Whi-Win: White through Winthrop

See below for annotated biographies of anti-slavery Whigs. Source: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.

WHITE, Albert Smith, (October 24, 1803- September 4, 1864), lawyer, representative and senator, jurist. In 1836 he was elected to a seat in the national House of Representatives as a Whig, and in March 1839 was elected to the Senate. He served once more in the House of Representatives as a Republican from March 1861 to March 1863. His most notable activity was the introduction of a resolution for the appointment of a select committee to propose a plan for the gradual emancipation of slaves in the border states (Congressional Globe, 37 Congress, 2 Session, p. 1563). As chairman of such a committee he reported bills for indemnifying the loyal owners of slaves in Maryland, Missouri, and other states. Although the plan had the warm support of President Lincoln, it was not popular with White's constituents and cost him his renomination.

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 2,)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, pp. 466-467:

WHITE, Albert Smith, senator, born in Blooming Grove, Orange County, New York, 24 October, 1803; died in Stockwell, Tippecanoe County, Indiana, 4 September, 1864. He was graduated at Union in 1822, in the class with William H. Seward. After studying law he was admitted to the bar in 1825, and soon afterward moved to Indiana. In March, 1829, he opened an office in Lafayette, where, and in the neighboring town of Stockwell, he resided until his death. During the session of 1828-'9 he reported the proceedings of the Indiana Legislature for an Indianapolis journal, the first work of the kind that had been done in the state. In 1830-'l he was assistant clerk of the Indiana House of Representatives, and from 1832 till 1835 he served as its clerk. In 1832 he was a candidate for Congress in opposition to Edward A. Hannegan, but was defeated. Four years later he was elected, serving from 4 September, 1837, till 3 March, 1839. The year before he had been an elector on the Whig ticket. In 1839 Mr. White was elected to the U. S. Senate as the successor of General John Tipton. There were three candidates, and he was not chosen until the 36th ballot. In the Senate he opposed the annexation of Texas, as well as every other measure that tended to extend the area of slavery. He was also active in securing grants of land to aid in the extension of the Wabash and Erie Canal. On the expiration of his senatorial term in 1845 he resumed the practice of law, but soon abandoned it to become actively engaged in the construction of railroads. He was president of the Indianapolis and Lafayette road from its organization until 1856, and for three years was also at the head of the Wabash and Western Railway. In I860 Mr. White was elected to Congress as a Republican, and served from 4 July, 1861, till 3 March, 1863. He was made chairman of a select committee whose duty it was to consider the question of compensated emancipation, and reported a bill appropriating $180,000,000 to pay loyal owners for their slaves, and $20,000,000 to aid in the colonization of the freedmen. This measure was recommended and supported by Mr. Lincoln with all the influence of his office. In presenting the bill, Mr. White accompanied it with an elaborate report on slavery as a social and political problem. He contended that the white and black races should be separated, and the latter colonized in the equatorial regions of America. He also assured the south that if his proposition were not accepted, their slaves would ultimately be taken from them without compensation. Mr. White, at the close of his term, failed to secure a renomination, mainly on account of his action on this question. He was named by the president one of three commissioners to adjust the claims of citizens of Minnesota and Dakota, against the government for Indian depredations. On the death of Caleb B. Smith, 7 January, 1864, President Lincoln appointed Mr. White U. S. judge for the district of Indiana, but he lived to discharge the duties of the office only a few months. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, pp. 466-467.

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

WHITE, ALBERT SMITH (October 24, 1803- September 4, 1864), lawyer, representative and senator, jurist, was a descendant of Thomas White, an early settler of Weymouth, Massachusetts. He was born at the family homestead at Blooming Grove in Orange County, New York, the son of Nathan Herrick and Frances (Howell) White. The father was the presiding judge of the Orange County court for twenty years. The son was graduated from Union College in 1822, studied law at Newburgh, was admitted to the bar in 1825, removed to Indiana the same year, and, after brief periods at Rushville and Paoli, in 1829 settled permanently in Tippecanoe County, residing either at Lafayette or on his farm near Stockwell. In 1830-31 he was assistant clerk of the Indiana House of Representatives, and for the four succeeding years was clerk of that body.

