsement of Graham, who publicly affirmed confidence in Vance. Nevertheless, by 1864 Graham, now a Confederate senator and an open opponent of the Davis government, hoped earnestly for a negotiated peace based on the status quo ante bellum. He was a moving spirit in the fruitless Hampton Roads Conference of 3 Feb. 1865. He favored reunion over independence but balked at talk of emancipation. His conservative racial views caused him to oppose the enlistment of slaves in Confederate armies. If slavery and the accompanying social system were abolished, he believed, all was lost.
When the end was in sight, Graham left Richmond to warn Vance that the Confederacy was collapsing and to advise that North Carolina should look to its own interests. Vance demurred but authorized Graham and David L. Swain to surrender Raleigh to William T. Sherman, whose armies menaced the capital. This they did, though some North Carolinians never fully understood their motives. Years later, after both Swain and Graham were dead, Vance disparaged their realistic service to the state.
Ironically, Graham's national reputation was more easily regained. He carried on an extensive correspondence and was evidently widely esteemed. In 1867, he was appointed to the original board of Peabody Fund Trustees and served faithfully in that capacity until his death. He was also on the arbitration commission to settle the Virginia-Maryland boundary dispute, and by 1875 he had become the principal figure in the long-delayed deliberations of that group.
Graham died unexpectedly at Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where he had gone to attend a meeting of the Virginia-Maryland Arbitration Commission. He was buried in the cemetery adjacent to the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church. His memory is perpetuated in the name of a small city in Alamance County and a county in western North Carolina. A marble bust of Graham adorns the capitol building in Raleigh and an oil portrait by William Garl Browne hangs in the Museum of History, Raleigh.