W: Wade through Wilson

See below for annotated biographies of Radical Republicans. Source: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.

WADE, Benjamin Franklin, 1800-1878, lawyer, jurist, U.S. Senator from Ohio, 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-March 2, 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 Ashtabula 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. 

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: Historical and Biographical. Vol. 1., By William H. Barnes, 1869, pp. 23:

BENJAMIN F. WADE.

PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE.
IN Feeding Hills Parish, Massachusetts, on the 27th of  October, 1800, was born Benjamin F. Wade, the youngest of ten children. His father was a soldier of the Revolution, and fought in every battle from Bunker Hill to Yorktown. His mother was the daughter of a Presbyterian clergyman, and was a woman of vigorous intellect and great force of character.

The family was one of the poorest in New England. They had, however, among their scanty property a few books, which eventually came into Benjamin's possession. He never enjoyed more than seven days' schooling, yet under the tuition of his mother he soon learned to read and write. He read and re-read the few books of the family library, and as a boy became better informed than most of his age.

He was for a time employed as a farm hand on very meagre wages. When eighteen years old, thinking he might find something better in the West, with a bundle of clothing on his back, and seven dollars in his pocket, he started on foot for Illinois. He walked as far as Ashtabula County, Ohio, when a fall of snow having impeded his progress, he determined to wait for spring to finish his journey. He hired out to cut wood in the forest at fifty cents per cord. He spent his evenings reading the Bible by the light of the fire on the hearth of the log cabin, and in a single winter read through both Old and New Testaments.

When spring came, he was persuaded to further suspend his journey to Illinois, by engaging in a summer's work at chopping, logging, and grubbing. This was followed by a winter at school-teaching. After two years of such employment, he engaged in driving herds of cattle from Ohio to New York. He thus made six trips, the last one leaving him in Albany, New York. Here he taught a winter school, and in the spring hired himself to shovel on the Erie Canal, in which employment he spent the summer :-—“The only American I know,” said Governor Seward, in a speech in the Senate, “who worked with a spade and wheel-barrow on that great improvement.”

Having occupied the summer in work on the canal, he taught school another winter in Ohio. In the following spring he commenced the study of law with Hon. Elisha Whittlesey. He was soon after elected a justice of the peace. After two years he was admitted to the bar, He waited another year for his first suit, and from that time his success was steady. He was elected Prosecuting Attorney for Ashtabula County, a position of great advantage to a young man just rising in his profession.

But Mr. Wade's destined field was politics. He was elected to the State Senate, where he took the lead of the Whig minority. He aided in abolishing the law for imprisonment for debt. He inaugurated a war against the “Black Laws” of Ohio. He took a bold stand against the admission of Texas into the Union. “So help me, God!” he declared, “I will never assist in adding another rod of slave territory to this country.”

Mr. Wade having attempted to bring about a repeal of the State laws that oppressed the negroes and gave security to slavery in the neighboring States, incurred the displeasure of his party friends, who left him at home at the next election.

Time and events having at length brought the people up to Wade's position, they again sent him to the Senate against his will. There he procured the passage of a bill which founded the Oberlin College, “ for the education of persons without regard to race or color.” He led the resistance of Ohio to the resolution adopted by Congress, denying the people the right to petition concerning the abolition of slavery. He labored to bring the Legislature and the State up to the support of John Quincy Adams in his fight for the sacred right of petition.

In 1847, Mr. Wade was elected President Judge of the Third Judicial District. After the session of his court was over for the day, Judge Wade sometimes went to the neighboring school-houses and made speeches in favor of General Taylor, then a candidate for the Presidency. Since Wade was known far and near as a strong antislavery man, it was thought strange that he did not support Mr. Van Buren, the candidate of the Liberty party. Some of his friends remonstrated with him for supporting Taylor, a slaveholder. “Taylor is a good old Whig,” he replied, “and I am not going to stand by and see him crucified between two such thieves as Cass and Van Buren.” For four years he occupied the bench, and obtained with the bar and the people the reputation of a wise and just judge.

In March, 1851, as he was hearing a cause in court, the firing of a cannon in the streets of Akron announced to the public that Mr. Wade had been elected United States Senator by the Legislature of Ohio. The office had not been sought for by him, nor canvassed for by his friends. The arrangements of politicians and the selfishness of aspirants were over-ruled by the people in their desire to have one who would represent the manhood, the conscience, the progress of the State.

When Mr. Wade entered the Senate, he found but few opposed to the aggressions of slavery. In 1856, when the great Kansas controversy came up, the advocates of slavery were thirty-two against thirteen in favor of freedom. Wade showed himself brave against all odds and every influence. “I come before the Senate to-day," said he, “as a Republican, or, as some prefer to call me, a Black Republican, for I do not object to the term. I care nothing about the name; I come here especially as the advocate of liberty, instead of slavery.”

Mr. Wade has continued a member of the United States Senate, by successive re-election, for eighteen years. His Senatorial career has been marked by indomitable energy, unfailing courage, and invariable consistency. It has been marked by some acts which cannot fail to cause his name to be remembered. He reported from
the Committee on Territories the first provision prohibiting slavery in all the Territories of the United States to be henceforth acquired. He proposed in the Senate the bill for Negro Suffrage in the District of Columbia.

It was in the days when Republicans in Congress were few, and the champions of Slavery were dominant in the councils of the Republic, that Mr. Wade rendered services for the struggling cause of liberty that are never to be forgotten. He met the arrogant leaders of the South with a bravery that secured their respect, and gained friends for his cause. Toombs, the fierce fire-eater of Georgia, once said in the Senate, “My friend from Olio puts the matter squarely. He is always honest, outspoken, and straightforward ; and I wish to God the rest of you would imitate him. He speaks out like a man. He says what is the difference, and it is. He means what he says; you don't. He and I can agree about everything on earth except our sable population.”

It was the custom in those days for Northern Senators to yield submissively to the insolence of the slaveholders. Mr. Wade had too much nerve and independence meekly to accept the situation. Soon after he took his seat, a Southerner in debate grossly insulted a Free State Senator. As no allusion was made to himself or his State, Wade sat still; but when the Senate adjourned, he said openly, if ever a Southern Senator made such an attack on him or Ohio while he sat on that floor, he would brand him as a liar. This coming to the ears of the Southern men, a Senator took occasion to pointedly speak, a few days afterward, of Ohio and her people as negro thieves. Instantly Mr. Wade sprang to his feet and pronounced the Senator a liar. The Southern Senators were astounded, and gathered round their champion; while the Northern men grouped about Wade. A feeler was put out from the Southern side, looking to retraction; but Mr. Wade retorted in his peculiar style, and demanded an apology for the insult offered himself and the people he represented. The matter thus closed, and a fight was looked upon as certain. The next day a gentleman called on the Senator from Ohio, and asked the usual question touching his acknowledgment of the code.

“I am here,” he responded, “in a double capacity. I represent the State of Ohio, and I represent Ben. Wade. As a Senator, I am opposed to dueling. As Ben. Wade, I recognize the code.”

“My friend feels aggrieved,” said the gentleman, " at what you said in the Senate yesterday, and will ask for an apology or satisfaction.”

“I was somewhat embarrassed,” continued Senator Wade, “ by my position yesterday, as I have some respect for the Chamber. I now take this opportunity to say what I then thought; and you will, if you please, repeat it. Your friend is a foul-mouthed old blackguard.”

“Certainly, Senator Wade, you do not wish me to convey such a message as that?”

“Most undoubtedly I do; and will tell you, for your own benefit, this friend of yours will never notice it. I will not be asked for either retraction, explanation, or a fight.”

Next morning Mr. Wade came into the Senate, and proceeding to his seat, deliberately drew from under his coat two large pistols, and, unlocking his desk, laid them inside. The Southern men looked on in silence, while the Northern members enjoyed the fire-eaters' surprise at the proceeding of the plucky Ohio Senator. No further notice was taken of the affair of the day before. Wade was not challenged, but ever afterward was treated with politeness and consideration by the Senator who had so insultingly attacked him.

Mr. Wade's fierce retorts sometimes fell with terrible effect upon his adversaries. When he was speaking against the Kansas-Nebraska bill, Mr. Douglas interrupted him with an inquiry designed at once to rebuke and embarrass him: “You, Sir, continually compliment Southern men who support this bill, but bitterly denounce Northern men who support it. Why is this? You say it is a moral wrong; you say it is a crime. If that be so, is it not as much a crime for a Southern man to support it, as for a Northern man to do so ?”

Mr. WADE.—“No, sir, I say not !”

Mr. DOUGLAS.—“ The Senator says not. Then he entertains a different code of morals from myself and —”

Mr. WADE (breaking in, and pointing at Douglas with extended arm and forefinger, his face wrinkling with scorn, and contempt and rage flashing out of his eyes)—“ Your code of morals! Your morals! My God, I hope so, sir!”

A witness of the scene says that the “ Giant” was hit in the forehead, and, after standing for a moment, his cheeks as red as scarlet, he sank silent into his chair.

Mr. Wade gained enduring fame by the unanswerable reasoning, the powerful oratory, and the undaunted courage with which he resisted the extension of slavery against the united might of the propogandists of the South and North.

Near the close of the Thirty-ninth Congress, Mr. Wade was elected President pro tempore of the Senate. He was chosen to that office at a time when it seemed probable that his election would soon become an elevation to the Presidential Chair by virtue of the impeachment and removal of Mr. Johnson. The narrowness of Mr. Johnson's escape, and the nearness of Mr. Wade's approach to the Presidency, are among the most curious scenes in recent history.

As an orator, Senator Wade has little polish, but great force, directness, and effect. He is an original thinker, and has much learning for one whose advantages were so few. His manners are plain and unaffected, his tastes are simple as in his humbler years. At home, in Ohio, he lives in a style undistinguished from the substantial citizens about him. His residence is a plain white frame house, hid among the trees and surrounded by ample grounds.

“There is," says one,“ a Puritan grimness in his face, which melts into sweetness and tenderness when his sympathies are touched, and which is softened away by the humor which wells from his mirthfulness in broad, rich, and original streams."



WARMOTH, HENRY CLAY (May 9, 1842- September 30, 1931), Union soldier, lawyer, governor of Louisiana, 1868-1872, radical republican.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 457-459:

WARMOTH, HENRY CLAY (May 9, 1842- September 30, 1931), Union soldier, lawyer, governor of Louisiana, was descended from a family of Dutch extraction which had wandered from Virginia through Kentucky and Tennessee to Illinois. Son of Isaac Sanders and Eleanor (Lane) Warmoth, he first saw the light in a log cabin in MacLeansboro, Illinois. His formal education was limited to that received in the village schools and to the training which he was able to pick up as a typesetter in a local printing office. After his father became justice of the peace at Fairfield, the reading of his law books and association with members of the bar inspired the youth with ambition to become a lawyer, and at the age of eighteen he was admitted to the bar at Lebanon, Missouri. The outbreak of the Civil War the following year found him established as district attorney of the eighteenth judicial district, which post he relinquished in 1862 to join the Union forces as lieutenant-colonel of the 32nd Missouri Volunteers. After the capture of Arkansas Post he was assigned to the staff of Maj. General John A. McClernand [q.v.] and participated in the battles around Vicksburg, where he· was wounded and furloughed. Charged with circulating exaggerations of Union losses, he was dishonorably discharged but was restored through personal appeal to President Lincoln. After the victory of Lookout Mountain and Banks's Texas campaign, he was assigned, in June 1864, as judge of the provost court for the Department of the Gulf, and when this service was ended he found himself, because of consolidations, without a command.