In 1836 he was elected to a seat in the national House of Representatives as a Whig, and in March 1839 was elected to the Senate. In the House he served on the committee on roads and canals, and introduced a few resolutions, but refrained from active participation in debates. With Oliver Hampton Smith [q.v.] as his colleague, he took his seat in the Senate, December 2, 1839, at the opening of the Twenty-sixth Congress. A few days later he was appointed a member of the committee on Indian affairs and from the beginning of the third session of the Twenty-seventh Congress until the close of his term, in March 1845, he was chairman of that committee. He became an important member of the committee on roads and canals, and served effectively (1841-45) on the committee to audit and control contingent expenses. When in 1852 the bill for apportioning the membership of the House of Representatives among the several states was before the Senate, he delivered a scholarly and cogent address in favor of "popular" as against "party" representation and advocated measures for the security of the federal government rather than the rights of the states (Congressional Globe, 27 Congress, 2 Session, p. 583).

Between 1845 and 1860 White was engaged in the practice of law and in the building of railroads in the valley of the Wabash. He was the first president of the Lafayette and Indianapolis Railroad, and for three years was manager of the Wabash and Western Railroad. He served once more in the House of Representatives as a Republican from March 1861 to March 1863. His most notable activity was the introduction of a resolution for the appointment of a select committee to propose a plan for the gradual emancipation of slaves in the border states (Congressional Globe, 37 Congress, 2 Session, p. 1563). As chairman of such a committee he reported bills for indemnifying the loyal owners of slaves in Maryland, Missouri, and other states. Although the plan had the warm support of President Lincoln, it was not popular with White's constituents and cost him his renomination. On his leaving the House, Lincoln appointed him (appointment confirmed, March 7, 1863) one of three commissioners to adjust claim s of citizens of Minnesota and Dakota on account of depredations committed during th e Sioux Indian massacre on the Minnesota frontier in August 1862. A second appointment by Lincoln (confirmed January 18, 1864) made him judge of the United States District Court for Indiana, a position he held until his death at his residence near Stockwell. White was a man of small physique and thin visage, with a large aquiline nose. He was well versed in belles-lettres, and in legal and political lore. He married a member of the Randolph family of Virginia and was survived by his widow, two sons, and two daughters.

[G. W. Chamberlain, History of Weymouth, Massachusetts (1923), volume IV; B. F. Thompson, History of Long Island (1918), volume II; E. M. Ruttenber and L. H. Clark, History of Orange County, New York (1881); W.W. woollen, Biographical and Historical Sketches of Early Indiana (1883); C. W. Taylor, Bench and Bar of Indiana (1895); Register of Debates. First Session, Twenty-fifth Congress (1837); Indianapolis Daily Journal, September 6, 9, 1864.]

N. D. M.



WHITTLESAY, Elisha, 1783-1863, Canfield, Ohio, lawyer, U.S. Congressman, American Colonization Society (ACS), Vice-President, 1836-41. He was one of the founders of the Whig party.

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, pp. 495-496; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI. pp. 495-496:

WHITTLESAY, Elisha, lawyer, born in Washington, Connecticut, 19 October, 1783; died in Washington, D.C., 7 January, 1863. He was brought up on a farm, received an academical education, studied law, and on his admission to the bar began practice in Canfield, Ohio, in 1806. He served as an aide-de-camp during the war of 1812-'15, was for sixteen years prosecuting attorney of his district, a member of the Ohio state House of Representatives in 1820-'1, and served in Congress from Ohio by successive elections from 1 December, 1823, till 9 July, 1838, when he resigned. He was one of the founders of the Whig party, was appointed by President Harrison in 1841 auditor of the post-office department, and by President Taylor in 1849 first comptroller of the treasury, from which post he was removed by President Buchanan in 1857, but he was reappointed by President Lincoln in 1861, and held office till his death. In 1845 he was appointed general agent and director of the Washington national monument association, and contributed greatly to the success of that enterprise. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI. pp. 495-496.



