Wad-Wan: Wade through Waner

See below for annotated biographies of American abolitionists and anti-slavery activists. Sources include: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography and Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.


WADE, Benjamin Franklin, 1800-1878, lawyer, jurist, U.S. Senator, strong and active opponent of slavery.  In 1839, opposed enactment of stronger fugitive slave law, later calling for its repeal.  U.S. Senator, March 1851-1869.  Opposed Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854.  Reported bill to abolish slavery in U.S. Territories in 1862.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, pp. 310-311; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 2, p. 303; Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005, pp. 11-13, 213-237; Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, pp. 103, 151, 229; Mitchell, Thomas G. Antislavery Politics in Antebellum and Civil War America. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007, pp. 23, 25, 48-49, 54, 71, 116, 132, 143-144, 172, 189, 216, 217, 227, 228, 230; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 499; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 22, p. 431; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 303-305:

WADE, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (October 27, 1800-March2, 1878), senator from Ohio, the tenth of eleven children of James and Mary (Upham) Wade, was a native of Feeding Hills, a hamlet near Spring field, Massachusetts. His father traced his descent from Jonathan Wade of County Norfolk, England, who emigrated in 1632 and became an honored citizen of Medford, Massachusetts Bay Colony. His mother was the daughter of a Baptist clergyman of West Spring field. Decius S. Wade [q. v.] was his nephew. Reared amidst the poverty and hard ships of a New England farm, Wade received little education in childhood, save that acquired from his mother and at a local school in the winter months. With his parents he moved in 1821 to the frontier community of Andover, Ohio, where two of his brothers had gone a year earlier. For the next few years he was by turns a farmer, drover, laborer, medical student, and school teacher in Ohio and New York state, but about 1825 he settled down to th e study of law in Canfield, Ohio, and in 1827 or 1828 was admitted to the bar. Diffidence in public speaking threatened his ambitions at the outset, but perseverance gradually made him a vigorous advocate, and partners hips with Joshua R. Giddings [q. v. ] in 1831 and Rufus P. Ranney [q.v.] in 1838 brought him a wide and successful practice in northeastern Ohio. On May 19, 1841, he was married to Caroline M. Rosekrans of Ashtabula and they took up their residence in Jefferson, Ohio, his place of practice. She bore him two sons, James F. and Henry P. Wade, and with them survived him.

Once established in the law, Wade turned his attention to politics and public office. After a term (1835-37) as prosecuting attorney of Ashtabula County he was elected to the state Senate in 1837. There he identified himself with the anti-slavery element; his outspoken opposition to a more stringent fugitive-slave law in Ohio is said to have been responsible for his failure to be reelected in 1839. But he was returned to the Senate for a second term in 1841 and was chosen by the legislature in 1847 to sit as president-judge of the third judicial circuit. His forceful and business-like methods on the bench, together with his rising popularity, commended him to the Whigs in the legislature and in 1851, apparently without effort on his part, he was elected to the United States Senate. Twice reelected as a Republican, he served until March 3, 1869.

Wade's entrance into the Senate in the early fifties was eventful in the history of slavery and the Union. Rough in manner, coarse and vituperative in speech, yet intensely patriotic, he speedily became a leader of the anti-slavery group in Congress. At heart an abolitionist, he supported a move in 1852 to repeal the Fugitive- slave Law (Congressional Globe, 32 Congress, I Session, p. 2371) and denounced the Kansas-Nebraska Bill (Ibid., 33 Congress, 1 Session, pp. 337-40). He also opposed the several efforts to win Kansas for slavery and almost every other measure or device for the promotion or protection of the system. When the controversy in the Senate became intensely personal and Wade was much involved, he entered into a secret compact (1858) with Simon Cameron and Zachariah Chandler [qq.v.] whereby they pledged themselves to make their own the cause of any Republican senator receiving gross personal abuse, and to "carry the quarrel into a coffin" (Riddle, post, pp. 215-16). He was an ardent supporter of the proposed homestead legislation of the period, saying in 1859 that it was "a question of land to the landless," while the bill to buy Cuba was "a question of niggers to the nigger less" (Congressional Globe, 35 Congress, 2 Session, p. 1354). During the secession crisis of 1860-61 he took his stand on the Republican platform of 1860, and as a member of the Senate Committee of Thirteen voted against the Crittenden proposals (Senate Report No. 288, 36 Congress, 2 Session), holding that the time for compromise had passed.

With the outbreak of war, Wade became one of the most belligerent men in Congress, demanding swift and decisive military action. Personally a fearless man, he played a dramatic part in momentarily stemming a portion of the Union retreat from Bull Run (July 21, 1861). When the army was reorganized he pressed vigorously for another forward movement, and when McClellan delayed, Wade became one of his sharpest critics. With Senators Chandler and J. W. Grimes he was instrumental in setting up the Committee on the Conduct of the War. From the moment of its creation the Committee, under Wade's chairmanship, became a violently partisan machine, suspicious of the loyalty of those who ventured to dissent from its wishes and bent upon an unrelenting prosecution of the war. Its members worked in close cooperation with Secretary of War Stanton, a kindred spirit whom Wade had urged for that office, but they were generally critical of the President. Like other Radical Republicans in Congress, Wade seemed temperamentally incapable of understanding Lincoln and deplored his cautious and conservative policies. He himself favored drastic punitive measures against the South, including legislation for the confiscation of the property of the Confederate leaders and the emancipation of their slaves (Congressional Globe, 37 Congress, 2 Session, p. 3375; Edward McPherson, The Political History of the United States ... during the Great Rebellion (1864, pp. 196 ff.). He was not overburdened with constitutional scruples where measures that he favored were concerned. At the same time he decried the President's "dictatorship" and found Lincoln's clement reconstruction policy, announced on December 8, 1863, particularly obnoxious. When he and Henry Winter Davis [q.v.] attempted to counteract it by a severe congressional plan, embodied in the Wade-Davis bill, and Lincoln checked this by a "pocket veto," announcing his reasons in a proclamation (July 8, 1864), their indignation was unbounded. The result .. his Wade-Davis Manifesto (August 5), a fierce blast, condemned the President's "executive usurpation" as a "studied outrage on the legislative authority" and insisted that in matters of reconstruction Congress was "paramount and must be respected" (Appletons' American Annual Cyclopaedia ... 1864, 1865, pp. 307-10). Previously Wade had joined with others in indorsing the Pomeroy circular, designed to replace Lincoln with Salmon P. Chase (G. F. Milton, The Age of Hate, 1930, p. 28), but when that project collapsed and the Manifesto aroused a storm of disapproval in Ohio, he gave his support to Lincoln in the closing weeks of the election contest in 1864. But he continued to resist the President's reconstruction policy, characterizing it as "absurd, monarchical, and anti-American" (Congressional Globe, 38 Congress, 2 Session, p. 1128).

The accession of Johnson to the presidency in April 1865 was hailed by Wade and his faction as a godsend, and they hastened to make overtures to him in behalf of their own measures. When to their surprise he took over Lincoln's policy, Wade dubbed him either "a knave or a fool," and contended that to admit the Southern states on the presidential plan was "nothing less than political suicide" (H.K. Beale, The Critical Year, 1930, pp. 49, 314). From December 1865 onward, along with Charles Sumner, Thaddeus Stevens, and other vindictive leaders, he waged a persistent campaign against Johnson, pressing for the enactment of the congressional program, including the Civil Rights, Military Reconstruction, and Tenure of Office bills. At the opening of the session in December 1865 Wade promptly introduced a bill for the enfranchisement of negroes in the District of Columbia (Congressional Globe, 39 Congress, 1 Session, p. 1), and supported negro suffrage in the campaign of 1866, although he was willing to readmit the Southern states if they ratified the fourteenth amendment within a reasonable time (Ibid., 39 Congress, 2 Session, p. 124). His methods during the period leave the impression that he, like Stevens, was ready to resort to almost any extremity in order to carry through the congressional policies or gain a point.

The Radicals succeeded in having Wade elected president pro tempore of the Senate when that office became vacant (March 2, 1867). According to the statute then in force, he would have succeeded to the presidency in the event of Johnson's removal. But it appears that the prospect of Wade's succession really became an embarrassment to them, for many of the conservatives felt that he would be no improvement and might prove less satisfactory than Johnson (Diary of Gideon Welles, 1911, volume III, 293; Oberholtzer, post, II, 13411.). Wade himself voted for Johnson's conviction despite the fact that he was an interested party. So expectant was he of success that he began the selection of his cabinet before the impeachment trial was concluded (Adam Badeau, Grant in Peace, 1887, pp. 136-37; C. G. Bowers, The Tragic Era, 1929, pp. 188-89). Thwarted in his presidential ambitions by Johnson's acquittal, and having failed of reelection to the Senate, Wade sought the second place on the ticket with Grant in 1868. However, after leading on the first four ballots in the Republican convention, he lost the nomination to Schuyler Colfax.

Upon his retirement from the Senate in 1869 Wade resumed the practice of law in Ohio. He became general counsel for the Northern Pacific Railroad and served for a time as one of the government directors of the Union Pacific. In 1871 Grant appointed him a member of the commission of investigation which visited Santo Domingo and recommended its annexation (Report of the Commission of Inquiry to Santo Domingo, 1871). Seven years later he died in Jefferson, Ohio.

[The chief documentary sources for Wade's public career are the Congressional Globe and the "Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War," Senate Report No. 108, 37 Congress, 3 Session, (3 volumes, 1863); Senate Report No. 142, 38 Congress, 2 Session, (3 volumes, 1865). A. G. Riddle, The Life of Benjamin F. Wade (1886), is too brief and uncritical to be of much historical value. Short sketches of Wade's life are to be found in L. P. Brockett, Men of Our Day (1872), pp. 240-62 a contemporary eulogistic account; The Biographical Cyclopaedia and Portrait Gallery ... of ... Ohio, volume I (1883), 293-94; Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); New York Herald and New York Times, March 3, 1878. J. F. Rhodes, History of the U. S. (9 volumes, 1893-1922); and E. P. Oberholtzer, A History of the U. S. since the Civil War (4 volumes, 1917-31) contain numerous references to Wade, as do the biographies of his political contemporaries. D. M. DeWitt, The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson (1903) is useful for the post-war period. This work, like the more recent studies of the war and reconstruction eras, is hostile to Wade and his faction.]