He thereupon opened a law office in New Orleans early in 1865 and soon won a lucrative practice before military commissions and government departments. In November of that year he was elected as "territorial delegate" to Congress by Louisiana Unionists but was denied a seat. In September 1866 he was a delegate to a special convention of Southern loyalists in Philadelphia called to demand protection for the Union men of the South. With a group including former Governor Andrew J. Hamilton [q.v.] of Texas he made a canvas of the Northern states in behalf of the congressional program of reconstruction. In the Republican state convention of 1868 the sentiment in favor of his nomination for the governorship was so strong that the constitutional limitation on age was removed to permit him to become a candidate. The nomination was not without opposition, for he defeated his negro rival by only two votes, and a colored faction withdrew its support in the subsequent election. Warmoth was successful, however, and was reelected in 1870. His gubernatorial term (1868-72) was characterized by discontent, turbulence, a wild orgy of speculation in state-aided railroads, a depleted treasury, and bitter strife over the question of negro suffrage. Although he signed the bill which opened the restaurants, schools, and railroad coaches to negroes without discrimination, he later vetoed a more radical measure and declared his purpose to harmonize the interests of races and to secure justice for both. Probably, as he claimed late in life, corruption and extravagance would have been worse except for his opposition. Nevertheless, toward the close of his administration he was under attack from three quarters: from white conservatives, from radical Republican negroes-who denounced him as a traitor-and from the so-called Custom-House, faction of the Republican party. By 1872 he had become utterly unavailable for renomination, and in consequence he actively supported the Democratic ticket. In the violent disturbances resulting from an election which culminated in two governors and two legislatures, he became, naturally, deeply involved, He was impeached by the hostile legislature in December 1872 and the trial dragged on until it was dropped some weeks after his term had expired. Many years later he published his own account of this stormy period, War, Politics, and Reconstruction (1930).

Although after 1872 he retired from active party politics, he participated at intervals in political affairs. In 1876-77 he was a member of the Louisiana legislature; in 1879 he served in the state constitutional convention; in 1888 he again headed the Republican state ticket, but, though he made the strongest campaign of his career, was defeated; in 1896 he went to St. Louis to help nominate McKinley for president. He was appointed collector of customs for New Orleans in 1890 by President Harrison and served until 1893, when Cleveland replaced him by a Democrat.

In 1873 Warmoth engaged in sugar planting at "Magnolia Plantation," just below New Orleans. He helped to organize a sugar refining company, and to build a railroad which greatly advanced the development of the west bank of the lower Mississippi. He contributed significantly to the advancement of sugar-refining until it was no longer possible to compete with the foreign product, whereupon he sold his plantation and retired to live quietly in New Orleans, In 1884 he had made a trip to France and Germany to study the sugar industry and upon his return secured the establishment of an experiment station on his plantation. When the Sugar  Planters Organization determined to fight for a higher duty and for a bounty, he was selected to conduct what proved a successful struggle. During his long life after the bitter era of Reconstruction he overcame much of the antagonism against him, and hundreds who had earlier opposed him gathered to do him honor at his funeral. He was survived by his wife, Sallie Durand of Newark, N. J., whom he had married May 30, 1877, and by two sons and a daughter.

[In addition to Warmoth's book, mentioned above, see: Who's Who in America, 1916-17; Mrs. E. S. du Fossat, Biog. Sketches of Louisiana's Governors (1885); Arthur Meynier, Meynier's La. Biogs., pt. I (1882); J. R. Ficklen, History of Reconstruction in La, through 1868 (1910); Ella Lonn, Reconstruction in La. after 1868 (1918); Times-Picayune (New Orleans), October 1, 1931.]

E. L.



WASHBURNE, Elihu Benjamin, 1816-1887, statesman, lawyer.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois, from December 1853 through march 1869.  Called “Father of the House.”  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 370-371; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, p. 504; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 22, p. 750; 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, p. 504:

WASHBURNE, ELIHU BENJAMIN (September 23, 1816--October 23, 1887), congressman, cabinet member, diplomat, historian, was the third of eleven children born to Israel and Martha (Benjamin) Washburn at Livermore, Maine. After the failure of the father's country store in 1829 the large family was forced to rely on a small and not-too-fertile farm for subsistence, and as a result several of the brothers, among them Elihu, were early forced to fend for themselves. Leaving home at the age of fourteen, he added an "e" to his name in imitation of his English forebears and embarked on the road of education and hard work which led him to a position not the least prominent among five brothers-Israel, Cadwallader C., William D. [qq. v.], Elihu, and Charles-notable for their service to state and nation.

A short experience at farm work convinced him that he was not destined for an agricultural career; he disliked his three months of school teaching more than anything he ever turned his hand to; a newspaper publisher to whom he apprenticed himself failed, and while he was working for another printer a hernia incapacitated him for further typesetting. These experiences led him to the decision to study law, and accordingly, after several months in Maine Wesleyan Seminary, Kent's Hill, followed by an apprenticeship in a Boston law office, he entered the Harvard Law School in 1839, where he came under the influence of Joseph Story [q.v.]. Armed with membership in the Massachusetts bar and a few law books, he turned his face westward in 1840, resolved to settle in Iowa Territory.

His brother Cadwallader, who had already settled at Rock Island, Illinois, persuaded the newcomer that Illinois was a more favorable location than Iowa, and that the most likely place for a briefless lawyer was the boom town of Galena, where lead mines had recently been opened. Within a month after his arrival Washburne had begun to make a living and some political speeches. He presently formed a connection which was to be of considerable importance, both personally and professionally, with Charles Hempstead, the leader of the town's dozen lawyers. The latter, partially paralyzed, needed clerical assistance in his practice and in return threw sundry minor cases to his quasi-partner. This association lasted for a year, after which Washburne practised independently until 1845, when he entered an actual partnership with Hempstead. In this year he married, July 31, one of his benefactor's relatives, Adele Gratiot, a descendant of the French settlers around St. Louis. Seven children were born to them. Washburne's connection by marriage with Missouri, indirect though it was, commended him to the attention of Thomas Hart Benton [q. v.] on his entry into Congress eight years later, and was of no disadvantage in launching his career.

His moderate earnings from the law were transmuted into a comfortable competence by careful investments in western lands, and he gradually turned his energies into political channels. He became a wheel-horse of the local Whig party, placed Henry Clay in nomination for the presidency at Baltimore in 1844, and ran unsuccessfully for Congress four years later. He was more fortunate in 1852, and in the following year began sixteen years of service in the House which covered the periods of the Civil War and reconstruction. He kept a sharp lookout for the interests of his section (particularly directed toward preventing the misappropriation of public lands to the uses of railroad speculators) and at the same time cast a keen and malevolent eye upon those who would raid the federal treasury. The lobbyist or the known corruptionist fared badly at his hands, and his last long speech in the House (January 6, 1869), on a pension bill, was one of a number of blasts against those who were at the time leading Congress along forbidden paths. For a time he was chairman of the committee on commerce and for two years, chairman of the committee on appropriations, where his efforts to keep down expenses made him the first of a long succession of "watchdogs of the treasury."

Physical disabilities kept him from active military duty during the Civil War, but he used his talents in Congress to aid his personal and political friend Lincoln, and to forward the military fortunes of his fellow townsman and protege, Ulysses S. Grant. He was the sole person to greet Lincoln on his secret arrival in Washington for the inauguration in 1861 (Hunt, post, pp. 229-30). He proposed Grant's name as brigadier-general of volunteers and sponsored the bills by which Grant was made successively lieutenant-general and general. When war gave way to reconstruction, Washburne found himself in the forefront of the Radicals and a member of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction. He turned against Lincoln's successor and when members of the vindictive party "competed with one another in phrasing violent abuse of Andrew Johnson ... Elihu Washburne deserved one of the prizes" (Ibid., p. 238).

His early sponsorship of Grant continued through the campaign of 1868, when Grant heard the news of his election over telegraph wires run to Washburne's library in Galena. His stanch support was rewarded by appointment as secretary of state in Grant's cabinet, a post which he assumed March 5, 1869, resigned March 10, and vacated March 16. It is probable that this was a courtesy appointment preliminary to his designation, March 17, as minister to France, and designed to give him prestige in the French capital. His connection with the Grant administration remained close and he and Grant were friends until the spring of 1880, when an abortive boom for Washburne ran foul of Grant's own futile aspirations for a third term. Washburne himself immediately adhered to Grant's candidacy, though apparently without great enthusiasm, and remained at least outwardly loyal to his former chief. During the convention he himself received as many as forty-four votes, and it was later contended by his friends that with Grant's support he r:ould have received the nomination which went to Garfield. Be that as it may, Grant vented his disappointment on Washburne and the two never met again.

Meantime he had rendered capable service through very trying times in Europe. As minister to France he witnessed the downfall of the empire of the third Napoleon and, remaining until the autumn of 1877, rounded out the longest term of any American minister to France down to that time. He was the only official representative of a foreign government to remain in Paris throughout the siege and the Commune, and his two volumes of memoirs, Recollections of a Minister to France, 1869-1877 (1887), constitute a valuable account of those exciting days. In addition to his service to his own country, during the war he made himself useful by looking after the interests of German residents of France. On his retirement from public. life he devoted himself to historical and literary activities, serving as president of the Chicago Historical Society from 1884 to 1887 and publisi1ing, in addition to the Recollections of a Minister, several works of some historical value, particularly sketches of early Illinois political figures, pre-pared for the Chicago Historical Society. For the same society he edited "The Edwards Papers" (Collections, volume III, 1884), a selection from the manuscripts of Governor Ninian Edwards [ q.v.] of Illinois.