WILLARD, Joseph (March 14, 1798-May 12, 1865), lawyer and historian. He an ardent Whig and later was a Free-Soiler in 1847 and an abolitionist in 1850; finally, he almost welcomed the Civil War as means to end of slavery.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 2, pp. 235-236:

WILLARD, JOSEPH (March 14, 1798-May 12, 1865), lawyer and historian, was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the youngest child of Joseph Willard [q.v.], president of Harvard College, and Mary (Sheafe) Willard. Sidney Willard [q.v.] was his brother. Joseph studied at Phillips Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire, and at a private school in Boston conducted by William Jennison. Entering Harvard, he was graduated with the class of 1816. He then became a student in the law office of Charles H. Atherton of Amherst, New Hampshire, tutoring the Atherton children in return for his own instruction. Later he removed to the office of Judge Samuel P. P. Fay of Cambridge, and finally entered the Harvard Law School, where he received the degree of LL.B. in 1820. He began practice in Waltham, but soon removed to Lancaster, Massachusetts, where he practised for ten years. Here he filled various town offices and was a member of the legislature in 1828 and 1829. His Sketches of the Town of Lancaster (1826) led to his election to the American Antiquarian Society and the Massachusetts Historical Society at an unusually early age. He served the latter society as librarian (1833-35), as recording secretary (1835-57), and as corresponding secretary (1857-64).

On February 24, 1830, he married Susanna Hickling Lewis, and shortly thereafter he removed to Boston. He was appointed master in chancery in 1839 and carried on his duties so well that there was hardly an objection to, or an appeal from, his probate decisions. In 1841 he was appointed to one of the clerkships of the Suffolk County courts, and chose to act in the court of common pleas. Here again his decisions were seldom appealed, and those appeals seldom sustained. His extensive knowledge of law and procedure made him of great service to the lawyers practising in the court. When the office was made elective in 1856 he was returned as a matter of course in recognition of the fact that he was a rare type of public servant. He continued in office until his death.

In 1845 he was one of the incorporators of the New-England Historic Genealogical Society, and he was one of the trustees of the old Boston Library. He was a frequent and welcome visitor in the homes of the intellectual leaders who then lived in Concord. In politics he was an ardent Whig. He was a Free-Soiler in 1847 and an abolitionist in 1850; finally, he almost welcomed the Civil War as a surgeon's knife to remove the cancer of slavery. His declining health was shattered by the news of the death of his son, Major Sidney Willard, at Fredericksburg, in December 1862. He was a Unitarian by religion and a practising Christian whose contemporaries had only praise for him. In 1858 he published Willard Memoir, or Life and Times of Major Simon Willard; a biography of General Henry Knox he left unfinished at his death, and the manuscript is now in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

[Willard Genealogy (1915), ed. by C.H. Pope; Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, series IX (1867), et passim; New England Historical and Genealogical Register, October 1865; Boston Transcript, May 13, 1865.]

C. K. S.



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 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 Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, pp. 548-550:

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 vols., 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, Vol. 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.

Chapter: “Conclusion,” by Henry Wilson, in History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 1878.

The proposed limits of this volume have been reached without taking up all the topics embraced within its original plan. It is to be hoped, however, that sufficient has been said to afford a measurably adequate idea of the progress of events developed by the " irrepressible conflict," and which have led to the present posture of affairs, — results already attained, and those the future will disclose as a natural consequence of the great struggle. Slavery has been traced from its small beginnings to its overshadowing greatness, — from the few seeds planted at Jamestown in 1620 to its woeful harvest covering the land, — from being a system of labor, in bad repute and dying out, or existing by sufferance when the Constitution was framed, to its becoming an "institution," dominating the government, and exerting a commanding if not a controlling influence in society, in the church, and in the commercial world. It has been shown, too, that in the plenitude of its power, impatient of the least restraint or check, anxious to guard against apprehended dangers arising from its local, restricted, and questionable character, it demanded new guaranties, and claimed that it should be no longer sectional but national, not only wandering everywhere at will, but everywhere protected by the aegis of the Constitution, and maintained by the arm of Federal authority. Such guaranties being too humiliating and wicked for any but the most craven to submit to, this Power appealed to arms, determined to rend what it could not rule, and break what it could not control with an unquestioned supremacy. In the war thus inaugurated slavery went down, not, however, for moral but military reasons, not because it was wrong but because it was unsafe, and because it could not continue and the Union endure. The war closed, the work of reconstruction began, the recusant States were brought back, and the flag again waves, if not over loyal hearts, at least as the symbol of restored nationality and authority, where it had been trailed in the dust, and treated with the greatest indignity and hate.

