Ezra Seaman

Ezra Champion Seaman (1805-1879) was born in Columbia County, New York, on October 14, 1805. He would later study law in Ballston Springs, New York, and would be admitted to the Supreme Court as an attorney in 1831, before moving to Detroit, Michigan, in 1839. As a prominent Whig, Seaman relocated to Washington, DC., in 1849, where he served as Chief Clerk and then First Comptroller of the Treasury, during the Taylor and Fillmore Administrations. Upon his return to Detroit in 1853, and subsequent move to Ann Arbor in 1854, Seaman became the Inspector of State Prisons. Later in 1858, he would also edit the Arbor Journal, where a series of protectionist essays would appear. He would also write several important articles for Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine. One of the more significant of these articles would appear in 1858. This was entitled “Human Progress: Its Elements, Impediments, and Limits.” Seaman’s main treatise on political economy was his Essays on the Progress of Nations, which first appeared in 1846, and went through several editions, including a heavily revised edition in 1852. Seaman’s work would receive high praise from the Whig President Millard Fillmore, who declared that “it is a very valuable publication, and that it brings within the reach of every man a vast store of useful information as to the progress of agriculture and the arts among mankind, which can be found no where else in so condensed and cheap form… [I] wish a copy might be placed in the hands of every enlightened citizen.” Seaman died on July 17, 1879, from a strangulated hernia following an unsuccessful operation.