[Gaillard Hunt, Israel, Elihu, and Cadwallader Washburn (1925); J. V. Fuller, "Elihu Benjamin Washburne," in S. F. Bemis, The American Secretaries of State, volume VII (1928); G. W. Smith, "Elihu B. Washburne," in Chicago Historical Society Colts., volume IV (1890); Encyclopedia of Biography of Illinois, volume II (1894); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); General Grant's Letters to a Friend, 1861-1880 (1897), ed. by J. G. Wilson, being letters to Washburne; Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the U.S., 1870-77; Chicago Tribune, October 24, 1887; Washburne Papers (101 volumes), MSS. Division, Library of Congress]

L. E. E.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 370-371:

WASHBURNE, Elihu Benjamin, statesman, born in Livermore, Maine, 23 September, 1816; died in Chicago, Illinois, 22 October, 1887, wrote his family name with a final “e.” He was educated at public schools, and, after working on his father's farm, entered the office of the “Christian Intelligencer” in Gardiner in 1833 as a printer's apprentice. The paper was discontinued a year later, and he was chosen to teach in the district school. In May, 1835, he entered the office of the “Kennebec Journal,” at Augusta, where he continued for a year, during which time he rose gradually until he became an assistant of the editor, and acquired his first knowledge of political life during the sessions of the state legislature. He then decided to study law, and entered Kent's Hill Seminary in 1836. After a year in that institution he began his professional studies in the office of John Otis in Hallowell, who, impressed by his diligence and ambition, aided him financially and took him into his own home to board. In March, 1839, he entered the law-school at Harvard, where among his class-mates were Richard H. Dana. Charles Devens, and William M. Evarts. He was admitted to the bar in 1840, and at once determined to establish himself in the west. Settling in Galena, Illinois, he there entered into law-partnership with Charles S. Hempstead, and, being a strong Whig, made speeches in behalf of that party, which had nominated William H. Harrison for the presidency. In 1844 he was a delegate to the Whig national convention in Baltimore that selected Henry Clay as its candidate, and on his return he visited that statesman in Washington. Meanwhile his business increased, and he was frequently called upon to practise in the supreme court of the state. In 1848 he was nominated for congress in the Galena district, but was defeated by Colonel Edward D. Baker. In 1852, as a delegate to the National Whig convention, he advocated the nomination of General Winfield Scott, and in the same year he was elected to congress, serving thereafter from 5 December, 1853, till 6 March, 1869. He soon gained an excellent reputation, and, on the election of Nathaniel P. Banks as speaker in 1855, was given the chairmanship of the committee on commerce, which he held for ten years. He was selected by the house to accompany William H. Seward, representing the senate, to receive Abraham Lincoln when he arrived in Washington after his election. From the length of his continuous service he became recognized as the “Father of the House,” and in that capacity administered the oath as speaker to Schuyler Colfax three times, and to James G. Blaine once. From his continual habit of closely scrutinizing all demands that were made upon the treasury and persistently demanding that the finances of the government should be administered with the strictest economy, he acquired the name of the “Watch-dog of the Treasury.” He was a steadfast friend of Ulysses S. Grant during the civil war, and every promotion that the latter received was given either solely or in part upon the recommendation of Mr. Washburne. Subsequently he originated the bills that made General Grant lieutenant-general and general. Mr. Washburne was a member of the joint committee on reconstruction and chairman of the committee of the whole house in the matter of the impeachment of Andrew Johnson. He opposed all grants of the public lands and all subsidies to railroad companies, and resisted with all his power what he called “the greatest legislative crime in history”—the bill that subordinated the first mortgage of the government on the Pacific railroad to the mortgage of the railroad companies. He also opposed “log rolling” river and harbor bills, all extravagant appropriations for public buildings, all subsidies for steamship lines, and all undue renewals of patents. Among the important bills that he introduced was the one that provided for the establishment of national cemeteries. At the beginning of his administration President Grant appointed Mr. Washburne secretary of state, which office he resigned soon afterward to become minister to France. This place he held during the Franco-Prussian war, and on the withdrawal of the German ambassador, the latter was ordered by Count Bismarck to turn over his archives to the American legation. At the request of Bismarck, and with the permission of the French minister of foreign affairs, he exercised his official influence with remarkable tact and skill for the protection of the Germans in Paris and acted as the representative of the various German states and other foreign governments. When the empire was overthrown, Mr. Washburne was the first foreign representative to recognize the new republic. He remained in Paris during the siege, and was at his post when the Commune ruled the city. He visited the venerable archbishop Darboy of Paris when he was hurried to prison, and succeeded in having the prelate removed to more comfortable quarters, but failed to prevent his murder. He retained the respect and good-will of the French during all the changes of government, and the emperor of Germany recognized his services by conferring upon him the Order of the Red Eagle. This he declined, owing to the provision of the U. S. constitution that prevented its acceptance, but on his resignation in 1877 the emperor sent him his life-size portrait, and he was similarly honored by Bismarck, Thiers, and Gambetta. On his return to this country he settled in Chicago, and in 1880 his name was brought forward as a candidate for the presidency, but he refused to have it presented to the convention. He was president of the Chicago historical society from November, 1884, till his death, and was frequently invited to lecture on his foreign experiences. He wrote a series of articles on that subject for “Scribner's Magazine,” which were expanded into “Recollections of a Minister to France, 1869-1877” (2 vols., New York, 1887). His collection of pictures, documents, and autographs he desired to be given to the city of Chicago, provided they should be exhibited free to the general public. Efforts are being made to secure the erection of a suitable building in Lincoln park for their exhibition. Mr. Washburne edited “History of the English Settlement in Edwards County, Illinois” (Chicago, 1882); and “The Edwards Papers” (1884). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 370-371.

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: Historical and Biographical. Vol. 1., By William H. Barnes, 1869, p. 203:

ELIHU B. WASHBURNE.

ELIHU B. WASHBURNE was born in Livermore, Maine, September 23, 1816. He served an apprenticeship as a printer in the office of " The Kennebec Journal," and studied law at Harvard University. Removing to Illinois he settled at Galena, in the practice of his profession. He was elected as a Whig to the Thirty-third Congress, and was eight times re-elected. In the Thirty-eighth Congress he became the " Father of the House" by reason of having served a longer continuous period than any other member, ne acted with the Republican party from its organization, voting always for freedom, from his vote against the Kansas bill to his vote for the Constitutional Amendment extending suffrage without distinction of color. He was Chairman of the Committee on Commerce in each Congress from the Thirty-fifth to the Thirty-ninth. At the death of Thaddeus Stevens, he became Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations. He has been the distinguished champion of economy in the House, opposing every subsidy, and doing his best to expose, if he could not defeat, every game of plunder.

Perhaps his most distinguished service to the country is that of having been the first to bring the genius of General Grant to public notice and official recognition. Mr. Grant had resided several years at Galena before Mr. "Washburne knew him. The latter was then the leading man in his District, owned and resided in one of the most elegant residences in the city, while Grant was a clerk in his father's leather store, and occupied a little two-story cottage.

At the first war-meeting held at Galena to muster volunteers, "Washburne offered resolutions and managed the meeting, and Rawlings, made a speech. Grant was present, but took no conspicuous part. The first company raised elected one Chetlain captain. Jesse Grant's partner, Mr. Collins, a Peace Democrat, said t; Mr. Washburne, " A pretty set of fellows your soldiers are, to elect Chetlain for captain!" "Why not?" "They were foolish to take him when they could get such a than as Grant." "What is Grant's history?" "He was educated at West Point, served in the army eleven years, and came out with the very best reputation." Washburne immediately called upon Grant and invited him to go to Springfield. He did so, and was employed to assist in Governor Yates's office, and in mustering in regiments. Governor Yates at length appointed Grant colonel of a regiment, but he was indebted for his next promotion to Washburne. President Lincoln sent a circular to each of the Illinois Senators and Representatives, asking them to nominate four brigadiers. Washburne pressed the claims of Grant, on the ground that his section of the State had raised a good many men, and was entitled to a brigadier. Grant, Hurlburt, Prentiss, and McClernand were appointed. When Grant heard of his promotion he said, "It never came from any request of mine. It must be some of Washburne's work." In October, 1861, while Grant was in command at Cairo, Washburne made him a visit, and then for the first time became impressed that he was " the coming man " of the war.

After the battle of Fort Donelson, Grant no longer needed Washburne's kind offices to secure his promotion. Nevertheless, Washburne found frequent opportunities to give his influence and arguments in refutation of unjust criticisms of Grant's soldierly qualities. He framed the bill to revive the grade of Lieutenant-General which had been previously conferred only on Washington, and was an efficient leader in every movement to further Grant's progress toward the chief command of the armies.

Upon General Grant's accession to the Presidency he appointed Mr. Washburne Secretary of State. He held this office but a few days, however, when he was appointed United States Minister to France.
Mr. Washburne is a man of marked peculiarities—vigorous in body, duff in manner, vehement in oratory, making no display of learning nor show of profundity in argument, carrying his point rather by strong blows than by rhetorical art.



WILLIAMS, George Henry (March 26, 1820-April 4, 1910), attorney-general, senator from Oregon. After Iowa was granted statehood, he was elected a district judge in 1847 and served until 1852. The next year President Pierce appointed him chief justice of the Territory of Oregon. Soon after his arrival at Salem in June 1853 he rendered a decision in favor of a freed negro, Robin Holmes, suing his former owner for the custody of his three minor children After the call of a convention to meet in August 1857 to form a state constitution, he wrote a letter to the Oregon, Statesman, July 28, urging the inexpediency of slavery in Oregon.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 2, pp. 262-263:

WILLIAMS, GEORGE HENRY (March 26, 1820-April 4, 1910), attorney-general, senator from Oregon, was born at New Lebanon, Columbia County, New York, the son of Taber and Lydia (Goodrich) Williams. The father was of Welsh, the mother of English descent and both grandfathers were Revolutionary soldiers. During George's childhood his father moved to Onondaga County, New York, where the son attended district school and Pompey Hill Academy until he was seventeen. He then read law, was admitted to the Syracuse bar in 1844, and began practice at Fort Madison, Iowa Territory.

After Iowa was admitted to statehood, he was elected a district judge in 1847 and served until 1852. The next year President Pierce appointed him chief justice of the Territory of Oregon. Soon after his arrival at Salem in June 1853 he rendered a decision in favor of a freed negro, Robin Holmes, suing his former owner for the custody of his three minor children (Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society, June 1922). After the call of a convention to meet in August 1857 to form a state constitution, he wrote a letter to the Oregon, Statesman, July 28, urging the inexpediency of slavery in Oregon (Ibid., September 1908; C. H. Carey, The Oregon Constitution ... of 1857, 1926, pp. 32-33). He was a leading member of the constitutional convention and chairman of the committee on the judicial department. He opposed unsuccessfully the proposal that the property of a married woman should not be subject to the debts of a husband and should be registered separately (Art. XV sect. 5) on the ground that "in this age of woman's rights and insane theories" legislation should "unite the family circle" and make husband and wife one (Carey, p. 368).