Claiming, as its title imports, only or mainly to give some account of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, this work has proposed nothing like a full and connected military or political history of the war, and of the process of re construction. Its purpose has been rather to seize upon those portions of such history, perhaps not always with the nicest discrimination, which would shed the clearest light upon the subject it was written to examine, elucidate, and improve, and yield the most profitable instruction.

The topics omitted for lack of space are subsidiary, however, and of less real importance than those for which room has been found. Necessary, perhaps, to the completeness of historic detail, they would be only the exponents of principles already enunciated and illustrated in other connections, examples of general facts already recognized and recorded, the carrying out of the new policy entered upon and made possible only by the giving up by Southern members of their seats in Congress, and their mad relinquishment of the power their occupation had given them. Henceforward, with human rights instead of human chattelhood the goal and guide, freedom instead of slavery the polestar of government, members, in their debates and in the details of legislation, whether effected or only attempted, could but exhibit a similarity of argument and appeal. On measures of the same general character and purpose friends and foes could hardly do otherwise than repeat themselves. Without, therefore, the excitement of pending issues, with the uncertainty and anxiety as to what the result would be, there is less of loss, now that excitement has passed and the results are known, in not having the precise details before the mind. Besides, it is almost among the marvels of history how easily some of the most radical legislation of those days was effected, — how noiselessly and almost without division slave-laws were revoked, the very mention of whose repeal before the war would have roused the nation, both North and South, to fierce excitement, been the signal of the wildest clamor, the most frantic expostulations, and the most terrible and defiant threats. One indeed could but stand amazed at the change, be silent with wonder, and almost question his own identity, or that of others, as he saw law after law repealed almost without remonstrance, and that mountain of unrighteous legislation, the crystallized product of the cruelty and fiendish ingenuity of generations, melting away, like icebergs in a summer sea and under the fervors of a tropical sun, in the presence of an aroused indignation, that had hitherto been trammelled by compromise and the sense of constitutional obligations, and suppressed by fear of offending Southern brethren and sacrificing Southern support, but now prepared to indicate its right to be heard, and to enforce the claims of justice and a common humanity.

Perhaps, however, the marvel will not appear so great, at least to those who comprehend the philosophy or rationale of the change. Through the secession of the States from the Union, and of their members from Congress, resulted two or three facts whose importance arid potency can hardly be overestimated. By it they not only removed shackles from Northern limbs, but they put shackles on their own, or they did that which was tantamount thereto. By leaving their places in Congress they disarmed themselves of the only weapons they had ever used with much effect, they abandoned the only tenable position from which they could defend their cherished system or assail its enemies. Everything else was against it, — argument, sentiment, reason, conscience, the laws of nature and the law of God, the claims of justice and the pleadings of humanity, the teachings of philosophy and the sweet voices of poetry, — all, all, as it could not well be otherwise, were arrayed against the "sum of all villanies." But their position in the government, with the three-fifths representation of their slaves, gave them political power, and long practice gave them great astuteness and adroitness in its use, while Northern selfishness, venality, lack of convictions, and what has been justly termed "careless citizenship," afforded a wide and fruitful field for their peculiar strategy. In their citizen ship were the hidings of the slaveholders' power, and by that sign alone they conquered. Had they been content therewith, nothing appears why this might not have continued for years, perhaps generations. For the fact, already stated, may be here repeated, that Mr. Lincoln, when elected to the Presidency, was in a minority of a million, and that on a platform that simply insisted on the non-extension of slavery, while it not only permitted but guaranteed its continuance where existing. And this, it is to be remembered, notwithstanding the light shed by the antislavery agitation of a generation and the faithful warnings thundered in the nation's ear from the Abolition pulpits and platforms of those days of earnest reasoning and appeal; aided, too, in their work of argument and alarm by the continued aggressions of the Slave Power, from the annexation of Texas to the Lecompton infamy, from the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act to the Dred Scott decision. Not ignoring the Divine agency and the possibilities within reach of the Divine arm, humanly speaking, it may lie claimed there did not appear to man's finite vision during the summer and autumn of 1860 any reason for believing that the Slave Power could be dethroned, or dislodged from its seemingly impregnable position by any forces then at command or in view. The composition and doings of the Peace Congress; the Crittenden Compromise, with the narrow escape from its adoption, designed to eternize slavery and place it beyond the reach of repeal, however earnestly and largely the people might desire it; the action and tone of Congress during the closing months of Mr. Buchanan's administration, — all lead to the conclusion that had the Slave Power been content, it might have still remained in practical possession of the government.