A.H.M.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 310-311:

WADE, Benjamin Franklin, senator, born in Feeding Hills, near Springfield, Massachusetts, 27 October, 1800; died in Jefferson, Ohio, 2 March, 1878. His ancestor, Jonathan, came from Norfolk, England, to Massachusetts in 1632. His father, James, a soldier of the Revolution, removed to Andover, Ohio, in 1821. The son's education was received chiefly from his mother. He shared in the pioneer work of his new home, and in 1823, after aiding in driving a herd of cattle to Philadelphia, went to Albany, New York, where he spent two years in teaching, also beginning the study of medicine with his brother, and at one time working as a common laborer on the Erie canal to obtain funds. On his return to Ohio he began the study of law, was admitted to the bar in 1827, and began practice in Jefferson. He formed a partnership with Joshua R. Giddings in 1831, and in 1835 was elected prosecuting attorney of Asht.abula county, which office he held till 1837. In that year he was chosen as a Whig to the state senate, where, as a member of the judiciary committee, he presented a report that put an end to the granting of divorces by the legislature. In 1839 he was active in opposition to the passage of a more stringent fugitive-slave law, which commissioners from Kentucky were urging on the legislature. The law passed, but his forcible speech against it did much to arouse state pride on the subject and to make it a dead letter. His action cost him his re-election to the senate, but he was chosen again in 1841. In February, 1847, he was elected by the legislature president-judge of the 3d judicial district, and while on the bench he was chosen, on 15 March, 1851, to the U. S. senate, where he remained till 1869. He soon became known as a leader of the small anti-slavery minority, advocated the homestead bill and the repeal of the fugitive-slave law, and opposed the Kansas-Nebraska bill of 1854, the admission of Kansas under the Lecompton constitution of 1858, and the purchase of Cuba. After the assault on Charles Sumner, Robert Toombs avowed in the senate that he had witnessed the attack, and approved it, whereupon Mr. Wade, in a speech of great vehemence, threw down the gage of personal combat to the southern senators. It was expected that there would be an immediate challenge from Toombs, but the latter soon made peace. Subsequently Mr. Wade, Zachariah Chandler, and Simon Cameron made a compact to resent any insult from a southerner by a challenge to fight. This agreement was made public many years afterward. Wade was present at the battle of Bull Run with other congressmen in a carriage, and it is related that after the defeat seven of them alighted, at Wade's proposal, being armed with revolvers, and for a quarter of an hour kept back the stream of fugitives near Fairfax Court-House. This incident, as narrated in the journals, made a sensation at the time. Mr. Wade labored earnestly for a vigorous prosecution of the war, was the chairman and foremost spirit of the joint committee on the conduct of the war in 1861-'2, and was active in urging the passage of a confiscation bill. As chairman of the committee on territories, he reported a bill in 1862 to abolish slavery in all the territories. He was instrumental in the advancement to the portfolio of war of Edwin M. Stanton, whom he recommended strongly to President Lincoln. Though he cordially supported the administration, he did not hesitate to criticise many of its acts, and after the adjournment of the 38th congress he issued, with Henry Winter Davis, what became known as the Wade-Davis manifesto, condemning the president's proposed reconstruction policy. Mr. Wade became president pro tempore of the senate, and thus acting vice-president of the United States, on 2 March, 1867, succeeding Lafayette S. Foster. He advised President Johnson to put on trial for treason a few of the Confederate leaders and pardon the rest, and was radical in his ideas of reconstruction. In the impeachment of President Johnson he voted for conviction. In 1869, at the close of his second term, he was succeeded in the senate by Allen G. Thurman, and he then returned to his home in Jefferson, Ohio. He was one of the chief members of the Santo Domingo commission in 1871, and then became attorney for the Northern Pacific railroad. He was chairman of the Ohio delegation in the Cincinnati national convention of 1876, and earnestly advocated the nomination of Rutherford B. Hayes, but after his accession to the presidency Mr. Wade bitterly condemned his course in relation to the southern states. Though Mr. Wade had been called “Frank Wade” in Ohio, from his middle name, he was known in congress and throughout the country as Ben or “Old Ben” Wade. He was popularly looked upon as one of the bulwarks of the National cause in the darkest hours of the civil war, and was widely admired and respected for his fearlessness, independence, and honesty. His rugged and forcible style of oratory always commanded attention. See his “Life,” by Albert G. Riddle (Cleveland, Ohio, 1888).—His son, JAMES FRANKLIN, entered the army on 14 May, 1861, as 1st lieutenant of the 6th U. S. Cavalry, and rose in rank till at the close of the war he was major and brevet brigadier-general of volunteers. He became lieutenant-colonel on 20 March, 1879, and colonel of the 5th Cavalry on 21 April, 1887. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 310-311. 


WADE, Edward, 1802-1866, West Springfield, Massachusetts, Ohio, lawyer, prominent abolitionist.  Free Soil party U.S. Congressman from Ohio in the 33rd Congress.  Republican representative in the 34th and 35th Congresses.  Opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. 

(Blue, Frederick J. No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005, pp. 11-13, 213, 226, 236, 268; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 302, 363; Mitchell, Thomas G. Antislavery Politics in Antebellum and Civil War America. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007, pp. 23, 25, 26, 48, 65, 71, 72; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 56; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe).


WADSWORTH, James Samuel (October 30, 1807-May 8, 1864), Union soldier. Originally “a Democrat, his strong anti-slavery sentiments made him join in organizing the Free-Soil party, which later merged with the Republican party in 1856. He was a delegate to the unofficial "peace conference" in Washington in February 1861”.  

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 312-313; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1,  pp. 308-309. [C. C. Baldwin, Wadsworth (Copyright 1882); H. G. Pearson, James S. Wadsworth of Geneseo (1913); L. F. Allen, Memorial of the Late General James S. Wadsworth (1865); Proc. Century Association in Honor of Brigadier General James S. Wadsworth (1865); War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army); Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (4 volumes, 1887-88):

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 312-313:

WADSWORTH, James Samuel, soldier, born in Geneseo, New York, 30 October, 1807; died near Chancellorsville, Virginia, 8 May, 1864, was educated at Harvard and Yale and studied law in Albany, completing his course with Daniel Webster. Although he was admitted to the bar in 1833, he never practised his profession, but devoted himself to the management of the family estate in western New York, which amounted to 15,000 acres. In 1852 he was elected president of the State Agricultural Society, in which he was interested during his life. He promoted education and the interests of the community in which he lived. He founded a public library in Geneseo. was a subscriber to the endowment of Geneseo College, aided in establishing the school-district library system, and was active in philanthropical labors. Although a Federalist by education and a Democrat by conviction,  he supported the Free-Soil Party in 1848, and continued to act in defence of the anti-slavery movement. He was a presidential elector on the Republican ticket in 1856 and 1860. In 1861 he was a delegate to the Peace Convention in Washington, and at the beginning of the Civil War he was among the first to offer his services to the government. In April, 1861, he was commissioned a major-general by Governor Edwin D. Morgan, but the appointment was subsequently revoked. When communication with the capital was cut off, he chartered two ships upon his own responsibility, loaded them with provisions, and went with them to Annapolis, where he superintended the delivery of the supplies. He was volunteer aide to General Irvin McDowell at the first battle of Bull Run, where he was commended for bravery and humanity. Afterward he was made brigadier-general of volunteers, 9 August, 1861, assigned to a command in the advance under General George B. McClellan, and guarded the city of Washington. On 15 March, 1862, he became military governor of the District of Columbia. In the autumn of 1862 he was the Republican candidate for governor of New York, but was defeated by Horatio Seymour. In the following December he was assigned to the command of a division in the Army of the Potomac under General Ambrose B. Burnside, and participated in the battle of Fredericksburg, 13 December, 1862. He displayed great military skill in the command of the 1st Division of the 1st Army Corps under General John F. Reynolds. At Gettysburg his division was the first to engage the enemy on 1 July, 1863, and on that day lost 2,400 out of 4,000 men. During the second and third days' fighting he rendered good service in maintaining the heights on the right of the line. At the council of war held after the victory he was one of the three that favored pursuit of the enemy. Early in 1864 he was sent on special service to the Mississippi Valley, and made an extensive tour of inspection through the southern and western states. On the reorganization of the Army of the Potomac in 1864, he was assigned to the command of the 4th Division of the 5th Corps, composed in part of his old command. While endeavoring to rally his troops during the battle of the Wilderness, 6 May, 1864, he was struck in the head by a bullet, and before he could be removed the enemy had gained possession of the ground where he lay. Although unconscious, he lingered for two days. It is said that his troops were inspired by his heroic bearing continually to renew the contest, when but for him they would have yielded. He was brevetted major-general of volunteers on 6 May, 1864. Horace Greeley, in his " American Conflict" (Hartford, 1864-'6), says: "The country's salvation claimed no nobler sacrifice than that of James S. Wadsworth, of New York. . . . No one surrendered more for his country's sake, or gave his life more joyfully for her deliverance." In 1888 a movement was in progress for the erection in Washington of a monument to his memory. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 312-313.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 2, pp. 308-309:

WADSWORTH, JAMES SAMUEL (October 30, 1807-May 8, 1864), Union soldier, was the son of James Wadsworth [q.v.] and his wife, Naomi, daughter of Samuel Wolcott of East Windsor, Connecticut, Born at Geneseo, New York, at a time when the hardships of the first settlement there were over, Wadsworth grew up among pioneer surroundings, but as the prospective heir to a great landed estate. He spent two years at Harvard, without graduating, studied law, and was admitted to the bar, but did not practise, his legal education having been intended only to prepare him for the management of his properties. On May 11, 1834, he married Mary Craig Wharton, daughter of John Wharton, a Quaker merchant of Philadelphia. His position in the community and his own sense of public duty made him active in politics throughout his life, although he had no ambition for office. At first a Democrat, his strong anti-slavery sentiments made him join in organizing the Free-Soil party, which merged with the Republican party in 1856. He was a delegate to the unofficial "peace conference" in Washington in February 1861. From the outbreak of the Civil War his life and fortune were unreservedly at the service of the country. "It always seemed to me," wrote his friend John Lothrop Motley, "that he was the truest and the most thoroughly loyal American I ever knew" (Pearson, post, p. 34). But he was no candidate for high military rank. The governor of New York, on the understanding that he could name two major generals of volunteers, offered an appointment to Wadsworth, who advised the selection of a regular army officer instead, and accepted only when this was found impossible. "I am better than a worse man," was his sagacious comment, and he was frankly gratified when the grant of power to the governor was refused. He went to the front, however, and offered his services as an aide to General Irvin McDowell, a gift accepted with hesitation, for a middle-aged gentleman of national reputation would not seem to be either physically or mentally suitable for an orderly officer. But he proved at the battle of Bull Run that both in hard riding and in intelligent obedience he could match the youngest of the staff. On August 9, 1861, he was commissioned brigadier-general of volunteers. The appointment, which was partly political, was intended to conciliate Republicans of Democratic antecedents. Wadsworth accepted it after considering in his usual detached fashion what the effect on the public service might be. He was, indeed, much better qualified than most of the non-professional general officers. Though destitute of military training like the rest, he had the habit of command, rarer among Union than among Confederate volunteers, and his civil occupations had fitted him peculiarly well for the care of his men in the field. A military education would not have shown him how to organize a system of supply by ox team, as he did when his brigade was camped in the Virginia mud near Arlington during the first winter of the war and mule-drawn wagons could not get through. He was fortunate in not being required to command a large force in action until he had been nearly two years in service and the men under him were seasoned veterans. When the Army of the Potomac moved to the peninsula in the spring of 1862, he was left in command of the defenses of Washington  Doubtful of getting service in the field, he accepted the Republican nomination for governor of New York but was defeated at the election. In December 1862, after the battle of Fredericksburg, he took command of the 1st Division, I Corps. It had a small part in the battle of Chancellorsville and a very great one at Gettysburg. On the first day of the battle, in spite of terrific loss, it held the Confederates in check while the rest of the army was hastening to the battlefield. On the second and third days it held Culp's Hill, on the right of the Union line. In the reorganization of the army for the 1864 campaign, Wadsworth received the 4th Division of the V Corps, made up largely of regiments from his old command. After nearly succeeding in breaking through the Confederate center on the second day (May 6) of the battle of the Wilderness, it was outflanked and driven back. Wadsworth had already had two horses shot under him; his third was unmanageable, and the Confederate line was close upon him before he could turn. He was shot in the head, and the enemy's advance passed over his body. He died two days later in a Confederate field hospital. He was survived by his wife and their six children.

[C. C. Baldwin, Wadsworth (Copyright 1882); H. G. Pearson, James S. Wadsworth of Geneseo (1913), an adequate biography, with ample citations of authorities; L. F. Allen, Memorial of the Late General James S. Wadsworth (1865); Proc. Century Association in Honor of Brigadier General James S. Wadsworth (1865); War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army); Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (4 vols ., 1887-88); New York Monuments Commission, In Memoriam, James Samuel Wadsworth (1916); Morris Schaff, The Battle of the Wilderness (1910); obituary in New York Times, May 11, 1864. ]

T. M. S.


WAGONER, Henry O., 1816-1901, African American, abolitionist, journalist, political leader.  Active in abolitionist newspaper, Western Citizen, and Frederick Douglass’s Frederick Douglass’ Paper, a weekly publication.  Active in Underground Railroad in Chicago area.  Helped enlist soldiers for the Black Union Army regiments.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 11, p. 356)


WALDEN, John Morgan M. E. bishop, born in Lebanon, Warren County, Ohio, 11 February, 1831. For year and a half of he was editor and publisher of a free-state paper in Kansas. He was also a member of the Topeka legislature, and of the Leavenworth Constitutional Convention at the time of its adoption of a constitution in 1858. 

D. H. Moore, John Morgan Walden (1915); Biographical Cyclopedia and Portrait Gallery ... of the State of Ohio, volume V (n. d.); The Biographical Encyclopedia of Ohio of the Nineteenth Century (1876); Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 320; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 330-331

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

WALDEN, John Morgan, M. E. bishop, born in Lebanon, Warren County, Ohio, 11 February, 1831. He was graduated at Farmers' (now Belmont) College, near Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1852, and engaged in educational work for two years and in editorial work for four years, during the last year and a half of which he was editor and publisher of a free-state paper in Kansas. He was also a member of the Topeka legislature, and of the Leavenworth Constitutional Convention at the time of its adoption of a constitution in 1858, under which he was elected superintendent of public instruction. In September of that year he left Kansas and entered, as a minister, the Cincinnati conference of the Methodist Episcopal church, where he occupied several important posts. After a few years he was elected corresponding secretary of the Freedmen's Aid Commission, an undenominational society. He remained in this office until August, 1866, when, on the organization of the Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, he was chosen its first corresponding secretary, and he has been officially connected with it ever since, being its president at the present time. In 1868 he was elected one of the publishing agents of the Western Methodist book concern, and he held that post sixteen years. He was a member of every general conference from 1868 till 1884, when he was elected bishop. He is a man of great industry and capacity for business   and giving attention to energy thing that is committed to his care. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 320. 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 330-331:

WALDEN, JOHN MORGAN (February 11, I831- January 21, 1914), bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, was born near Lebanon, Ohio; the son of Jesse and Matilda (Morgan) Walden, who moved to Hamilton County in 1832. He was of Virginian ancestry, his great-grandfather Walden having moved from Culpeper County to Kentucky in 1770, and his grandfather, Benjamin, to Ohio in 1802. After the death of his mother in 1833 John went to live with relatives near Cincinnati. He attended a local school until 1844, when he went to work. Becoming a wanderer, he found employment as a carpenter, in a country store and post office, and in connection with theatrical performances. A carpenter for whom he worked interested him in Thomas Paine's writings, and he became a skeptic. He read extensively in Scott and Goldsmith and wrote romantic stories over the name of Ned Law for the Hamilton, Ohio, Telegraph (1849-53). After attending Farmers' College, College Hill, Ohio, in 1849, he taught for a year in Miami County, where he was converted by a Methodist circuit rider. Returning to Farmers' College he was graduated in 1852 and for two years was a teacher there.

In 1854 he went to Fairfield, Illinois, where he published the Independent Press, opposing in his editorials the liquor traffic and "squatter sovereignty." The Illinoisans starved him out by refusing to support his paper, and in 1855 he returned to Ohio, where he reported for the Cincinnati Commercial. So deeply interested in the Kansas troubles did he become while reporting the National Democratic Convention of 1856 that he went to Kansas, where he established the Quindaro Chindowan, a free-soil organ. He was a delegate to five free-state conventions, including the Leavenworth constitutional convention (1858). That same year he campaigned over half the Territory, opposing the Lecompton constitution.

On September 8, 1858, he was admitted on trial to the Cincinnati Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The first two years of his ministry were spent on circuits, and on July 3, 1859, he married Martha Young of Cheviot, Ohio. In 1860 he was admitted to the Conference in full connection and sent to the York Street Church, Cincinnati. While he was here the Civil War began, and he became very active and raised two regiments to defend the city against threatening attack. After service in connection with the Ladies' Home

Mission in Cincinnati (1862-64) and as corresponding secretary of the Western Freedmen's Aid Commission and of the Methodist Freedmen's Aid Society, he became in 1867 presiding elder of the East Cincinnati District. The following year he was chosen an assistant agent of the Wes tern Methodist Book Concern. His penchant for statistics and organization, his business ability, and his sympathetic cooperation with preachers made the Concern a financial success.

At the General Conference of 1884 he was elected bishop. In his official capacity he presided at some time over every Conference in the United States and inspected Methodist missionary work in Mexico, South America, Europe, China, and Japan, doing much to shape the missionary policy of his Church. He was a delegate to the Ecumenical Conferences in London, 1881., Washington, 1891, and Toronto, 1911. With respect to church organization he insisted upon strict adherence to the written law, but otherwise he was liberal in his views. He was noted for his wit and for his optimistic spirit. He was happiest when, attired in a white slouch hat and linen duster, he started out for a day's recreation with fish bait in his pocket. His wife and three of his five children survived him. In recognition of his work for the colored race the name of Central Tennessee College, in Nashville, was changed in 1900 to Walden University.

[D. H. Moore, John Morgan Walden (1915); Biographical Cyclopedia and Portrait Gallery ... of the State of Ohio, volume V (n. d.); The Biographical Encyclopedia of Ohio of the Nineteenth Century (1876); H. C. Jennings, "Bishop John Morgan Walden," Journal of the Twenty-seventh Dele gated General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church (1916); C. T. Greve, Centennial History of Cincinnati and Representative Citizen s (1904), volume II; Who's Who in America, 1912-13; Cincinnati Enquirer, January 22, and Cincinnati Times-Star, January 28, 1914; Walden Papers, in possession of Mrs. S. O. Royal.]

W. E. S-h.


WALES, John, Delaware, abolitionist.  Co-founder and first Vice President, Delaware Abolition Society, 1827.