 Williams retired from the bench in 1857 to take up the practice of law in Portland. He supported Douglas in the campaign of 1860, and as a northern Democrat opposed to slavery in the call for a Union state convention in 1862. He was a delegate to this body, which met at Eugene in April, and was chairman of the executive committee that carried on the campaign for the Union state ticket, which was entirely successful at the June election. In September 1864 he was elected as a Republican to the United States Senate for the term beginning in March 1865. When Congress met in December of that year he was appointed a member of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction and supported Thaddeus Stevens and the Radicals against President Johnson. He introduced the Tenure of Office bill in the Senate in December 1866, and held at the time that this measure did not take away the power of the President to remove cabinet officers (J. G. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress, volume II, 1886, p. 270). He claimed authorship for the Military Reconstruction bill, which he introduced in the Senate February 4, 1867, and which was passed by Congress (see his article, "Six Years in the United States Senate," Sunday Oregonian, Portland, December 3, 10, 1905). With his Oregon colleague, H. W. Corbett, he voted "guilty" in the impeachment trial of President Johnson. He failed of reelection to the Senate in 1871, but in February of that year was appointed a member of the Joint High Commission that negotiated the Treaty of Washington with Great Britain, and in May was appointed attorney-general, a position which he held until May 5, 1875. In 1873 Grant nominated him as chief justice to succeed Salmon P. Chase [q.v.], but the appointment aroused such criticism and opposition that Williams requested the President to withdraw his name. The Senate judiciary committee refused to recommend him after an inquiry that revealed that "Williams had removed from office A. C. Gibbs, United States District Attorney at Portland, Oregon, to prevent him from prosecuting election frauds, an action taken at the insistence of Senator John H. Mitchell [q.v.], who was said to have been implicated in the use of "bribes and repeaters" (Diary of M. P. Deady, January 7, 1874, and letters of J. W. Nesmith written to Deady from Washington, December 2, 7, 8, 1873, January 10, 1874, in Oregon Historical Society). In 1876 Williams and General Lew Wallace were sent to Florida by the Republican National Committee "to save the state for Hayes" and managed, so Williams wrote afterwards, "to put the returns in such shape that the authorities would" know how the people voted."

After returning to Portland he renewed his practice of law and was twice elected mayor of that city, serving 1902-05. In his later years he lent his name in support of the "Oregon System" of popular government and of the woman's suffrage movement.

In 1850 Williams married Kate Van Antwerp of Keokuk, Iowa, who died in 1863; in 1867 he married Kate (Hughes) George. This was the "pushing and ambitious wife" whose "new landau," furnished at public expense and displayed at Washington while the husband was a member of Grant's official family, is said to have helped block the way to her husband's promotion as chief justice (James Schouler, History of the United States, volume VII, copyright 1913, p. 230). He had one daughter by his first marriage and two adopted children. In addition to "Six Years in the Senate," cited above, Williams published Occasional Addresses (1895), and "Political History of Oregon from 1853 to 1865" (Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society, March 1901).

[Joseph Gaston, Portland, Oregon (19II), volume II; Charles Warren, The Supreme Court  in U. S. History (1928), volume II; Proceedings Oregon State Bar Association, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Sessions (n.d.); Who's Who in America, 1910-11; Oregon Native Son, May 1899; Oregon Historical Society Quarterly, June 1910; Morning Oregonian (Portland), April 5, 1910.)

R. C. C.

GEORGE H. WILLIAMS.

GEORGE H. WILLIAMS was born in Columbia County, New York, March 23,1823. He received an academical education in Onondaga County, and studied law. He was admitted to the bar in 1844, and immediately emigrated to Iowa. In 1847 he was elected Judge of the First Judicial District of Iowa, and in 1852 he was a presidential elector. In 1852 he received from President Pierce the appointment of Chief-Justice of the Territory of Oregon, and was re-appointed by President Buchanan in 1857, but resigned. He was a member of the Convention which formed a Constitution for the State of Oregon.

When Oregon was under the absolute control of the Democratic party, Judge Williams declared himself a Republican, and did much to promote the ultimate triumph of that party in his State. In 1864 he was elected a United States Senator from Oregon for the term ending in 1871. He at once took an active part in the important legislation of the Thirty-ninth Congress. On the first day of the second session of this Congress he brought before the Senate a bill to "regulate the tenure of offices," which was referred to a committee, and subsequently, with modifications, passed over the President's veto. On the 4th of February, 1867, Mr. Williams introduced " A bill to provide for the more efficient government of the insurrectionary States," which was referred to the Committee on Reconstruction. It was subsequently reported and passed as the "Military Reconstruction Act." He has served with much ability on the Committee on the Judiciary, and as Chairman of the Committee on Private Land Claims.

As a Speaker Mr. Williams is deliberate, logical, and impressive. He is a wise, comprehensive, and practical statesman, having a large and increasing influence in the Senate.



WILLEY, Waitman Thomas, 1811-1900, lawyer.  U.S. Senator from Virginia (1861), later West Virginia (1863).  Willey was elected by the Unionist legislature at Wheeling to take the seat of U.S. Senator James M. Mason.  Served in Senate until March 1871.  He presented the constitution of West Virginia and was instrumental in securing its acceptance by Congress and the ratification by the people of the "Willey amendment" providing for the gradual abolition of slavery in the proposed state. Thus, West Virginia was the only state to secede from the Confederacy.  Became a Radical Republican. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 519; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 2, pp. 246-247; 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. 2, pp. 246-247:

WILLEY, WAITMAN THOMAS (October 18, 1811-May 2, 1900), senator from West Virginia, was born in a log cabin in Monongalia County, Virginia, near what is now Farmington, Marion County, West Virginia. William, his father, of English descent, had moved west from Delaware about 1782; Waitman's mother, Sarah (Barnes), was born in Maryland of English and Irish stock. As a child, Waitman attended school less than twelve months, most of his youth being spent on his father's farm, first on Buffalo Creek and later on the banks of the Monongahela. He was graduated in 1831 from Madison College, Uniontown, Pennsylvania, studied law with Philip Doddridge [q.v.] and John C. Campbell, and in Morgantown (then in Virginia) began a practice in which he gained a livelihood and a local reputation. He married Elizabeth E. Ray on October 9, 1834.

A Whig in political faith, Willey served in various minor positions, from 1840 to 1850, and was a delegate to the Virginia constitutional convention of 1850, where he championed western measures, especially white manhood suffrage. He also joined the Methodist Episcopal Church and became active in the Sons of Temperance. He was defeated as a candidate for lieutenant governor in 1859. The next year, supporting Bell and Everett, he struggled against the tide of disunion, and in the state convention of 1861 voted against the secession of Virginia.

His chief work began with the movement for a new state in western Virginia. Reluctantly he admitted the necessity for dividing the Old Dominion. In the Mass Convention at Wheeling, May 12, 1861, he was one of the conservative leaders who checked the radical movement to create a state government immediately. A new convention, contingent upon the ratification of secession at the polls, met on June 11, and reorganized the government of Virginia in the northwestern counties, under Francis H. Pierpont [q.v.] as governor. In addition to consenting to the division of the state, this government later became the reconstruction government of Virginia. By it Willey was elected almost immediately to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the withdrawal of James M. Mason [q.v.]. He presented the constitution of West Virginia and was instrumental in securing its acceptance by Congress and the ratification by the people of the "Willey amendment" providing for the gradual abolition of slavery in the proposed state. He was continued in the Senate by the legislature of West Virginia and was reelected in 1865. That the West Virginia revolution took the form of law and that the statehood movement was successful were in large measure due to the leadership of Willey and his associates.

In the meantime, he had become a Republican and had campaigned for Lincoln in 1864. He later became a Radical Republican and voted for the impeachment of President Johnson. Usually, but not invariably, he supported party measures. Democratic victory in West Virginia in 1870 resulted in his retirement from office, which he accepted gracefully, closing his work in the state constitutional convention of 1872 by introducing resolutions calling for a cessation of political disabilities. He campaigned for the Republicans in 1868, 1872, and 1876, being a member of the national convention in the last-named year. Local office holding, law, and domestic duties engaged his activities during the remainder of his life. He died in Morgantown, West Virginia, in his eighty-ninth year.

[Willey's diary (2 volumes, covering 1844-1900 and containing newspaper clippings) and 1 s boxes of letters to Willey in West Virginia University Library; biographical essay written before Willey's death by his son-in-law, J. M. Hagans, in S. T. Wiley, History of Monongalia County, West Virginia (1883), and in abridged form in Biographical and Portrait Cyclopedia of Monongalia, Marion and Taylor Counties, West Virginia (1895); W. P. Willey, An Inside View of the Formation of the State of West Virginia (1901); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); Wheeling Register, May 3, 1900.]

J-n D.B.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI. pp. 519:

WILLEY, Waitman Thomas, senator, born in Monongalia county, Virginia (now W. Virginia), 18 October, 1811. He was graduated at Madison college, Uniontown, Pennsylvania, in 1831, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1833. He was clerk of the county and circuit courts successively from 1841 till 1855, and a member in 1850-'1 of the Virginia constitutional convention. Mr. Willey was a delegate to the State convention that met at Richmond in February, 1861, and after the adoption of the ordinance of secession was elected by the Unionist legislature at Wheeling to occupy the seat in the U. S. senate that was vacated by James M. Mason, taking his seat on 13 July, 1861. He attended the convention that decided to create a new state, was chosen to represent West Virginia in the senate, and took his seat on 3 December, 1863. In the following year he was re-elected for the full term that ended on 3 March, 1871, and served as chairman of the committees on patents and on claims. In 1866 he was a delegate to the Loyalists' convention at Philadelphia, and in 1871 he was a member of the Constitutional convention of West Virginia. He has written for reviews and delivered lectures on various subjects, including a series on “Methodism” in 1853. Allegheny college gave him the degree of LL. D. in 1863. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI. pp. 519. 



WILSON, Henry, 1812-1875, abolitionist leader, statesman, U.S. Senator and Vice President of the U.S.  Massachusetts state senator.  Member, Free Soil Party.  Founder of the Republican Party.  Strong opponent of slavery.  Became abolitionist in 1830s.  Opposed annexation of Texas as a slave state.  Bought and edited Boston Republican newspaper, which represented the anti-slavery Free Soil Party.  Called for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1815.  Introduced bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia and the granting of freedom to slaves who joined the Union Army.  Supported full political and civil rights to emancipated slaves.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 548-550; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 2, pp. 322-325; Congressional Globe; Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); Wilson, History of the Antislavery Measures of the Thirty-seventh and Thirty-Eighth United States Congresses (1864); Wilson, Military Measures of the United States Congress, 1861-1865 (1866); Wilson, History of the Reconstruction Measures of the Thirty-ninth and Fortieth Congresses (1868); and Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America (3 volumes, 1872-77), Elias Nason and Thomas Russell, The Life and Public Services of Henry Wilson (1876).