But the peace the North so earnestly desired and eagerly sought was not to be the reward of such surrender and betrayal, nor were the slaveholders to be placated even by concessions so extreme. On a large scale and in view of the nations was to be exhibited another example of the haughty spirit that goes before a fall, of that judicial blindness that precedes destruction. By the Divine wisdom, made more resplendent by this dark background of human folly, God revealed anew how the wrath of man could be made to praise him, and how the remainder of wrath he could restrain. By a fatuity that hardly finds a parallel in human history, the slaveholders sacrificed slavery to save it, and in their frantic efforts to defend it against all possible danger, they increased those dangers immeasurably, abandoning, as they did, the only stronghold from which defence was possible. Placing in the hands of their antagonists the same weapons they themselves had hitherto used with so much effect, the rest became inevitable, and only a question of time. Slavery fallen, what was created for or enacted by it would very naturally follow. The tyrant dead, his satellites were allowed to die without regret; the system destroyed, its auxiliaries were allowed to pass away without protest. Laws like the Fugitive Slave Act and those forbidding the instruction of slaves fell naturally and necessarily into disuse and became practically repealed, because there were no longer slaves to be returned to bondage or slaves to be kept in enforced ignorance. There were enactments, too, in the interests of slavery which affected others than slaves, and bore heavily upon freemen themselves. Among them were the laws that confined the militia of the slaveholding States to white persons and authorized the barbarous custom of whipping. There, too, was the system of peonage in New Mexico, allowed to exist not so much as a relic of slavery as by sufferance, because a government committed to the grosser and more barbarous form of chattelhood, and dominated by the Slave Power, could hardly be expected to interfere with this milder system of "modified servitude inherited from Mexico," at least from any regard for the primal rights of man. Beside these, there were military organizations in the slaveholding States, Rebel in spirit and purpose, and composed mainly of men who had belonged to the armies of the Confederacy. Such organizations were justly deemed antagonistic to the Union, and little likely to promote continued peace. Though not so much the creatures of slavery as of treason, — and their menace was rather against the authority of the government than against the freedom of the individual, — like peonage in New Mexico and the other laws above mentioned, they owed their origin to slavery, were pervaded by its spirit and purpose, and could not with safety be allowed to exist. Though a bill early introduced by Mr. Wilson for their disbandment failed, a similar measure, moved as an amendment to an appropriation bill, was subsequently carried with little opposition.

On the same day that the above-named amendment was introduced into the Senate, Mr. Trumbull moved to amend the same appropriation bill by a provision prohibiting "whipping or maiming of the person," and it was carried without debate or division. With little more discussion or dissent an amendment to a bill for the temporary increase of the pay of the officers of the army, striking out the word "white" from the militia laws, was adopted.

When New Mexico became a Territory of the Union, there existed a system of peonage, by which when a Mexican owed a debt the creditor had a right to his labor until the debt was paid. The debtor became a domestic servant and practically a slave until its liquidation. There were about two thousand of this class, principally Indians, in the Territory. But a resolution abolishing the system was introduced by Mr. Wilson, and without much ado it was passed; thereby removing another of the relics of the slave system.