WALKER, Amasa, 1799-1875, Boston, Massachusetts, political economist, abolitionist.  Republican U.S. Congressman from Massachusetts.  Active and vigorous opponent of slavery. Walker was an early supporter of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, 1834.  He submitted a resolution outlining the objectives of the Society to outline principles of religion, philanthropy and patriotism.   American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) Manager, 1837-1840, 1840-1841, 1843-1844, Counsellor, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, 1840-1841.  Co-founder of Free Soil Party in 1848.  Served in Congress December 1862 through March 1863. 

(Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, pp. 60, 254; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 258, 340, 403n25; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 324-325; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 338-339; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 22, p. 485; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe); Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Volume 1.  Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, 223-230; Annual Report of the New England Anti-Slavery Society, 1834). 

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

WALKER, Amasa, political economist, born in Woodstock, Connecticut, 4 May, 1799; died in Brookfield, Massachusetts, 29 October, 1875. He received a district-school education in North Brookfield, where among his fellow-students was William C. Bryant. In 1814 he entered commercial life, and in 1820 formed a partnership with Allen Newell in North Brookfield, but three years later withdrew to become the agent of the Methuen manufacturing company. In 1825 he formed with Charles G. Carleton the firm of Carleton and Walker, of Boston, Massachusetts, but in 1827 he went into business independently. In 1840 he withdrew permanently from commercial affairs, and in 1842 he went to Oberlin, Ohio, on account of his great interest in the college there, and gave lectures on political economy at that institution until 1848. After serving in the legislature, he became the Free-soil and Democratic candidate for speaker, and in 1849 was chosen to the Massachusetts senate, where he introduced a plan for a sealed-ballot law, which was enacted in 1851, and carried a bill providing that Webster's Dictionary should be introduced into the common schools of Massachusetts. He was elected secretary of state in 1851, re-elected in 1852, and in 1853 was chosen a member of the convention for revising the state constitution, becoming the chairman of the committee on suffrage. He was appointed in 1853 one of the examiners in political economy in Harvard, and held that office until 1860, and in 1859 he began an annual course of lectures on that subject in Amherst, which he continued until 1869. Meanwhile, in 1859, he was again elected to the Massachusetts legislature, and in 1860 he was chosen a member of the electoral college of that state, casting his ballot for Abraham Lincoln. He was also elected as a Republican to congress, and served from 1 December, 1862, till 3 March, 1863. Mr. Walker is best known for his work in advocating new and reformatory measures. In 1839 he urged a continuous all-rail route of communication between Boston and Mississippi river, and during the same year he became president of the Boston temperance society, the first total abstinence association in that city. He was active in the anti-slavery movement, though not to the extent of recommending unconstitutional methods for its abolition, and in 1848 he was one of the founders of the Free-soil party. Mr. Walker was a member of the first International peace congress in London in 1843, and was one of its vice-presidents, and in 1849 he held the same office in the congress in Paris. The degree of LL. D. was conferred on him by Amherst in 1867. In 1857 he began the publication of a series of articles on political economy in “Hunt's Merchant's Magazine,” and he was accepted as an authority on questions of finance. Besides other contributions to magazines, he published “Nature and Uses of Money and Mixed Currency” (Boston, 1857), and “Science of Wealth, a Manual of Political Economy” (1866), of which eight editions have been sold, and it has been translated into Italian. With William B. Calhoun and Charles L. Flint he issued “Transactions of the Agricultural Societies of Massachusetts” (7 volumes, 1848-'54). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 324-325. 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 338-339:

WALKER, AMASA (May 4, 1799-October 29, 1875), business man, economist, congressman, was born in Woodstock, Connecticut, the son of Walter and Priscilla (Carpenter) Walker, and a descendant of Samuel Walker of Lynn, Massachusetts, who came to New England about 1630. His childhood was spent in Brookfield; Massachusetts, to which place his parents moved not long after his birth. Here he attended the district school and Worked on the farm-or for the card manufacturers of Leicester at seventy-five cents a week-until he was fifteen years old, when he became a clerk in a country store. During the next six years he varied this employment by farm work, by teaching, and by an attempt to prepare for Amherst College which failed because of his frail health. At twenty-one, with a partner, he purchased a store in West Brookfield, but three years later sold his share in the small business and became an agent for the Methuen Manufacturing Company. His next move carried him to Boston, where in 1825 he established a boot-and-shoe store with Charles G. Carleton, whose sister Emeline he married on July 6, 1826. Her death occurred two years later, and on June 23, 1834, he married Hannah Ambrose of Concord, New Hampshire. To this marriage three children were born.

While he was extending his business southward and westward from Boston, Walker's attention was drawn to the railroad as the coming means of transportation. In a series of articles published in the Boston Daily Advertiser and Patriot in 1835, under the signature "South Market Street," he urged the building of a railroad to connect Boston and Albany; he was also one of a committee to visit Albany in order to induce the citizens of that city to build their end of such a road. Four years later, on a trip to the West, he presented to audiences in St. Louis and Alton, Illinois, the desirability of a railroad connecting Boston with the Mississippi River, but his suggestion that the time would come when a man might travel from Boston to St. Louis eating and sleeping on the train provoked only mirth.

In 1840, being now provided with a modest livelihood despite heavy losses in the panic of 1837, he retired from business, partly because of ill health but also because he wished to devote his time to study and to public service. The first months after his retirement were spent in Florida in search of health, but for the most part the years which followed were crowded with activities. In 1842 he visited Oberlin College, which he had helped to found, and for seven years thereafter, at irregular intervals and without remuneration, he. lectured at Oberlin on political economy. From 1853 to 1860 he was an examiner in political economy at Harvard, and from 1860 to 1869 he lectured at Amherst College.

Walker's special interest in the field of economics was the monetary system, to which he had turned his attention after the panic of 1837. In 1857 he published in Hunt's Merchants' Magazine and Commercial Review a series of articles on the subject, which also appeared in pamphlet form as The Nature and Uses of Money and Mixed Currency (1857); The panic of 1857 gave him an opportunity to put his opinions to practical test. When the business men of Boston agreed to maintain specie payment in that city Walker argued that it could not be done for more than two weeks and that the tightening of credit necessitated by the effort would result in the ruin of many business houses. His proposal that the suspension should take place at once met with shocked opposition; but twelve days later, after a number of failures, suspension was forced upon the Boston banks. The publicity which this episode gained brought him much into demand as a speaker on currency problems. His most considerable publication, The Science of Wealth: A Manual of Political Economy (1866), was widely read and in 1876 was quoted by Walker's son, Francis Amasa Walker [q.v.], in his better-known work, The Wages Question (pp. 141, 231). Amansa Walker's qualifications for the authorship of his treatise he described as "a practical knowledge of business and banking affairs generally, and a most earnest and persistent search for the truth in all matters appertaining to my favorite science" (Science of Wealth), p. ix).

In politics, Walker was successively a Clay protectionist, a member of the Anti-Masonic party, a Democrat, a Free-Soiler, and a Republican. In 1848 he was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives and was the candidate of Free-Soilers and Democrats for speaker. The next autumn he entered the state Senate. In 1851 and 1852 he was secretary of state of Massachusetts, and the following year he served as chairman of the committee on suffrage of the constitutional. convention of the state. In 1859 he was chosen for a second term in the state House of Representatives, where he assisted in revising the Massachusetts banking laws. Elected as a Republican to fill a vacancy in Congress (December 1, 1862-March 3, 1863), he joined in the monetary debates of that body and throughout the remainder of his life, both in his private correspondence and in articles in periodicals, he frequently expressed his views on monetary questions, especially his belief in the need for contraction of the currency.

During the. years after his retirement from business Walker lived in the Brookfield residence which had belonged to his father. He was president of the Boston Temperance Society in 1839; ten years. earlier he had been a founder and the first secretary of the Boston Lyceum. Though warmly attached to the anti-slavery cause, he insisted that more form must be accomplished by constitutional means. His heart was also enlisted in the cause of world peace and as vice-president he attended the International Peace Congress held in England in 1844 and the Paris Congress of 1849.

[Holmes Ammidown, Historical Collections (1874), volume II; F. Walker, Memoir of Hon. Amasa Walker, LL.D. (1888), reproduced from New-England Historical and Genealogical Register, April 1888; New-England Historical and Genealogy Register, January 1898; J.P. Munroe, A Life of Francis Amasa-Walker (1923); D. I. Hurd, History of Worcester County, Massachusetts (1889); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); Boston Transcript, October 29, 1875; Hugh McCulloch Papers, volume III, Library of Congress]  

E. D.


WALKER, Charles, Reverend, Rutland, Vermont, clergyman.  Agent of the American Colonization Society (ACS) in New England.  Assistant to ACS agent Reverend Joshua N. Danforth of Boston. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 197)


WALKER, David, 1796?-1830, born Wilmington, North Carolina, free African American, author, abolitionist.  Wrote Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World.  Mother was free; father was a slave.  Founder of the Massachusetts General Colored Association, which opposed colonization.  Walker was a subscription agent for the newspaper, Freedom’s Journal.

(Aptheker, 1965; Burrow, 2003; Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, p. 131; Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 114-115; Hammond, 2011, pp. 96, 177; Hinks, 1997; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 258, 340, 403n25; Pease, William H., & Pease, Jane H. The Antislavery Argument. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965, pp. 298-310; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 25, 39, 172, 463, 501-502, 581-585, 588; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, p. 340; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 22, p. 487; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 11, p. 378). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, p. 340:

WALKER, DAVID (September 28, 1785-June 28, 1830), negro leader, was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, of a free mother and a slave father. His status was that of a free man and in his youth he traveled widely in the South. At an early age he acquired a deep and bitter sympathy with the enslaved members of his race and in his wide reading, particularly in historical works, he sought parallels to the American negro's situation in the enslavement and oppression of ancient peoples. Some time before 1827 he went to Boston where he established a second-hand clothing business on Brattle Street. In 1829 there appeared the work for which he is best known, an octavo pamphlet of seventy-six pages entitled Walker's Appeal in four articles together with a Preamble to the Colored Citizens of the World, but in particular and very expressly to those of the United States of America. The text of the appeal was a closely reasoned, eloquent and occasionally rhetorical argument against slavery. The author called upon the colored people to rise against their oppressors and to resort to whatever violence might be necessary, but, at the same time, he counseled forgiveness of the past if the slaveholders would let their victims go.