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

WILSON, Henry, statesman, born in Farmington, New Hampshire, 16 February, 1812; died in Washington, D. C., 22 November, 1875. He was the son of a farm-laborer, whose ancestors were from the north of Ireland, and at the age of ten was apprenticed to a farmer till the age of twenty-one. During those eleven years of service he received not more than twelve months' schooling altogether, but read more than a thousand volumes. When his apprenticeship terminated in December, 1833, he set out from Farmington on foot in search of work, which he found at Natick, Massachusetts, in the house of a shoemaker. On attaining his majority he had his name, which was originally Jeremiah Jones Colbaith, changed by legislative enactment to the simpler one of Henry Wilson. He learned the trade of his employer and followed it for two years, earning enough money to return to New Hampshire and study in the academies at Stafford, Wolfborough, and Concord. At the same time he made his appearance in public life as an ardent Abolitionist during the attempts that were made in 1835 to stop the discussion of the slavery question by violent means. The person to whom he had intrusted his savings became insolvent, and in 1838, after a visit to Washington, where his repugnance to slavery was intensified by the observation of its conditions, he was compelled to relinquish his studios and resume shoemaking at Natick. In 1840 he appeared in the political canvass as a supporter of William Henry Harrison, addressing more than sixty Whig meetings, in which he was introduced as the “Natick cobbler.” In that year and the next he was elected to the Massachusetts house of representatives, and then after a year's intermission served three annual terms in the state senate.

He was active in organizing in 1845 a convention in Massachusetts to oppose the admission of Texas into the Union as a slave state, and was made, with John Greenleaf Whittier, the bearer of a petition to congress against the proposed annexation, which was signed by many thousands of Massachusetts people. In the following year he presented in the legislature a resolution condemnatory of slavery, supporting it with a comprehensive and vigorous speech. In 1848 he went as a delegate to the Whig national convention in Philadelphia, and on the rejection of anti-slavery resolutions spoke in protest and withdrew. On his return he defended his action before his constituents, and soon afterward bought the Boston “Republican” newspaper, which he edited for two years, making it the leading organ of the Free-soil party. He was chairman of the Free-soil state committee in 1849-'52. In 1850 he returned to the state senate, and in the two following years he was elected president of that body. He presided over the Free-soil national convention at Pittsburg in 1852, and in the ensuing canvass acted as chairman of the national committee of the party. As chairman of the state committee he had arranged a coalition with the Democrats by which George S. Boutwell was elected governor in 1851 and Charles Sumner and Robert Rantoul were sent to the U. S. senate. He was a candidate for congress in 1852, and failed of election by only ninety-three votes, although in his district the majority against the Free-soilers was more than 7,500. In 1853 he was a member of the State constitutional convention and proposed a provision to admit colored men into the militia organization. In the same year he was defeated as the Free-soil candidate for governor. He acted with the American party in 1855, with the aid of which he was chosen to succeed Edward Everett in the U. S. senate. He was a delegate to the American national convention in Philadelphia in that year, but, when it adopted a platform that countenanced slavery, he and other Abolitionists withdrew. He had delivered a speech in advocacy of the repeal of the fugitive-slave law and the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia shortly after taking his seat in the senate in February, 1855. On the disruption of the American organization through the secession of himself and his friends, he took an active part in the formation of the Republican party, with the programme of opposition to the extension of slavery. On 23 May, 1856, the morning after his colleague in the senate, Charles Sumner, was assaulted by Preston S. Brooks, Mr. Wilson denounced the act as “brutal, murderous, and cowardly.” For this language he was challenged to a duel by Brooks; but he declined on the ground that the practice of duelling was barbarous and unlawful, at the same time announcing that he believed in the right of self-defence.

During the next four years he took part in all the important debates in the senate, delivering elaborate speeches on the admission of Kansas, the treasury-note bill, the expenditures of the government, the Pacific railroad project, and many other topics. His speeches bore the impress of practical, clear-sighted statesman ship, and if the grace of oratory and polished diction was wanting, they always commanded attention and respect. The congressional records during his long term of service in the senate show that he was one of the most industrious and efficient members of that body, and that his name stands connected with nearly all the important acts and resolves. Strong in his convictions, he was fearless in their expression, but he was scrupulously careful in his statements, and the facts he adduced were never successfully disputed. In March, 1859, he made a notable reply to James H. Hammond, of South Carolina, in defence of free labor, which was printed and widely circulated through the northern states. He had been continued in the senate for a full term by an almost unanimous vote of the Massachusetts legislature in the preceding January. In March, 1861, he was made chairman of the committee on military affairs, of which he had been a member during the preceding four years. He induced congress to authorize the enlistment of 500,000 volunteers at the beginning of hostilities between the states, and during the entire period of the war he remained at the head of the committee, and devised and carried measures of the first importance in regard to the organization of the army and the raising and equipment of troops, as well as attending to the many details that came before the committee. He had been connected with the state militia as major, colonel, and brigadier-general from 1840 till 1851, and in 1861 he raised the 22d regiment of Massachusetts volunteers, and marched to the field as its colonel, serving there as an aide to General George B. McClellan till the reassembling of congress.

During the session of 1861-'2 he introduced the laws that abolished slavery in the District of Columbia, put an end to the “black code,” allowed the enrolment of blacks in the militia, and granted freedom to slaves who entered the service of the United States and to their families. During the civil war he made many patriotic speeches before popular assemblages. He took a prominent part in the legislation for the reduction of the army after the war and for the reconstruction of the southern state governments, advocating the policy of granting full political and civil rights to the emancipated slaves, joined with measures of conciliation toward the people who had lately borne arms against the United States government. He was continued as senator for the term that ended in March, 1871, and near its close was re-elected for six years more. He was nominated for the office of vice-president of the United States in June, 1872, on the ticket with Ulysses S. Grant, and was elected in the following November, receiving 286 out of 354 electoral votes. On 3 March, 1873, he resigned his place on the floor of the senate, of which he had been a member for eighteen years, in order to enter on his functions as president of that body. The same year he was stricken with paralysis, and continued infirm till his death, which was caused by apoplexy.

It is but just to say of Henry Wilson that with exceptional opportunities which a less honest statesman might have found for enriching himself at the government's expense, or of taking advantage of his knowledge of public affairs and the tendency of legislation upon matters of finance and business, he died at his post of duty, as he had lived, rich only in his integrity and self-respect. Among his many published speeches may be mentioned “Personalities and Aggressions of Mr. Butler” (1856); “Defence of the Republican Party” (1856); “Are Workingmen Slaves?” (1858); “The Pacific Railroad” (1859); and “The Death of Slavery is the Life of the Nation” (1864). He was the author of a volume entitled “History of the Anti-Slavery Measures of the Thirty-seventh and Thirty-eighth United States Congresses,” in which he relates the progress of the bills relating to slavery and cites the speeches of their friends and opponents (Boston, 1865); of a history of legislation on the army during the civil war, with the title of “Military Measures of the United States Congress” (1866); of a small volume called “Testimonies of American Statesmen and Jurists to the Truths of Christianity,” being an address that he gave before the Young men's Christian association at Natick (1867); of a “History of the Reconstruction Measures of the Thirty-ninth and Fortieth Congresses, 1865-'8” (1868); of a series of articles on Edwin M. Stanton that were reprinted from a magazine, with those of Jeremiah S. Black, with the title of “A Contribution to History” (Easton, Pennsylvania, 1868); of a published oration on “The Republican and Democratic Parties” (Boston, 1868); and of a great work bearing the title of “History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America,” on which he labored indefatigably during his last illness, yet was not quite able to complete (3 volumes, Boston, 1872-'5). See his “Life and Public Services,” which was written by his friend, Thomas Russell, and Reverend Elias Nason, who was his pastor for many years (1872). Congress directed to be printed a volume of “Obituary Addresses,” that were delivered in both houses, on 21 January, 1876 (Washington, 1876). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI. pp. 548-550. 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 2, pp. 322-325:

WILSON, HENRY (February 16, 1812-November 22, 1875), United States senator, vice-president, born at Farmington, New Hampshire, and named Jeremiah Jones Colbath, was one of the many children of Winthrop and Abigail (Witbam) Colbath. The father was a day-laborer in a sawmill. So dire was the family's poverty that soon after the boy's tenth birthday he was bound by indenture to work for a neighboring farmer; he was to have food and clothing, and one month's schooling each winter. For more than ten years he worked at increasingly heavy farm labor. Two neighbors sent him books and directed his reading. By the end of his service he had "inwardly digested" nearly a thousand volumes, including the best in English and American history and biography. At twenty-one he received in quittance "six sheep and a yoke of oxen," which he immediately sold for $85-the first money returns for his years of work. At this period, with the approval of his parents, he had his name changed by act of the legislature to Henry Wilson.

After some weeks of unsuccessful job-hunting in neighboring towns, he walked more than a hundred miles to Natick, Massachusetts, and hired himself to a man who agreed, in return for five months' labor, to teach him to make "brogans." In a few weeks he "bought his time" and began to work for himself. For several years he drove himself hard at the shoemaker's bench, intent upon getting together enough money to begin the study of law. Meanwhile, he was reading incessantly and developing effectiveness in public speaking by taking an active part in the weekly meetings of the Natick Debating Society. To regain his health, broken by overwork, he made a trip to Virginia. In Washington he listened to passionate debates over slavery, and in the nearby slave pen watched negro families separated and fathers, mothers, and children sold at auction as slaves. Many years later he declared: "I left the capital of my country with the unalterable resolution to give all that I had, and all that I hoped to have, of power, to the cause of emancipation in America" (Nason and Russell, post, p. 31). With health restored, he turned to study; three brief terms in New Hampshire academies (at Strafford, Wolfborough, and Concord) ended his meager schooling. His savings exhausted, he returned to Na tick, paid off his debt by teaching district school in the winter term, and than with a capital of a very few dollars started fo manufacture shoes, continuing in this industry for nearly ten years and at times employing over a hundred workers. He dealt with them as man to man, and won their entire confidence and devotion. He was moderately successful in business, but the making of a fortune was not a career that attracted him. On October 28, 1840, he married Harriet Malvina Howe. Their only son, Henry Hamilton Wilson (d. 1866) served with distinction in the Civil War, attaining the rank of lieutenant-colonel of a colored regiment.

