US Senator, CSA Congressman, US Governor. William Graham was a member of the North Carolina legislature from 1833 to 1840. As a member of the Whig Party, he was then elected as a U.S. Senator from North Carolina from 1840 to 1843 to fill a vacancy. In 1845, he served as the Governor of North Carolina until 1849. During the administration of United States President Millard Fillmore, he was the U.S. Secretary of the Navy from 1850 to 1852. He was an unsuccessful candidate for Vice President of the United States in 1852 on a ticket with General Winfield Scott. While a member of the North Carolina state senate from 1854 to 1866, he also served as a Senator from North Carolina in the Confederate Congress from 1864 to 1865. In 1873 to 1875, he was an arbitrator in a boundary line dispute between Maryland and Virginia. He died suddenly in New York while striving to finish the project. Before his political career, he graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1824 and after studying law, was admitted to the bar in 1825 and began practicing law in Hillsborough. In time, he owned three plantations worked by slave labor. Prior to the American Civil War, he was a Unionist even though a Southerner, but voted for secession after Fort Sumter with North Carolina joining the Confederate States. He did support many means to spare the state hardships during and after the war. He became the champion of personal liberties, constitutional government, and states' rights. A city and county in North Carolina were named in his honor. Born the youngest of eleven children of a planter, his mother died when he was four years old. On June 8, 1836, he married Susannah Sarah Washington and the couple had ten children. Like his ancestors, he and all his children were involved in North Carolina politics. His marble bust adorns the capitol building in Raleigh and an oil portrait by William Garl Browne hangs in the Museum of History in Raleigh.