The Appeal was calculated to stir up the suppressed race to mob and race violence by its forceful, primitive, emotional tone, but, on the other hand it contained a religious and prophetic vein that pied with the slaveholders to repent of their sins while there was still time, since the wrath of God must surely overwhelm them otherwise. Many anti-slavery leaders and free negroes rejected Walker's policy of violence and he circulated his pamphlets at his own expense. His courage and sincerity could possibly have served his cause more effectively had he adopted other tactics, but his course at least testifies to the strength of these two characteristics. A second edition of the pamphlet appeared in 1830 and penetrated the South to spread consternation there among the slaveholders, especially in the seaboard slave states, where incoming ships were searched for it. In a single day after a copy was discovered in Georgia the legislature rushed through a law that made "the circulation of pamphlets of evil tendency among our domestics" a capital offense. A price was set on Walker's head in the South, and the mayor of Savannah wrote with reference to the possible punishment of the author to the mayor of Boston, Harrison Gray Otis [q.v.]. The latter replied in a letter (February 10, 1830), a copy of which he sent also to William B. Giles [q.v.], governor of Virginia, in which he condemned the tendency of the pamphlet but stated that the author had not made himself amenable to the laws of Massachusetts. True to his expressed intention Walker published a third, revised, and still more militant edition of the pamphlet in March 1830. Three months later he died. It was rumored and widely believed that his death was due to poisoning, but this has never been proved.

In 1828 he was married in Boston to a woman referred to simply as "Miss Eliza --" in H. H. Garnet's Walker's Appeal, With a Brief Sketch of His Life (1848). The only child of the marriage, Edwin G. Walker, born posthumously, was elected in 1866 to the House of Representatives of the Massachusetts legislature.

[John Daniels, In Freedom's Birthplace (1914); William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879, The Story of His Life; volume I (1885); G. W. Williams, History of the Negro Race in America (1883), volume II; S. J. May, Some Recollections of Our Antislavery Conflict (1869); Richmond Enquirer (Richmond, Virginia), February 18, 1830.)

M. G.


WALKER, Edwin G., 1831?-1901, African American, lawyer, politician, abolitionist.  Participated in Boston’s abolition groups.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 11, p. 380)


WALKER, Isaac P., 1813-1872, lawyer, U.S. Senator, anti-slavery Democrat from Wisconsin. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 326-327)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 326-327:

WALKER, Isaac P, senator, born in 1813; died in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1 April, 1872. He adopted the profession of law, removed to Wisconsin in 1841, practised in Milwaukee, and took an active part in early political events in the state. He served in the territorial congress in 1847-'8, and in the latter year was chosen to the U. S. senate as an Anti-slavery Democrat. His policy in that body was deemed timid by his constituents, for, although he wished to preserve the Union, he did not properly represent their attitude on the Wilmot proviso. He was not returned in the next election, retired from politics, and resumed the practice of law. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 326-327.


WALKER, John, Gurnsey County, Ohio, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1840-1842.


WALKER, Jonathon, Captain, 1799-1878, abolitionist, reformer.  Attempted to aid escape of slaves from Pensacola, Florida.  Was caught, tried and convicted, and branded on hand with “SS” for “slave stealer.”  His story revealed evil of slave trade and slave laws. 

(Filler, Louis. The Crusade Against Slavery, 1830-1860. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960, p. 164; Mabee, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 266, 268, 269, 298; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 328; Wilson, 1872, Volume 2, pp. 82-83). 

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 328:

WALKER, Jonathan, reformer, born on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in 1799; died near Muskegon, Mich., 1 May, 1878. He was captain of a fishing vessel, in his youth, but about 1840 he went to Florida, where he became a railroad-contractor. He was interested in the condition of the slaves, and in 1844 aided several of them in an attempt to make their escape in an open boat from the coast of Florida to the British West Indies. After doubling the capes, he was prostrated by illness, and the crew being ignorant of navigation, they would all have been drowned had they not been rescued by a wrecking sloop that took Walker to Key West, whence he was sent in irons to Pensacola. On his arrival there he was put in prison, chained to the floor, and deprived of light and proper food. Upon his trial in a U. S. court, he was convicted, sentenced to be heavily fined, put on the pillory, and branded on his right hand with a hot iron with the letters “S. S.,” for “slave-stealer,” a U. S. marshal executing the sentence. He was then remanded to jail, where he was confined eleven months, and released only after the payment of his fine by northern Abolitionists. For the subsequent five years he lectured on slavery in the northern and western states. He removed to Michigan about 1850, where he resided near Muskegon until his death. A monument was erected to his memory on 1 August, 1878. He was the subject of John G. Whittier's poem “The Man with the Branded Hand.” See “Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America,” by Henry Wilson (Boston, 1874). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 328.

Chapter: “Underground Railroad. - Operations at the East and in the Middle States,” by Henry Wilson, in History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 1872.
About the year 1840, Captain Jonathan Walker, of Massachusetts, took a contract to build a portion of a projected railroad in Florida. In fulfilling that contract, he employed several negroes.  Being a Christian man, he so far carried his religion into his daily life, as to treat his workmen as human beings, permitting them to sit at the same table with himself, and to bend the knee around the same family altar. The natural result followed. Kindness begat kindness, and they loved him and trusted in him. Accordingly, in 1844, they persuaded him to enter upon the every-way hazardous venture of aiding them in an attempt, in an open boat, to escape from the land of chains to a neighboring island, belonging to the British crown. After doubling the capes of Florida, he was prostrated by violent sickness. He helpless, and the fugitives ignorant of navigation, they were at the mercy of the winds and waves. Found by the crew of a wrecking-sloop, he was taken into Key West, where he was thrown into prison, and kept in irons until he was despatched to Pensacola. During the passage he was compelled, like a criminal of the vilest sort, to lie on the bottom of the steamer in chains. Arriving in Pensacola, he was cast into a cell in which, two days previously, a man had committed suicide, the floor still saturated with blood. There, chained to the floor, he was allowed neither bed, chair, nor table. He was tried in a United States court, convicted, and sentenced to be branded on the right hand with the capitals “S. S.''; to stand in the pillory one hour; to pay as many fines as there were slaves "stolen"; to suffer as many terms' imprisonment; to pay the costs, and to stand committed until the fines were paid. The execution of these sentences was at once entered upon. A United State marshal branded his hand with the initials of the words "slave stealer,” he was compelled to stand in the pillory, was pelted with rotten eggs by a renegade Northerner, and remanded to prison, where he lay for eleven months, with a heavy chain on his leg, which the jailer would not remove, even for the purpose of changing his clothing. By efforts of friends, in which Loring Moody took a leading part, a sufficient sum was raised to liquidate his fines, and in the summer of 1845 he was set at liberty. The most impressive lessons of that strange and revolting incident lie in the sharp and broad contrast between the personal bravery and moral grandeur of the man and the craven cowardice and heartless ignominy of the nation; and in the profound mistake they made who supposed that they could thus fix a stigma upon such a person, or tarnish his good name, and that the disgrace was not all their own, and all the honor his. For there were many, even in those days of darkness, who saw, with Whittier, that that brand was "highest honor;" and who welcomed the "brave seaman" back to his New England home as the chivalrous possessor of the old "heroic spirit of an earlier, better day." Like him, too, they said in thought, if not in his own ringing words: 

“Then lift that manly right hand, bold ploughman of the wave,
Its branded palm shall prophesy "SALVATION TO THE SLAVE'':
Hold, up its fire-wrought language, that whoso reads may feel
His heart swell strong within him, his sinews change to steel.

"Hold it up before our sunshine, up against our Northern air.
Ho! men of Massachusetts, for the love of God, look there!
Take it henceforth for your standard like the Bruce's heart of yore;
In the dark strife closing round ye, let that hand be seen before."

Source:  Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Volume 2.  Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, 82-84.


WALKER, Mary Edwards, 1832-1919, feminist, physician (surgeon), Union Army surgeon, women’s rights and suffrage activist, abolitionist.  Received the Medal of Honor for her services during the Civil War, the only woman to have received this high honor. 

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, p. 352)


WALKER, Robert John (July 19, 1801- November 11, 1869), whose name is sometimes given as Robert James and most often as Robert J. Walker, United States senator, secretary of the treasury, governor of Kansas Territory, supported the free-soil movement. Sustained treaty for suppressing the African slave trade.  Advocate for gradual emancipation and colonization of slaves.  Freed his own slaves.  During Civil War, supported emancipation as a necessity for Union victory.  Strong supporter of the Union. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 329; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, p. 355)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 355-358:

WALKER, ROBERT JOHN (July 19, 1801- November 11, 1869), whose name is sometimes given as Robert James and most often as Robert J. Walker, United States senator, secretary of the treasury, governor of Kansas Territory, was born in Northumberland, Pennsylvania, the son of Jonathan Hoge Walker [q.v.] and his wife Lucretia (or Lucy) Duncan. Prepared' for college at town schools and by private tutors, Robert attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated first in his class in 1819. Money had to be borrowed for his board and tuition from his landlord, the Reverend Samuel B. Wylie; it was repaid in a few years by young Walker himself. He was admitted to the bar in Pittsburgh in 1821. Walker at once plunged into politics. In the fall of 1823 he was one of the sponsors of a meeting of the Republicans of Allegheny County to nominate Andrew Jackson for the presidency, and wrote the address which called cm the party in Pennsylvania to support him at a state convention. The Harrisburg convention of 1824 marked the success of this movement, and Walker's speech was adopted as the address of the convention. Subsequently, a laudatory biographer said: "Thus at the early age of twenty-two, we find Mr. Walker the acknowledged leader of the democracy of ... Pennsylvania." (United States Magazine and Democratic Review, February 1845, p. 157).