In 1840 Wilson supported the Whig candidate, Harrison, for president, believing that the Democrats' financial policy had injured the industrial interests of the North and brought misery to its wage-earners. In that year he was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and for the next dozen years only twice did he fail to win a seat in one branch or the other of the legislature. In 1845 he was active in the Concord convention in protest against the extension of slavery, and with Whittier was chosen to present to Congress the petition of 65,000 Massachusetts citizens against the annexation of Texas. At the Whig national convention in Philadelphia (June 1848) when General Taylor was nominated for the presidency and no stand taken by the party as to the Wilmot Proviso, Wilson and Charles Allen, another Massachusetts delegate, headed the small group that denounced the Whigs' action, withdrew from the convention hall, and called the convention at Buffalo which launched the Free Soil party. From 1848 to 1851 Wilson edited the Boston Republican, the organ of that party. He was mainly instrumental in bringing about in 1851 the coalition-abhorred by all straight party men of that day-which resulted in the election of Charles Sumner to the United States Senate. In 1851 and 1852 Wilson was president of the state Senate. In the latter year he served as chairman of the Free Soil national convention. Believing that the rising American (Know Nothing) party might be liberalized so as to become an important force for the cause of freedom, in 1854, with many other anti-slavery men, he joined that organization. No act of his life drew upon him so much criticism, and he soon came to deplore the step he had taken. He loathed the intolerant nativist spirit of the Know Nothings, and before many months had passed he declared that if the American party should prove "recreant to freedom" he would do his utmost to "shiver it to atoms" (Nason and Russell, p. 121). Over his vehement protest the American National Council at Philadelphia in 1855 adopted a platform as evasive on the slavery issue as had been that of the Whig convention in 1848, and forthwith Wilson again led anti-slavery delegates from the hall in a revolt which dismembered the American party in its first attempt to control national politics.

In January 1855-by a legislature almost entirely "American" in membership-Wilson had already been elected to fill the vacancy in the Senate caused by the resignation of Edward Everett [q.v.]. In his very first speech he aligned himself with those who favored the abolition of slavery "wherever we are morally or legally responsible for its existence" (i.e. in the District of Columbia and the Territories), and the repeal of the fugitive slave law, declaring his firm belief that, if the federal government were thus relieved from all connection with and responsibility for the existence of slavery, "the men of the South who are opposed to the existence of that institution, would get rid of it in their own States at no distant day" (Congressional Globe, 33 Congress, 2 Session, p. 238). He was outspoken in the debate upon the struggle in Kansas. Following Brooks's assault upon Sumner, Wilson upon the floor of the Senate characterized that act as " brutal, murderous, and cowardly" (Ibid., 34 Congress, 1 Session, p. 13o6). This brought a challenge from Brooks, to which Wilson instantly wrote a reply declining to "make any qualification whatever ... in regard to those words," and adding: " The law of my country and the matured convictions of my whole life alike forbid me to meet you for the purpose indicated in your letter" (History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, II, 487). In many states Wilson took a most active part in the campaign for the election of Lincoln. While peace hung in the balance, he made a powerful speech against the Crittenden compromise (Congressional Globe, 36 Congress, 2 Session, pp. 1088-94).

With the outbreak of the war heavy responsibilities at once devolved upon him. For nine years he had been a member of the Massachusetts state militia, rising to the grade of brigadier-general. In the Senate he had served for several years on the committee on military affairs. To its chairmanship he now brought a combination of long military and legislative experience unequaled by that of any other member of the Senate. With tremendous energy he threw himself into the task of framing, explaining, and defending legislative measures necessary for enlisting, organizing, and provisioning a vast army. General Winfield Scott declared that in that short session of Congress Wilson had done more work "than all the chairmen of the military committees had done for the last twenty years" (Nason and Russell, p. 307). At the end of the session, he returned to Massachusetts and within forty days recruited nearly 2300 men. Simon Cameron, secretary of war, wrote to Wilson, January 27, 1862: "No man, in my opinion, in the whole country, has done more to aid the war department in preparing the mighty army now under arms than yourself" (Ibid., p. 316). He constantly urged Lincoln to proclaim emancipation as a war measure, and he shaped the bills which brought freedom to scores of thousands of slaves in the border states, years before the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. In March 1865 he reported from the Senate conference committee the bill for the establishment of the Freedmen's Bureau.

He was a bitter opponent of Johnson's reconstruction policy and attitude toward Congress. In that dark era Wilson was so concerned for the welfare of the freedmen in whose cause he had Jong been fighting that he could not appreciate the realities of the chaos in which the South had been left by the war, nor the sincerity and self-sacrifice with which many of the Southern leaders were grappling with the problems of reconstruction. He therefore joined with extremists in Congress in imposing tests and restrictions which in the retrospect of seventy years seem unnecessarily harsh and unrelenting. As a result of long tours through the South and West, however, his attitude soon became more conciliatory; he conferred frankly with pre-war Southern leaders, and counseled the freedmen who thronged to hear him to learn something, to get and till a bit of land, and to obey the law. He favored federal legislation in aid of education and homesteading in the impoverished Southern states. In 1872 the nomination of Wilson for vice-president strengthened the Republican ticket. He proved a highly efficient and acceptable presiding officer, though ill health soon made his attendance irregular. In November 1875 he suffered a paralytic stroke in the Capitol and was taken to the Vice-President's Room, where twelve days later he died. He was buried in Old Dell Park Cemetery, Natick.

Through nearly thirty years of public service Wilson did not allow personal ambition to swerve him from the unpopular causes to which he had devoted himself from the beginning-the freeing of the slave, and the gaining for the workingman, white or black, a position of opportunity and of dignity such as befitted the citizen of a republic. To gain these ends he did not hesitate to compromise on what he deemed non-essentials, to cut loose from old party ties, and to manipulate new coalitions to the dismay of party leaders who denounced him as a shifty politician. His sympathies were always with the workers from whose ranks he had sprung, and in his career they found incentive and inspiration. In his own state he was the champion of the free public school, of the free public library, of exemption of workers' tools and household furniture from taxation, and of the removal of property tests from office-holding. In the opinion of Senator G. F. Hoar (post, pp. 213, 216-17), Wilson was "a skilful, adroit, practiced and constant political manager"-"the most skilful political organizer in the country" of his day. No other leader of that period could sense as clearly as he what the farmer, the mechanic, and the workingman were thinking about, and he "addressed himself always to their best and highest thought." Wilson brought together much valuable material in the following books: History of the Antislavery Measures of the Thirty-seventh and Thirty-Eighth United States Congresses (1864); Military Measures of the United States Congress, 1861-1865 (1866); History of the Reconstruction Measures of the Thirty-ninth and Fortieth Congresses (1868); and History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America (3 volumes, 1872-77), the last written with the zeal and the bias of a crusader, but without overemphasis upon his own part in the movement.

[The most detailed account of Wilson is Elias Nason and Thomas Russell, The Life and Public Services of Henry Wilson (1876), a laudatory, crudely expanded revision of Nason's campaign biography of 1872. See, also, Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of Henry Wilson ... Delivered in the Senate and House of Representatives January 11, 1876 (1876); New England Historical and Genealogical Register, July 1878; G. F. Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years (1903); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); Evening Star (Washington) and Boston Transcript, November 22, 1875.]

G. H. H.

The Fortieth Congress of the United States: Historical and Biographical. Vol. 2., By William H. Barnes, 1869:

HENRY WILSON.

HENRY WILSON was born at Farmington, N. H., February 16, 1812, of poor parentage. He was early apprenticed to a farmer in his native town, with whom he continued eleven years, during which period his school privileges, at different intervals, amounted to about one year. He early formed a taste for reading, which he eagerly indulged on Sundays and evenings by fire-light and moon-light. Thus, in the course of his eleven years' apprenticeship, he read about 1,000 volumes—mainly of history and biography.

On coming of age, young Wilson left Farmington, and with all his possessions packed upon his back, walked to Natick, Mass., and hired himself to a shoemaker. Having learned the trade, and labored nearly three years, he returned to New Hampshire for the purpose of securing an education. His educational career, however, was suddenly arrested by the insolvency of the man to whom he had entrusted his money, and in 1838 he returned to Natick to resume his trade of shoemaking.

Wilson was now twenty-six years of age, and up to this period his life had been mainly devoted to labor. It was in allusion to this that when, in 1858, he replied on the floor of Congress to the famous "mudsill" speech of Governor Hammond of South Carolina, he gave utterance to these eloquent words:

"Sir, I am the son of a hireling manual laborer, who, with the frosts of seventy winters on his brow, 'lives by daily labor.' I, too, have 'lived by daily labor.' I, too, have been a ' hireling manual laborer.' Poverty cast its dark and chilling shadow over the home of my childhood; and want was sometimes there—an unbidden guest. At the age of ten years—to aid him who gave me being in keeping the gaunt specter from the hearth of the mother who bore me—I left the home of my boyhood, and went forth to earn my bread by 'daily labor.'"

From his youth, Mr. "Wilson seems to have been deeply and permanently imbued with the spirit of hostility to Slavery, and few men have dealt more numerous or heavy blows against the institution. His political career commenced in 1840. During this year he made upwards of sixty speeches in behalf of the election of General Harrison. In the succeeding five years, he was three times elected a Representative, and twice a Senator, to the Massachusetts legislature. Here his stern opposition to Slavery was at once apparent, and in 1845 he was selected, with the poet Whittier, to bear to Washington the great antislavery petition of Massachusetts against the annexation of Texas. In the same year he introduced in the legislature a resolution declaring the unalterable hostility of Massachusetts to the further extension and longer continuance of Slavery in America, and her fixed determination to use all constitutional and lawful means for its extinction. His speech on this occasion was pronounced by the leading anti-slavery journals to be the fullest and most comprehensive on the Slavery question that had yet been made in any legislative body in the country. The resolution was adopted by a large majority.

Mr. Wilson was a delegate to the Whig National Convention of 1848, and on the rejection of the anti-slavery resolutions presented to that body, he withdrew from it, and was prominent in the organization of the Free Soil party. In the following year he was chosen chairman of the Free Soil State Committee of Massachusetts—a post which he filled during four years. In 1850 he was again a member of the State legislature; and in 1851 and 1852 was a member of the Senate, and president of that body. He was also president of the Free Soil National Convention at Pittsburg in 1852, and chairman of the National Committee. He was the Free Soil candidate for Congress in 1852. In 1853 and 1854 he was an unsuccessful candidate for Governor of Massachusetts. In 1853 he was an active and influential member of the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention. In 1855, was elected to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy occasioned by the resignation of Mr. Everett.

Mr. Wilson took his seat in the Senate in February, 1855, and, by a vote nearly unanimous, has been twice re-elected to that office. As a Senator, he has been uniformly active, earnest, faithful, prominent, and influential,—invariably evincing an inflexible and fearless opposition to Slavery and the slave-power. In his very first speech, made a few days after entering the Senate, he announced for himself and his anti-slavery friends their uncompromising position. "We mean, sir," said he, "to place in the councils of the Nation men who, in the words of Jefferson, have sworn on the altar of God eternal hostility to every kind of oppression over the mind and body of men." This was the key-note of Mr. Wilson's career in the Senate from that day to this.

In the spring of 1856 occurred the assault upon Mr. Sumner by Preston S. Brooks of South Carolina. Mr. Wilson—whose fearlessness is equal to his firmness and consistency—denounced this act as "brutal, murderous, and cowardly." These words, uttered on the floor of the Senate, drew forth a challenge from Mr. Brooks, which was declined by Wilson in terms so just, dignified, and manly, as to secure the warm approval of all good and right-minded people.

