Evarts, William Maxwell (1818-1901)

US lawyer, cabinet officer, and senator. A prominent lawyer, he was chief counsel for President Andrew Johnson in his impeachment trial, before becoming attorney general and then secretary of state. He was a Republican senator for New York.

Born in Boston, he was the grandson of Roger Sherman. At Yale, he founded the Yale Literary Magazine. He took up the law and was admitted to the New York bar in 1841. Originally active in the Whig Party, he joined the new Republican Party. He went to England on diplomatic missions to try to stop the British from supplying the Confederate navy. He was defence lawyer for Henry Ward Beecher in an adultery trial (1875), and chief counsel for the Republican Party in the presidential dispute between Rutherford Hayes and Samuel Tilden (1877). In addition to the high esteem he earned as a lawyer and public servant, he was noted as a public speaker, and on 4 July 1876, he delivered the principal address at the Philadelphia centennial of the Declaration of Independence.