None the less, in 1826 he moved to Natchez, Mississippi Thither he had been preceded by his brother Duncan, with whom he entered into a lucrative law practice. But Walker's associations were mainly with the more eager and speculative spirits of those flush times. His speculations in plantations, slave, and wild lands were magnificent, involving a debt of several hundred thousand dollars. At the same time he always posed as the friend of the squatter and small farmer. Though known as a Jackson man, Walker did not at first take conspicuous part in politics. In 1834, however, he was taken up by the Democratic managers of the state as almost the only available man able to cope in debate with the redoubtable and eccentric Senator George Poindexter [q.v.]. Walker's successful campaign for the Senate was carefully managed by an inner ring of which William M. Gwin was the most important member. It was marked by the introduction of a type of stump speaking and sectional appeal which was new in Mississippi. The great stroke of this campaign of 1835, however, was the procurement of an "original letter" from Andrew Jackson, expressing confidence in the candidate. Some have questioned the authenticity of this letter (Claiborne, post, p. 416), but it was conspicuously useful to Walker for some years, serving as a sort of certificate of respectability when he was accused of being too intimate with banks and bankers.

Walker took his seat in the Senate on February 22, 1836. He was one of the most ardent of the southwestern group, and rarely missed an opportunity to speak in favor of the claims of new states to public lands, in favor of preemption and lower prices, and against distribution of the surplus, the protective tariff, and abolitionism. He won an early notoriety by seeking a quarrel with Clay; and, being an eager and indefatigable worker, he soon won a place for himself. He was conspicuous in the debates on the complicated matters connected with the surplus revenues and the "American system"; and his friends gave him credit for the permanent preemption law of 1841. He was a powerful supporter of the independent treasury plan. He was reelected to the Senate for the term beginning March 4, 1841, over Seargent S. Prentiss [q.v.]. He was definitely identified with the anti-bank and repudiating party in Mississippi.

Walker's service as a senator is chiefly memorable for his activities in connection with the annexation of Texas. By temper, by conviction, and by interest he was an expansionist. His resolution of January 11, 1837, calling for recognition of the independence of Texas was with difficulty put through the Senate, but his efforts won great applause in Texas. His opportunity came only with the presidency of John Tyler. It is doubtful whether he inspired Tyler's bank vetoes, but it is certain that he was one of the President's foremost allies in the efforts of 1843-45 to add Texas to the Union. In January 1844 he wrote to Andrew Jackson that the Senate would ratify a treaty of annexation, and urged him to put pressure on Houston to secure one. A published letter of his, dated January 8, 1844 (Letter of Mr. Walker of Mississippi, Relative to the Annexation of Texas, 1844), was very widely circulated and served as the major weapon in the campaign to prepare public opinion for the expected treaty. It contained an elaborate argument that annexation would help toward the ultimate extinction of slavery, but the claim has been made that this was omitted from the version of the letter circulated in the South (G. L. Prentiss, A Memoir of S.S. Prentiss, 1855, II, 336). When Tyler's treaty of annexation came to the Senate, Walker was the leader in defending it; many factors, however, combined to bring about its decisive defeat.

Meanwhile, the Democratic party was engaged in the difficult task of selecting a presidential candidate. Walker appears to have been at the center of the manipulations which resulted in the rejection of Martin Van Buren and the nomination of James K. Polk [qq.v.]. There is some indication that it was on his initiative that Van Buren's letter (published April 27, 1844), which declared against immediate annexation, was solicited. Walker, long the leader of the annexationists, was too shrewd a politician to play the game of Tyler or Calhoun; his role, then, was that of leader of an insurgent group, working to defeat Van Buren and secure an annexationist candidate who would divide the embittered factions as little as possible. This group, potently aided by Thomas Ritchie of Virginia, was successful at the Baltimore convention. In the campaign of 1844 Walker also served as head of the Democratic campaign committee in Washington. In this capacity he was betrayed by over-eagerness, for he circulated a pamphlet, The South in Danger (1844), which was so violent in its attempts to identify the Whigs with abolitionism that the Whigs reprinted it for use in the North.

Walker's last service to Texas was in February 1845, when he drafted the compromise resolutions which finally resolved the deadlock in the Senate over annexation. Meanwhile, Polk was being subjected to pressure to give him an important place in the cabinet. Dallas and the westerners favored him for the state department, but Polk finally made him secretary of the treasury. The appointment was clearly a concession to Lewis Cass and the western Democrats, though Andrew Jackson wrote to Polk on May 2, 1845, that Walker, because of his financial associations. was the only one of the cabinet of whom he disapproved (J. S. Bassett, ed., Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, VI, 1933, p. 405).

During his four years as secretary, Walker, despite bad health, was indefatigable. His first concern was to secure the establishment of the independent or "constitutional" treasury system for the handling of public monies; until this was obtained he felt that the country had its "hand in the Lions mouth." Far more of his energy, however, was devoted to the revision of the tariff, a matter in which he saw eye to eye with the President. His well-known report of 1845 on the state of the finances, which at once became a classic of free-trade literature, set forth with emphasis the constitutional, economic, and social arguments in favor of a tariff for revenue only (House Document No. 6, 29 Congress, l Session). It smells a little of the study but remains a very able state paper; and at the time it was utilized in the current controversy in England as well as in the United States. The tariff bill of 1846, largely framed by Walker, was put through as an administration measure with difficulty and with the aid of personal lobbying by him. It was, however, a moderate protective rather than a free-trade measure, and from Walker's point of view it was mutilated by the omission of duties on tea and coffee.

The financing of the Mexican War was carried out simply and successfully. Walker had close personal relations with the powerful Washington firm of Corcoran and Riggs, and although it is possible that certain financiers enjoyed the use of government funds longer than was proper, the public borrowings were made on favorable terms and without scandal (Diary of Polk, III, 140 ff.). Walker initiated two administrative changes of importance. On his urgent recommendation, provision was made for the establishment of a warehousing system for the handling of imports (9 United States Statutes at Large, 53), such as has remained in use ever since. His last public report was a study of this system, based especially on the data obtained by commissioners whom he had sent to England (Report of the Secretary of the Treasury on the Warehousing System (Senate Executive Document No. 32, 30 Congress, 2 Session). He was also mainly responsible for the creation of the Department of the Interior in 1849. The bill for its organization was drawn by him as a direct result of his administrative experience, and was carried through the Senate by Jefferson Davis assisted by Daniel Webster. Polk signed the bill though he did not approve of it.

Walker constantly urged in the cabinet the acquisition of all the territory the United States could get-which, by the autumn of 1847, meant all of Mexico. His views were well known, and when he was joined by Buchanan and Vice" President Dallas, anti-slavery northerners ex" pressed great alarm. Polk was not to be stampeded by any pressure from official advisers, and had at least the tacit Support of all his cabinet save Walker and Buchanan in his final decision to submit the Trist treaty to the Senate (February 1848). It was said, but cannot be proved, that Walker lobbied behind Polk's back for the rejection of the treaty. At any rate, a few months later Walker and the President were talking cordially about the possible annexation of Yucatan, while it was the Secretary of the Treasury who suggested $100,000,000 as the sum which might be, and was, offered for Cuba.

When he went out of office in 1849, Walker made no attempt to resume participation in state politics. Until 1857 he lived as a private citizen in Washington, attending to his extensive speculative interests-lands in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Wisconsin, projects for a Pacific railroad, a quicksilver mine in California; practising in the Supreme Court; and, in 1851-52, making a long stay in England to sell the securities of the Illinois Central Railroad. In 1853 he was offered and accepted the mission to China, but there was disagreement or misunderstanding about it and he resigned, feeling that President Pierce had abused him badly. Walker's influence was rated highly by politicians behind the scenes, and in 1856 he was again brought into active politics as a supporter of Buchanan's presidential ambitions. After the election he was regarded as a strong candidate for the State Department; but there was strong objection from the South. His appointment as governor of Kansas Territory (March 1857) was made with the concurrence of all Democratic factions, and both Buchanan and Douglas had to urge him to accept the position. But Kansas, though the grave of governors, offered a great opportunity to a man confident in his own powers, and it seems likely that 'Walker saw the governorship as a stepping-stone to the Senate and the presidency (F. W. Seward, Seward at Washington, 1891, II, 299).

Walker's understanding with Buchanan was explicit that the bona fide residents of Kansas should choose their "social institutions'' by fair voting, and he stood steadily by the implications of this pledge. His inaugural address, however, was not read or approved by the cabinet. Designed as an appeal to the patriotism and self-interest of the Kansans, and containing the "isothermal" thesis that climatic conditions would be the ultimate determinant of the location of slavery, it aroused a storm of protest in the South. "We are betrayed," wrote a fire-eater at once (Harmon, post, p. 9). Walker suddenly became a liability to the administration. This was because of his attempts to conciliate the free-state party in Kansas by promising with reiterated emphasis that he would do his utmost, with the support of the administration at Washington, to enable a majority of the people in Kansas to rule. Walker's ambition was to bring a pacified and Democratic state into the Union, and he was convinced that it would be a free state. He failed to accomplish this, less because of certain blunders he made than because of the failure of the administration to support him. But he did prevent recurrence of civil war. Finally, when he fail ed to persuade the President that the so-called ratification of the Lecompton Constitution was unacceptable, in December 1857 he resigned in a letter which was a pamphlet. He subsequently took some part in the agitation against the Lecompton Constitution.