It was also proposed to give account of some attempted legislation, as a history of the times and an index of congressional thought and feeling, evinced by those who were striving to use aright the power for the moment in their hands, and thus secure the fruits of the war, guard against similar at tempts in the future, but especially protect the freedmen and the loyal men of the South, hated and oppressed because they had proved themselves true to the Union. A chapter was proposed giving a somewhat detailed account of attempts, beginning as early as the third day of the first session of the XXXIXth Congress, in December, 1865, to secure amendments of the Constitution to prevent the assumption of "Rebel debts," to define "citizenship," and to fix the "basis of representation." They all failed of enactment, and are mainly valuable as matters of historic record, to show how earnest and prompt were the Republican leaders to meet squarely the issues presented, and to provide, if possible, for the exigencies of the hour. This failure of enactment, with the character of the debates, revealed the uncertain and hesitating steps with which members moved along the untraveled path they were called to tread, and grappled with problems for which no precedents could be found; though the arguments urged and the reasons for action were substantially those employed in subsequent discussions, which resulted in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which were finally adopted, and which are now parts of the Constitution. Another subject, of which some account was to have been given, was the process by which the different border slave States, which, though believing in slavery, had not joined the Rebellion, were induced to accept emancipation and adapt their legislation to the new order of things. Of this it is to be said, however, that while those States had much in common, being affected by influences which were general and national, each had its own autonomy, its local history and struggle. While, therefore, the result attained was substantially the same in all, the processes by which it was reached varied materially, according to the different circumstances and leadership in these separate commonwealths. Much depended upon leadership. Always and everywhere true, at least, in greater or less degree, at this juncture of affairs the measures actually adopted by the many were the result largely, if not entirely, of the views and feelings of the few. When all were in a maze, knowing not what to do or expect, the natural leader's voice was listened for, and, if heard, generally heeded. When all were dazed by the resplendent events in progress, not knowing what the next act in the imposing drama was to be, though prepared for almost anything, it is not strange that men, dis trusting themselves, should have looked to others for counsel and guidance. Everything in confusion, the very foundations of society seemingly sliding from beneath their feet, the very stars in their courses appearing to fight against them, Southern men were willing to accept almost any solution that promised repose, and the salvation of anything from the general wreck around them. The voice of leaders at such a time had special potency, and the policy finally adopted unquestionably depended oftentimes far more on the influences to which these leaders chanced to be exposed than upon any well-considered opinions and purposes of the people themselves. This undoubtedly affords some solution of the fact, that while the three border slave States, Delaware, Maryland, and Kentucky, rejected the Fourteenth Amendment by a vote of three to one, the State of Missouri accepted it by a vote of one hundred and eleven to forty.

The details, therefore, of State action, not by any means uninstructive and devoid of local and special value, cannot be of that general and historic interest which inheres in the great and providential fact that those States were induced to move at all; that, without any great change of sentiment and feeling on the subject of slavery, they should adopt legislation recognizing its destruction, and adapted thereto. That, and not the special methods pursued in the separate States, is the significant and memorable fact. This recognition, however, did not carry with it anything like a hearty adoption of the Republican policy of which it formed a part. Thus a Democratic convention, held in Kentucky in 1866, resolved, "That we recognize the abolition of slavery as an accomplished fact, but earnestly assert that Kentucky has the right to regulate the political status of the negroes within their territory." And even what was called a Union convention, a few months later, entered its protest against negro suffrage, denying that the Thirteenth Amendment gave to Congress the power "to pass any law granting the right of suffrage to persons of African descent." In Maryland, in 1867, the legislature, while resolving that " we regard the abolishment of negro slavery as a fact achieved, to which the peace and quiet of the country require that we should bow in submission," did "most solemnly and earnestly protest against any action by the Congress of the United States to assign the negro a social status or endow him with the elective franchise." It also declared "that the loss of private property occasioned by the emancipation of slaves constitutes a valid claim upon the Federal government for compensation, and that the General Assembly ought to provide for ascertaining the extent of such loss, with a view of pressing the claim at an early day."

It was also proposed to give a somewhat detailed account of the trial of President Johnson on articles of impeachment exhibited by the House of Representatives, March 2, 1868. The original motion, made by Mr. Ashley of Ohio, January 7, 1867, charging him with "high crimes and misdemeanors" specified that "he has corruptly used the appointing power; that he has corruptly used the pardoning power; that he has corruptly used the veto; that he has corruptly disposed of public property of the United States; that he has corruptly interfered in elections, and committed acts, and conspired with others to commit acts, which, in contemplation of the Constitution, are high crimes and misdemeanors." The articles were read to the Senate sitting as Court of Impeachment, March 4, 1868. The trial proceeded till the 16th of May, when a vote was taken, thirty-five voting Guilty, and nineteen. Not Guilty; and judgment of acquittal was entered. Although a somewhat striking episode, and, for the time being, exciting a widespread interest, this trial cannot be regarded as having any very direct bearing on the history of slavery. That the President's course was utterly indefensible, that he proved himself false to his promises and loudly promulgated opinions as well as to the party which elected him, besides aggravating and greatly increasing the difficulties of reconstruction, is matter of record, and has been referred to in previous chapters of this volume. Himself a product of slavery, which was itself a " gigantic lie," how could he be true to a party or cause based on the grand verities enunciated in the Republican platform, and made the dominating forces of its history? And yet the trial itself was of local and temporary interest and importance, and hardly deserves a very large space or mention in a general history of the Slave Power.