At the commencement of the rebellion, the Senate assigned to Mr. Wilson the Chairmanship of the Military Committee. In view of his protracted experience as a member of this committee, joined with his great energy and industry,' probably no man in the Senate was more completely qualified for this most important post. In this committee originated most of the legislation for raising, organizing, and governing the armies, while thousands of nominations of officers of all grades were referred to it. The labors of Mr. Wilson, as chairman of the committee, were immense. Important legislation affecting the armies, and the thousands of nominations, could not but excite the liveliest interest of officers and their friends; and they ever freely visited him, consulted with, and wrote to him. Private soldiers, too, ever felt at liberty to visit him, or write to him concerning their affairs. Thousands did so, and so promptly did he attend to their needs that they called him the " Soldier's Friend."

As clearly as any man in the country, Mr. Wilson, at the commencement of the rebellion, discerned the reality and magnitude of the impending conflict. Hence, at the fall of Fort Sumter, when President Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 men, the clear-sighted Senator advised that the call should be for 300,000; and immediately induced the Secretary of War to double the number of regiments assigned to Massachusetts. In the prompt forwarding of these troops Mr. Wilson was specially active. Throughout that spring, and until the meeting of Congress, July 4th, he was constantly occupying himself at Washington, aiding the soldiers, working in the hospitals, and preparing the necessary military measures to be presented to the national legislature.

Congress assembled; and, on the second day of the session, Mr. Wilson introduced several important bills relating to the military wants of the country, one of which was a bill authorizing the employment of 500,000 volunteers for three years. Subsequently Mr. Wilson introduced another bill authorizing the President to accept 500,000 volunteers additional to those already ordered to be employed. During this extra session, Mr. Wilson, as Chairman of the Military Committee, introduced other measures of great importance relating to the appointment of army officers, the purchase of arms and munitions of war, and increasing the pay of private soldiers,—all of which measures were enacted. In fact, such was his activity and efficiency in presenting and urging forward plans for increasing and organizing the armies necessary to put down the rebellion, that General Scott declared of Mr. Wilson that he "had done more work in that short session than all the chairmen of the military committees had done for the last twenty years."

After the defeat at. Bull Run, Mr. Wilson was earnestly solicited by Mr. Cameron, Mr. Seward, and Mr. Chase, to raise a regiment of infantry, a company of sharp-shooters, and a battery of artillery. Accordingly, returning to Massachusetts, he issued a stirring appeal to the young men of the State, addressed several public meetings, and in forty days he succeeded in rallying. 2,300 men. He was commissioned colonel of the Twenty-second Regiment, and with his regiment, a company of sharp-shooters, and the third battery of artillery, he returned to "Washington as colonel; and afterwards, as aid on the staff of General McClellan, Mr. Wilson served until the beginning of the following year, when pressing duties in Congress forced him to resign his military commission.

Returning to his seat in the Senate, Mr. Wilson originated and carried through several measures of great importance to the interests of the army and the country. Among these was the passage of bills relating to courts-martial, allotment certificates, army-signal department, sutlers and their duties, the army medical department, encouragement of enlistments, making free the wives and children of colored soldiers, a uniform system of army ambulances, increasing still further the pay of soldiers, establishing a national military and naval asylum for totally disabled officers and men of the volunteer forces, encouraging the employment of disabled and discharged soldiers, securing to colored soldiers equality of pay, and other wise and judicious provisions.

Invariably true and constant in his sympathies for the downtrodden and oppressed, Mr. Wilson never once forgot the slave, for whose freedom and elevation he had consecrated his time and energies for more than a quarter of a century. He actively participated in the measures culminating in the anti-slavery amendment to the Constitution. He introduced the bill abolishing Slavery in the District of Columbia, by which more than three thousand slaves were made free, and Slavery made for ever impossible in the capital of the Nation. He introduced a provision, which became a law, May 21, 1862, "providing that persons of color in the District of Columbia should be subject to the same laws to which white persons were subject; that they should be tried for offenses against the laws in the same manner as white persons were tried; and, if convicted, be liable to the same penalty, and no other, as would be inflicted upon white persons for the same crime." He introduced the amendment to the Militia Bill of 1795, which made negros a part of the militia, and providing for the freedom of all such men of color as should be called into the service of the United States, as well as the freedom of their mothers, wives, and children. This, with one or two other measures of a kindred character, introduced by Mr. "Wilson, and urged forward through much and persistent opposition, resulted in the freedom of nearly 100,000 slaves in Kentucky alone.

After the close of the war, Mr. Wilson was no less active and influential in procuring legislation for the suitable reduction of the army than he had been in originating measures for its creation. Making an extended tour through the Southern States, he delivered numerous able and instructive addresses on political and national topics.

He was among the first to declare himself in favor of General Grant as the Republican candidate for the Presidency. After the nomination, Mr. Wilson entered with great zeal into the canvass, and made some of the ablest speeches of the campaign. Amid the pressure of public duties, Mr. Wilson has found time for literary pursuits. He is the author of a "History of the Anti-Slavery Measures of the Thirty-seventh and Thirty-eighth Congresses," and "History of the Reconstruction Measures of the Thirty-ninth Congress."

In his personal character Mr. Wilson is without reproach. He possesses purity as stainless as when he entered politics, and integrity as unimpeachable as when first elected to office. He is one of the most practical of statesmen, and one of the most skillful of legislative tacticians. Ills forte as a Senator is hard work—the simple and efficient means by which he has arisen from humble origin to his present high position.



WILSON, James Falconer, born 1828-1895, lawyer.  Ohio State Senator.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  Elected to the federal House of Representatives to fill a vacancy in December 1861, he was reelected as a Republican and served until March 3, 1869. In the days of war and reconstruction he had a conspicuous and determining part in the congressional policies. He used fully his strategic position as chairman of the judiciary committee to forward abolition and the Union program. War measures that he fathered included the article prohibiting the use of troops in the return of fugitive slaves, enfranchisement of negroes in the District of Columbia, and the tax on state bank circulation; he introduced the original resolution for an abolition Amendment. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 552; 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. 2, pp. 331-333). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 2, pp. 331-333:

WILSON, JAMES FALCONER (October 19, 1828-April 22, 1895), lawyer, representative in Congress, United States senator, popularly known as "Jefferson Jim" to distinguish him from his fellow Iowan, "Tama Jim" (James T. Wilson [q.v.], secretary of agriculture under McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, and Taft), was born at Newark, Ohio. His father, David S. Wilson, a contractor and builder, was of Scotch ancestry and a native of Morgantown, Virginia (now West Virginia); his mother was Kitty Ann (Bramble) of Chillicothe, Ohio. Left fatherless at ten, James aided in the support of the mother and two younger children by serving as apprentice to a harness maker. With brief intervals of school attendance and the personal instruction of sympathetic teachers and ministers he secured what he later termed a "thorough education." While working at his trade he began reading law, and, completing his study under the direction of William Burnham Woods [q.v.], later a justice of the United States Supreme Court, was admitted to the bar in 1851. On May 25, 1852, he married Mary Jewett, and the couple went to Fairfield, Iowa, where they established their home; two sons and a daughter were born to them.

The young lawyer soon took a foremost place on the local circuit but was drawn more and more into politics. Editorials for the local organ gave him standing and offices came in continuous succession. He was one of the most influential delegates in the constitutional convention of 1857, and the same year was appointed to the Des Moines River improvement commission and elected to the state House of Representatives, where he served as chairman of the ways and means committee. Promoted to the state Senate in 1859, he aided in the revision of the state code, published in 1860, and in the special war session of 1861 was named president pro tempore.

Elected to the federal House of Representatives to fill a vacancy in December 1861, he was reelected as a Republican and served until March 3, 1869. In the days of war and reconstruction he had a conspicuous and determining part in the congressional policies. He used fully his strategic position as chairman of the judiciary committee to forward abolition and the Union program. War measures that he fathered included the article prohibiting the use of troops in the return of fugitive slaves, enfranchisement of negroes in the District of Columbia, and the tax on state bank circulation; he introduced the original resolution for an abolition Amendment. During the turmoil of Reconstruction he was one of the ablest leaders among the legalistic Radicals. On every possible occasion he upheld the constitutional prerogatives of Congress. He introduced important amendments to the resolution for repudiation of the Confederate debt, introduced the amendment repealing appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court under the Habeas Corpus Act of 1867, gave the final form to the Civil Rights Act, and served on the conference committee on tenure of office. He voted with the minority of his committee against the origin.al impeachment charges in 1867, giving an elaborate argument that was sustained by the House; but in view of a definite case of wilful violation of statutes, as it appeared to his legalistic mind, he became committed to the President's removal. His selection as a member of the committee to formulate the articles and as a trial manager was a recognition of the more moderate element of the Radical wing. His service at the trial consisted in constitutional arguments, most notably on the responsibility of the executive to abide bv acts of Congress regardless of his opinion as to their validity.

In 1869 Grant persuaded Wilson to accept the state portfolio. Misunderstandings over the activities of Elihu B. Washburne [q.v.], to whom the office had been granted temporarily to pay another personal debt, caused Wilson to withdraw his acceptance. On two subsequent occasions the invitation to enter the Grant official family was unavailingly renewed. While by no means indifferent to the political scene, he now devoted himself mainly to his profession. A prominent interest of these years and the one that was to bring the main attack upon his record was promotion of the Pacific railroad. In Congress he had been a zealous supporter of this enterprise and in 1868 had shown his confidence in it by profitable though moderate speculation in the stock of the construction company. For six years under Grant and one under Hayes he was a government director of the road. These connections brought him rather prominently into the House investigations of 1873. In the first of these he frankly admitted having secured stock as an investment and regretted that he was unable to secure more. Before the second, he emphatically denied the charge by an ex-official that he had received a check for $19,000 out of a fund for "special legal expenses," and no substantiating proof that he had was offered. The resulting attacks on him by hos tile journals apparently did not weaken him in Iowa. Probably the bulk of his constituents agreed with his view that his contribution to this great national enterprise had been praiseworthy and public-spirited.

While mentioned for the Senate from 1866 on his real opportunity did not come until 1882, when all of the other aspirants withdrew; he was reelected in 1888 without organized opposition. In brilliance and specific achievement his senatorial service fell far below that which he had rendered in the House. He was laborious on committees and helped to frame the original Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 and other measures, but he was clearly in the rank of the "elder statesmen." His health was steadily failing; he was definitely committed to retirement at the close of his second term, and, as it happened, died, at Fairfield, Iowa, within a few weeks of the close of the session. There was lacking, too, a cause to which he could devote himself as he had to anti-slavery. Prohibition was the only substitute. A zealous personal teetotaler, he belonged to the group that sought to commit the Republican party to temperance reform. In 1890 he secured the passage of the Original Package Act, which at the time was regarded as a great triumph for state control of the liquor traffic.