Walker was at heart a Free-Soiler as early as 1849 and is said to have freed his slaves in 1838. The outbreak of the Civil War, accordingly, found him an eager Unionist, though still very much a Democrat, and in the spring of 1861 he was speaking at Union meetings. In 1862 he and F. P. Stanton became proprietors of and frequent contributors to the very loyal Continental Monthly, which lasted until the end of 1864. From April 1848 to the latter part of 1864 he undertook a financial mission in Europe which he himself later summarized by saying that while abroad he had "caused to be taken and bought" 250 millions of Federal bonds (National Intelligencer, November 12, 1869). His prestige in England, both because of his treasury report of 1845 and his governorship of Kansas, was considerable, and he made use of it not only in favor of the Union bonds but also in the publication of a series of pamphlets showing, not very candidly, how slavery, Jefferson Davis, and the repudiation of debts were almost synonymous terms.

Walker's subsequent activities were obscure but characteristic. His law business had long been concerned chiefly with the prosecution of claims. He seems to have been concerned with a minor phase of the peace parleys at Montreal in 1864-65 (Dunbar Rowland, ed., Jefferson Davis ... His letters, Papers and Speeches, 1923, VII, 327, n. I); he acted as lobbyist of the Russian minister and Seward in putting the Alaska purchase bill through Congress; and during his last illness he penned an article urging the advantages which would come to Nova Scotia were it to submit to annexation to the United States (Washington Chronicle, April 23, 1869). He died in Washington on November II; 1869.

Walker was "a mere whiffet of a man, stooping and diminutive, with a wheezy voice and expressionless face" (Claiborne, p. 41 SJ.; he weighed less than a hundred pounds. Though his health was bad -and he may have been epileptic (McCormac, post, p. 529, n. 88), he was a particularly energetic and busy person who greatly impressed his associates by his encyclopedia knowledge. At one of the busiest periods of his life he was engaged, as a labor of love, on a "history of republics." His marriage on April 4, 1825, to Mary Blechynden Bache, a great-granddaughter of Benjamin Franklin, grand-daughter of A. J. Dallas, and daughter of Richard Bache of Texas, seems to have been happy; there were eight children of whom five survived him.  

[Materials concerning Walker are widely scattered. Among accounts of his life are W. E. Dodd, Robert J. Walker, Imperialist (1914), a short sketch; H. D. Jordan, "A Politician of Expansion: Robert J. Walker," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, December 1932; G. J. Leftwich, articles in Green Bag, March 1903; and Publications Mississippi Historical Society, VI; 1902, pp. 359-71; U.S. Magazine and Democratic Review, February 1845, pp. 157-64; J. F. H. Claiborne, Mississippi, volume I (1880); H. S. Foote, Casket of Reminiscences (1874); J. W. Forney, Anecdotes of Public Men (1 873), pp. 117-30; obituary in National Republican (Washington, D. C.), November 12, 1869; and, in particular, death notice and article in Washington Daily Morning Chronicle, November 12, 1869. For important aspects of his career, see G. W. Brown, Reminiscences of Governor R. J. Waller (1902); W. A. Dunning, "Paying for Alaska," Political Science Quarterly, September 1912; H.B. Learned, "The Establishment of the Secretaryship of the Interior," American Historical Review, July 1911; and "The Sequence of Appointments to Polk's original Cabinet," Ibid., October 1924; E. I. McCormac, James K. Polk (1922); A. B. Morris, "Robert J. Walker in the Kansas Struggle" (MS., 1916); M. M. Quaife, ed., The Diary of James K. Poll, (4 volumes, 1910); J.E. Winston, "Robert J. Walker, Annexationist," Texas Review, April 1917; "Mississippi and the Independence of Texas," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, July 1917; and "The Lost Commission," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, September 1918; Transaction Kansas State Historical Society, 1889-96 (1896), containing documents of Walker's administration as governor; G. D. Harmon, "President James Buchanan's Betrayal of Governor Robert J. Walker of Kansas," Pennsylvania Magazine History and Biography, January 1929; A. E. Taylor, "Walker's Financial Mission to London," Journal of Economic and Business History, February 1931. Various MS. collections of his contemporaries in the Library of Congress and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania are important. ]

H.D.J.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 329:

WALKER, Robert John, statesman, born at Northumberland, Pennsylvania, 23 July, 1801; died in Washington, D. C., 11 November, 1869. His father was a soldier of the Revolution, and a judge of the common pleas, of the high court of errors and appeals of Pennsylvania, and of the U. S. district court. After his graduation in August, 1819, at the state university at Philadelphia, with the first honor of a large class, he began the practice of law at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1822, with great success. In 1826 he removed to Mississippi, where he entered vigorously into law and politics, taking an active part in 1832 and 1833 against nullification and secession. In January, 1833, in the Natchez “Journal,” he made an extended argument against the doctrine of disunion and in favor of coercion against rebellious states, which was highly extolled by James Madison. In January, 1836, he was Union candidate for the U.S. senate in opposition to George Poindexter, and was elected, and at this time he influenced the legislature of Mississippi to adopt resolutions denouncing nullification and secession as treason. In 1840 he was re-elected to the U. S. senate by a two-to-one majority over the orator Sergeant S. Prentiss. During his service in the senate he took an active part in its debates, especially in opposition to John C. Calhoun. He supported the administrations of Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren; but when the latter disapproved of the annexation of Texas, Walker opposed him, and in the Baltimore convention of 1844 labored for the nomination of James K. Polk to the presidency. By Mr. Polk he was appointed secretary of the treasury, which office he held till 5 March, 1849. In his course in the senate Mr. Walker opposed the Bank of the United States and the distribution of the surplus revenue among the states, advocating, instead, its application to the public defences. He opposed a protective tariff, and in a speech on 3 March, 1836, proposed the celebrated Homestead bill. He sustained with much energy the treaty for suppressing the African slave-trade, and throughout his political career always and consistently advocated gradual emancipation, exhibiting his sincerity in 1838 by manumitting all his own slaves. He sustained New York in the McLeod case, and introduced and carried the resolution of 1837 recognizing the in dependence of Texas. He was the first to propose the annexation of Texas by a letter in the public prints in January, 1844, recommending, as a condition, a scheme for gradual emancipation and colonization, which was fiercely attacked by John C. Calhoun. While secretary of the treasury he prepared and carried the tariff of 1846, various loan bills, the warehousing system, the Mexican tariff, and the bill to organize the department of the interior. After leaving the treasury, he was offered by President Pierce in 1853 the post of commissioner to China, which he declined. The part that he took in the events that immediately preceded the civil war was active. He opposed the repeal of the Missouri compromise, though after it became a law he supported it on the ground that was assumed by Stephen A. Douglas. In 1857 he accepted the post of governor of Kansas on the pledge of President Buchanan that the state constitution should be submitted to the vote of the people; but after rejecting the forged and fraudulent returns in Kansas, and opposing the Lecompton constitution, Mr. Walker resigned, and, going before congress, defeated the attempt to force the corrupt measure on the territory. After Abraham Lincoln's election Mr. Walker took ground, earnestly and immediately, in favor of re-enforcing the southern forts and of sustaining the Union by force if necessary. In April, 1861, he addressed a great meeting in Union square, New York, advocating prompt and vigorous measures, and he did this when many of the best men of both parties deprecated a resort to extremities. His decided course had great influence in shaping the policy of the government. Early in 1863 he joined James R. Gilmore in the conduct of the “Continental Monthly,” which the latter had established the year before to advocate emancipation as a political necessity, and he wrote for it some of its ablest political articles. In the same year he was appointed by the government financial agent of the United States in Europe, and succeeded in negotiating $250,000,000 of the 5-20 bonds. Returning to the United States in November, 1864, he devoted himself thereafter to a large law-practice in Washington, and to writing for the “Continental Monthly” articles on financial and political topics, in which he was understood to present the views of the state and treasury departments. During this period he was influential in procuring the ratification of the Alaska treaty and in securing the passage of the bill for a railroad to the Pacific. During his public life of nearly forty years Mr. Walker exercised a strong and often controlling influence on affairs. He had a broad and comprehensive mind, and a patriotism that embraced the whole country. As a financier he takes high rank.   Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI. 


WALLACE, John, Muskingham County, Ohio, Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1835-38.


WALLACE, Lewis (April 10, 1827-February 15, 1905), lawyer, soldier, diplomat, author, commonly known as "Lew" Wallace, He campaigned against Zackary Taylor for president in 1848, and edited a Free-Soil paper. Author of popular novel Ben-Hur. Lew Wallace, An Autobiography, (1906).   

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 375-376:

WALLACE, LEWIS (April 10, 1827-February 15, 1905), lawyer, soldier, diplomat, author, commonly known as "Lew" Wallace, was born at Brookville, Indiana, the son of David [q.v.] and Esther French (Test) Wallace. His mother, to whom he was deeply attached, died during his boyhood. He early displayed a love of adventure; his father tried to keep him in school, but the boy was irked by ordinary tasks and preferred to draw caricatures or to play truant. As he grew older, however, he carried his books to the woods as often as his gun and rod. When his father was elected governor of Indiana in 1837 and the family moved to Indianapolis, Lew's zest for reading was stimulated by the advantages of th e state library. Before he was sixteen he began to support himself by copying records in the county clerk's office. About the same time, Prescott's Conquest of Mexico made such a deep impression upon him that he determined to write upon the theme. Thus, The Fair God of later years had its inception. In 1844-45 he reported the proceedings of the Indiana House of Representatives for the Indianapolis Daily Journal, and soon afterwards began the study of law in his father's office. When the Mexican War began, he raised a company of which he became second lieutenant and which was assigned to the 1st Indiana Infantry. His services in Mexico gave him experience without involving him in the dangers of any serious engagement. He campaigned against Taylor in 1848 and edited a Free-Soil paper, chiefly because of resentment against Taylor's treatment of the Indiana regiments. Following the campaign he became a Democrat. Admitted to the bar in 1849 he began practice in Indianapolis. Soon he moved to Covington, and in 1850 and 1852 was elected prosecuting attorney. In 1853 he changed his residence to Crawfordsville, and in 1856 was elected to the state Senate. There he advocated a reform in divorce laws and in 1859 proposed the popular election of United States senators. In the summer of 1856 he had organized a military company at Crawfordsville which he drilled so efficiently that most of its members became officers in the Civil War. After Fort Sumter was fired upon, Governor O. P. Morton [q.v.] made him adjutant-general of the state. Within a week he had 130 companies in camp, seventy more than the state quota, and was made colonel of the 11th Regiment. Soon at the front, he helped to capture Romney, on the South Branch of the Potomac, and to evict the enemy from Harpers Ferry. An excellent disciplinarian and popular with his men, he was promoted rapidly. On September 3, 1861, he was made a brigadier-general and on March 21, 1862, after his service at the capture of Fort Donelson, Tennessee, a major-general. Unfortunately, he incurred the ill will of General Halleck, who twice removed him from command; the first time he was restored by President Lincoln, the second time, by General Grant. In November 1862, he was president of the military commission that investigated the operations of the army under Major-General Don Carlos Buell [q.v.]. The following year he saved Cincinnati from capture by General E. Kirby-Smith [q.v.], after which event the President gave him command of the Middle Division and VIII Army Corps, with headquarters at Baltimore. With 5,800 men, part of them inexperienced, he held a force of 28,000 under General Jubal A. Early [q.v.] at the Monocacy, July 9, 1864. Though defeated, he probably saved Washington from capture, and was highly commended by Grant in his Memoirs (post, II, 306). He served on the court martial which tried the assassins of Lincoln, and was president of the court that tried and convicted Henry Wirz [q.v.], commandant of Andersonville Prison. At the close of the war he undertook to procure munitions and to raise a corps of veterans for the Mexican liberals, and spent some time in Mexico. Returning to Crawfordsville, he practised law, and in 1870 was an unsuccessful candidate for Congress on the Republican ticket. In 1878 he was appointed governor of New Mexico, serving until 1881, when President Garfield appointed him minister to Turkey. There he lived for four years, 1881-85, winning the confidence of the Sultan to an unusual degree. In 1890 he declined an offer of the mission to Brazil tendered by President Harrison. Wallace is best known, however, as a man of letters. In 1873 he published The Fair God, a story of the conquest of Mexico, which won him wide recognition. The fame thus attained was greatly enhanced by Ben Hur; A Tale of the Christ (1880), of which 300,000 copies were sold within ten years. It was translated into a number of foreign languages, including Arabic and Chinese, and was successfully dramatized. The extraordinary success of this work was largely due to the fact that the greatest figure in history was with the deepest reverence brought into a strong story dramatically told. Among his other publications were The Life of Benjamin Harrison (1888), written for campaign purposes; The Boyhood of Christ (1888); The Prince of India (1893), inspired by his stay in Constantinople; and The Wooing of  Malkatoon (1898), a poem, with which was included Commodu1, a tragedy, written many years earlier. In 1906 appeared Lew Wallace, An Autobiography, which Wallace had brought down only to 1864, but which was sketchily completed by his wife and Mary H. Krout. On May 6, 1852, he married Susan Arnold (December 25, 1830-October 1, 1907), born in Crawfordsville, the daughter of Colonel Isaac C. and Maria Aken Elston. Fifty years later he called her "a composite of genius, common-sense, and all best womanly qualities" (Autobiography, I, 209). She was a frequent contributor to newspapers and periodicals, and one of her poems, "The Patter of Little Feet," had wide popularity. Other publications by her include The Storied Sea (1883); Ginevra: or The Old Oak Chest (1887); The Land of the Pueblos (1888); and The Repose in Egypt (1888). Wallace's poise and urbanity marked him as a man of the world, yet he was simple in taste and democratic in ideals. For politics he had no aptitude; the law he did not like; the military life challenged his adventurous spirit but could not hold him after his country had no special use for his services; art, music, and literature were his most vital and permanent interests. Many a young person had reason to remember the gracious hospitality of his study, built as "a pleasure-house for my soul." Never a church member, he believed in the divinity of Christ. His last years were serene. He lectured frequently and received unstinted praise. He died at Crawfordsville, and five years after his death his statue was unveiled in the Capitol at Washington as representative of the state of Indiana.

[In addition to the Autobiography, see Commemorative Biographical Record of Prominent and Representative Men of Indianapolis and Vicinity (1908); J. P. Dunn, Greater Indianapolis (1910), volume II; M. H. Krout, "Personal Record of Lew Wallace," Harper's Weekly, March 18, 1905; Meredith Nicholson, in Review of Reviews, April 1905; New York Tribune, Indianapolis Star, Indianapolis News and Daily Sentinel (Indianapolis), February 16, 1905; Senate Doc. 503, 61 Congress, 2 Session; War of the Rebellion: Official Records (Army); Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant (2 volumes, 1885-86).] A.L.L. port 1335, 62 Congress, 3

J. H.J.P.


WALLCUT, Robert F., N. Dennis, Massachusetts, abolitionist, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Counsellor, 1845-47, Recording Secretary, 1847-61-.


WALN, Robert, 1765-1836, businessman, economist.  Member of the U.S. Congress from Pennsylvania.  Served in Congress 1798-1801 in Federalist Party.  Opposed slavery in U.S. House of Representatives. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 339; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 387-388; Locke, Mary Stoughton. Anti-Slavery in America from the Introduction of African Slaves to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade (1619-1808). Boston: Ginn & Co., 1901, p. 93; Annals of Congress). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 387-388:

WALN, ROBERT (October 20, 1794-July 4, 1825), author, known as Robert Waln, Jr., son of Robert [q.v.] and Phebe (Lewis) Waln, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and died unmarried at Providence, Rhode Island, in his thirty-first year. The wealth and social position of his family made it unnecessary for him to earn his living. On the other hand, the traditions of the Society of Friends with whom they had long been affiliated forbade idleness. The young man showed an active interest in the great importing business conducted by Jesse and Robert Waln, his father and father's cousin, with Canton and the East. But literature was his chosen pursuit. His education, obviously liberal, was broadened by extensive and purposeful reading, for which Philadelphia afforded rich opportunities, while at the stately country seat of his father, Waln-Grove, at Frankford, five miles from Philadelphia, was an unusually large and well-equipped library. He maintained an eager interest in current American literary activity, contributed to the periodicals of the times and was conversant with their editors, and developed a special aptitude for criticism and biography. He exemplifies very well a Philadelphia tradition of aristocratic scholarship and belles-lettres.

His first independently published work (February 1819) was a vivid satire on manners in the wealthy inner circle of Philadelphia society: The Hermit in America on a Visit to Philadelphia  ... Edited by Peter Atall, Esq. In March of the same year this had a second edition, in which considerable alterations were made. Early in 1821 appeared a second series of the Hermit's observations. These works are both in prose. In November 1820 Waln had published Sisyphi Opus, or Touches at the Times, written in classical couplets, touching on some of the same themes. Another satire, purely literary in subject, also written in couplets, American Bards, had been published in August 1820. Part of this, the author said, had been written during a voyage "beyond the Cape of Good Hope." It should not be confused with a contemporary piece of the same title.

During 1823 he published, in quarto numbers, an elaborate work on China, its geography, history, customs, and trade relations. His interest in this subject was definitely related to the family business. Intensive research during many years was supplemented by a four months' residence in Canton from September 1819 to January 1820. The first draft of the manuscript was largely written during the long voyage home. About the same time he took over the editorship of the Biography of the Signers to the Declaration of Independence (volumes III-VI, 1823-24), which had been begun by John and James Sanderson. Altogether he edited or wrote some fourteen of the lives. From Waln-Grove in the summer of 1824 he issued proposals for publishing by subscription a Life of the Marquis de La Fayette, completing it at the same place in June 1825. His sudden death occurred scarcely three weeks later. In August was published posthumously his Account of the Asylum for the Insane Established by the Society of Friends, near Frankford, in the Vicinity of Philadelphia. All these works show a remarkable ability for compiling and verifying facts. His talent is further shown by his lyric poems, which, though few in number, bring the more intimate side of his personality attractively to view. They are to be found chiefly in the little volume containing "Sisyphi Opus." A few remain uncollected from current publications, like the Atlantic Souvenir. So also does some of his prose.

[Sources include records of the Phila. Monthly Meeting, Southern District, of the Society of Friends, from which the date of birth is taken; collections of the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and the Ridgway Branch of the Library Company of Philadelphia; Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American Poetry (1829), volume III, p. 213; obituary in Poulson's American Daily Advertiser, July 9, 1825.]

J.C.M.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 339:

WALN, Robert, merchant, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 22 February, 1765; died there, 24 January, 1836. His great-great-grandfather, Nicholas, an English Quaker, came to this country with William Penn in 1682, and bought a tract of land in what is now the city of Philadelphia. He took an active part in public affairs, was a member of the first grand jury that was called in 1683, and represented Bucks county in the first legislature of Pennsylvania from that year till 1695, when he removed to Philadelphia, and in 1711 became a director in the first public school of that city. He died there in 1721. Robert was educated at the Friends' academy in his native city. Be inherited a large estate, and with his brother Jesse continued the business that had been established by his father, which became widely known in the East India and China trade, and almost equalled that of Stephen Girard in the comprehensive character of its enterprises. He served in the legislature several years, and in congress from 1798 till 1801 as a Federalist, and was a member of the common council of Philadelphia. During the war of 1812 he built one of the first cotton-factories in the country, and, being also largely interested in iron-works, he became a strong protectionist. He was the author of an “Answer to the Anti-Protective Report of Henry Lee,” while the excitement on the tariff question was at its height, and of “Seven Letters to Elias Hicks,” which attracted great attention. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 339.  


WANER, Joseph, Delaware, abolitionist, member and delegate of the Delaware Society for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, founded 1789. 

(Basker, James G., gen. ed. Early American Abolitionists: A Collection of Anti-Slavery Writings, 1760-1820. New York: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, 2005, pp. 224, 225, 238, 241n20)



Sources:
Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volumes I-VI, Edited by James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888-1889.