In the years before the Civil War, anti-slavery activist William Seward befriended former slave Harriet Tubman, the most famous of the "conductors" on the Underground Railroad for runaway slaves. He sold her seven acres of land near his Auburn home in 1859, when a white man selling a black woman property was a brave thing for both. Their friendship is commemorated with a new life-size cast-bronze statue in Schenectady, NY.