[Debates, Constitutional Convention of Iowa (1857); Trial of Andrew Johnson (1868); House Report No. 77 and No. 78, 42 Congress, 3 Session; Johnson Brigham, Iowa: Its History (1915), volume I; Portrait and Biographical Album of Jefferson and Van Buren Counties, Iowa (1890); E. H. Stiles, Recollections and Sketches of Notable Lawyers and Public Men of Early Iowa (1916); J. G. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress (2 volumes, 1884-86); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); Midland Monthly, July 1895; Fairfield Ledger, April 24, May 1, 8, 1895; Iowa State Register (Des Moines), April 23, 24, 1895.]

E.D.R.

Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888,Volume VI, p. 552:

WILSON, James F., senator, born in Newark, Ohio, 19 October, 1828. He received a classical education, studied law, and in 1853 began practice in Iowa, making Fairfield his residence. He was a member of the State constitutional convention in 1856, and in the following year entered the legislature. He passed into the state senate in 1859, was chosen its president in 1861, and in the same year was elected to congress to fill the vacancy that was caused by the resignation of Samuel R. Curtis, taking his seat on 2 December He was re-elected for the following term, serving as chairman of the judiciary committee, and on his second and third re-election was placed at the head of the same committee, and of that on unfinished business. In 1868 he was one of the managers of the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson. In 1869 he was made a commissioner for the Pacific railroad. He was elected a senator from Iowa for the term that will expire on 4 March, 1889, and was appointed on the committee on foreign affairs. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI. pp. 552.


The Fortieth Congress of the United States: Historical and Biographical. Vol. 1., By William H. Barnes, 1869, p. 363:

JAMES F. WILSON.

JAMES F. WILSON was born in Newark, Ohio, October 19, 1828. With no early advantages for education, he, like many Son Americans who have attained distinguished positions, was dependent upon his own resources for that measure of culture which fitted him for those public stations which he was to occupy. Originally he learned a mechanical trade, which, however, he early abandoned for the study of the law.

In 1853, he removed to Fairfield, Iowa, where he entered upon the practice of his profession. For a considerable period he edited with much ability the local newspaper of his party, which brought his talents into public recognition.

In 1856, he was elected a member of the Convention to revise the State Constitution. His services in this body gave him a reputation through the State as a wise and judicious legislator, and a young man of great promise. In 1857, he was appointed, by the Governor of Iowa, Assistant Commissioner of the Des Moines River Improvement, then the chief work of internal improvement in the State. During the same year, he was first elected to the Legislature of the State, as a member of the House of Representatives. In 1859, lie was elected a member of the State Senate, of which body he was chosen President in 1861. During that year, Hon. Samuel R. Curtis, Representative in Congress for the district in which he resided, having resigned his seat to engage in the war for the Union, Mr. Wilson was elected to serve for the unexpired portion of his term. He was subsequently elected, without opposition in any of the nominating conventions, to the Thirty-eighth, Thirty-ninth, and Fortieth Congresses. Before the commencement of the canvass for members of the Forty-first Congress, Mr. Wilson published a letter to his constituents announcing his determination not to be a candidate for re-election.

In politics, Mr. Wilson was originally an Anti-Slavery Whig. He joined the Anti-Nebraska party, which served as a temporary organization for the opponents of slavery during the political confusion which followed the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Soon after, he assisted in the organization of the Republican party in his State, and became at once one of its most distinguished members, as he still remains one of its most sincere and consistent adherents. In all political conflicts in his own State, as in the more extended sphere of his public life, he has been, from the commencement of his career, an unswerving friend of equal rights, without regard to race, color, or creed. He was an original advocate of the proposition to strike the word “white” from the State Constitution-a measure which finally triumphed in the canvass of 1868.

At the commencement of the Thirty-eighth Congress, Mr. Wilson was appointed Chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the House. The progress of events connected with the war rendered that Committee of far greater importance than it had ever before been. So many important, intricate, and novel questions touching the public interest in its most vital parts, were necessarily submitted to it, that its decisions were watched with anxiety, and subjected to the most searching criticism. For the credit of Mr. Wilson in that capacity, it is sufficient to state that throughout the long and terrible turmoil of the war, with the great exactions that it devolved upon the chairman of that committee, he remained uninterruptedly at its head, with the common consent and applause of the House, and that he did not fail to carry in that body a single important measure which he reported from it.

On the first day of the session of the Thirty-eighth Congress, December 7, 1863, Mr. Wilson gave notice of his intention to introduce a joint resolution for an amendment of the Constitution abolishing Slavery. This was one of the first resolutions looking to that end, it not actually the first. Not long after, he reported the resolution from the Judiciary Committee; and on the nineteenth of March he made a speech in its support, which is, perhaps, the ablest and most effective speech that he ever made in the House. Notwithstanding it seems in the retrospect that at that advanced period of the war the final and legal extirpation of slavery, which was its originating cause, would have been an easy cause to champion, it was nevertheless met by a thousand objections of prudence, interest, timidity, and prejudice, and was finally carried only after the most intense parliamentary struggle that occurred during the pendency of the war. The brevity of these sketches forbids lengthy quotations from Congressional speeches, but we will introduce here the closing paragraph of the speech of Mr. Wilson upon that great subject, regretting that space forbids us further quotations or a summary of the argument by which he enforced his proposition. Mr. Wilson said:

“ The Committee on the Judiciary have authorized me to report to the House the proposed amendment of the Constitution of the United States, with a recommendation that it be passed by this body, and submitted to the legislatures of the several States for their acceptance. A concurrence in this recommendation is the plain road over which we may escape from the difficulties which now beset us. A submission of this proposition to the several States will at once remove from Congress the question of slavery. No further agitation of this vexatious question need disturb our relations if we concur in this recommendation, and we shall be far advanced towards a lasting, ever-enduring peace. Send this proposition to the States, trust it to the people, fix it as a center around which public opinion may gather its potent agencies, and we shall have accomplished more for the future tranquillity of the Republic than ever was effected by Congress before. The people are now convinced of the incompatibility of slavery with free government. Let us impart to them an opportunity to give effect to their conviction. If we refuse, our successors will be more obedient: for the people have decreed that slavery shall die, and that its death shall be recorded by the Constitution. We are to construct the machinery that shall execute the decree, or give place to those who will perform the bidding of the people. We cannot evade the responsibility which rests upon us by declaring that we accept the abolition of slavery as a fact accomplished. The nation knows that this enunciation is a mere lachrymose, diplomatic intrigue employed by slavery to arrest the grand volcanic action that is upheaving the great moral ideas which underlie the Republic. The nation demands more; its faith embraces more; its acute appreciation of the true. nature of the disease which preys upon its heart-strings, assures it that the work of death cannot be arrested until the fact of slavery's dissolution is accomplished; and that this may not be until, by an amendment of the Constitution, we assert the ultimate triumph of liberty over slavery, democracy over aristocracy, free government over absolutism.”

In this Congress, too, Mr. Wilson advocated the employment of negro troops. In order to dispose him to accept the services of black men to aid in the salvation of the Republic, he never had any prejudices to conquer. The repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law, with the removal of all the odious relics of the institution of slavery, found him at all times a prompt and indefatigable supporter.

Soon after the organization of the Thirty-ninth Congress, Mr. Wilson reported from the Judiciary Committee a joint resolution proposing an amendment of the Constitution to prohibit for ever the payment of any portion of the rebel debt. This interest was so great, and so complicated with partisan intrigues, that the danger seemed imminent that some proportion or the whole of it might be assumed, and its perpetual inhibition became a matter of great public importance. The resolution was passed by the House. It was not acted upon by the Senate, but the substance of it was included in the fourteenth constitutional amendment as finally adopted.

On the 18th of the same month, he reported from the Judiciary Committee the bill introduced by Mr. Kelley, of Pennsylvania, establishing impartial suffrage in the District of Columbia, and opened the discussion in its favor in a very pointed and able speech, supporting the measure energetically in all its stages through the House, until its final passage over the Executive veto.

At the same session, on the 1st of March, 1866, he reported, with some amendments, the Civil Rights Bill, which had passed the Senate, and engineered it skillfully through the House. On a motion to recommit the bill, he made an argument on its legal aspects and general character.

At the second session of the Thirty-ninth Congress, the subject of Impeachment of the President was referred to the Judiciary Committee, and was continued as a subject of their consideration in the Fortieth Congress. After a protracted examination of the evidence submitted, and of the law in the case, the committee made divided reports. Mr. Wilson made a report, in behalf of a minority, against impeachment. After an energetic debate, his proposition was adopted by the House. Mr. Wilson went to the examination of this case with the prevailing ideas with regard to the law and the practice in cases of impeachment—that the power to impeach is a vast, vague, almost illimitable prerogative, resting substantially alone in the judgment of the Senate as to the character of the offensive acts and the exigencies of the public welfare. The known deeds of the Executive led him to anticipate the necessity of reporting in favor of impeachment, and he was not inclined to suspect the legal power to meet the admitted acts by the extreme remedy of the Constitution. But the careful study of the law and history of impeachments which the occasion imposed upon him, forced him to the conclusion that, at least under our Constitution, no Federal officer could be impeached for any offense which was not named in the Constitution, or which was not a criminal offense under the laws of Congress. No such offense was shown. In support of his views he comprised in his report a careful but succinct review of every important case of impeachment in the British Parliament, and of every case brought before the Senate of the United States, with an elucidation of the law and practice under both governments, which forms an interesting and valuable treatise for the jurist and the historian. The report comprised, also, a summary of all the evidence bearing upon every charge made against the President, and a consideration of the character of each specific charge.

When the subject came a second time before the House, on new charges, Mr. Wilson was one of the most prompt and decided of those who demanded the impeachment of the President. In this instance, in his judgment, there was no doubt about the power and duty of Congress. In his view, a penal enactment of Congress had been violated, clearly, knowingly, intentionally, defiantly. He was made one of the Managers appointed by the House to carry the articles of impeachment that were found against the President before the Senate, and to prosecute them there. He gave to that prosecution his best and most active efforts, and the failure of the undertaking affected him more painfully than any public event with which he had ever been connected.

In the Thirty-ninth Congress Mr. Wilson was also Chairman of the Committee on Unfinished Business, and was also a member of the Committee on the Air-Line Railroad to New York. He has taken much interest in the subject of free communication between the Capital of the country and the North, and in the removal of the obstructions of the railroad monopolies on that line and elsewhere. Among other measures which elicited his sympathies in the Fortieth Congress, was the bill to protect the rights of American citizens.

Since the close of the rebellion he has been an active promoter of measures for the re-organization of the rebel States. He has been careful to provide, so far as any effort of his own was concerned, that they should not be restored except under such auspices and conditions as gave the country the surest attainable guarantees for the future, and yet none have hailed more readily and with greater satisfaction their restoration clothed in the garments of loyalty and law.

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.