Another chapter was to have been devoted to the presidential election of 1868. But, though occupying, no doubt, a commanding position in the work of reconstruction, — an important link in the chain of events now under review, its main significance and the chief contribution it affords for history appear in the exceedingly disloyal attitude in which it presents the Democratic party. Without even an attempt to conceal its purpose by words, — words that cost and often mean so little, and are indeed so often used by men to "disguise their thoughts" — it proclaimed not only its bitter hostility to the defenders of their country, but its too manifest sympathy with those who would destroy it. Both in the platform adopted and in the utterances of its candidates little short of the baldest treason was presented, not in mealy words, but in those most objurgatory and defiant. In its platform and in its arraignment of the Republican party, it spoke of " the unparalleled oppression and tyranny which have marked its career,” having subjected "ten States to military despotism and negro supremacy," and of its substituting "secret star-chamber inquisitions for constitutional tribunals"; pronounced "the reconstruction acts (so called) of Congress, as such, as usurpations, and unconstitutional, revolutionary, and void"; and demanded "amnesty for all past political offences, and the regulation of the elective franchise in these States by their citizens." But the most significant event of the canvass was the letter of Frank P. Blair, the Democratic candidate for Vice-President. On the 30th of June he wrote what became the famous "Brodhead letter," in which he indulged in the most violent and inflammatory language and recommendations. Beside accusing the Republican party of the most heinous political offences, and suggesting the most violent remedies, he said unequivocally: "There is but one way to restore the government and the Constitution, and that is for the President elect to declare these acts null and void, compel the army to undo its usurpations at the South, disperse the carpet-bag State governments, and elect Senators and Representatives." For this frank avowal of his treasonable and revolutionary opinions and purposes he was honored with a unanimous vote of the convention on the first ballot for the office of Vice-President, while it required twenty-three ballotings to secure the nomination of Horatio Seymour for the Presidency on the same electoral ticket; so well did the former represent the principles and purposes of the Democratic party. The Republican party simply reaffirmed the principles already enunciated in its platforms, proclaimed its inflexible purpose to maintain them in their entirety, and placed in nomination the distinguished soldier that had led the national forces to victory, with Schuyler Colfax for Vice-President. It triumphed by decisive majorities at the polls, and revealed the welcome fact that the people had not yet forgotten the lessons of the war, and were not quite ready to restore the defenders of the "lost cause” to seats they had so traitorously vacated for the destruction of the government. With this the record must close, though the conflict still rages, and the final issue remains in doubt. With no formal attempt to deduce the lessons this history was written to inculcate, — excepting a simple reference to what has been noted, the dangers of all compromises of moral principles, the prolific and pestiferous nature of national as well as individual sinning, the deteriorating and depressing influence of unrighteous laws on the morality of a people and the grave perils in a republic of "careless citizenship" and the presence of an unfaithful Church, which, instead of faithful testimony borne against wrong-doing, consents thereto and throws around it the sanctions of religion, — it only remains to notice briefly the present posture of affairs and the outlook disclosed thereby. That there have been great and marvellous changes none deny. The abolishment of slavery, the entire repeal or abrogation of the infamous slave-codes, the summary and sudden transformation of four million chattels personal into freemen and enfranchised citizens, with everything that legislation and constitutional amendments can do to maintain their freedom and protect them in its enjoyment, do certainly constitute great and memorable achievements that find few parallels in human history. All admit the greatness of the change, but men differ as to its extent. Nor are these differences mere matters of opinion, or of abstract theories simply, inconsequential and harmless, like views that neither demand nor lead to corresponding action. On the contrary, they enter largely into the purposes and policies of the hour. Thus large numbers, including the whole Democratic party, contend that emancipation and the constitutional amendments, even if accepted as accomplished facts, justify no further infringement on State prerogatives, and that the freed men, still amenable to State authority, must be remanded to the State governments alone for protection. Even so able and astute a statesman as Mr. Bingham, the reputed author of the Fourteenth Amendment, opposed the Civil Rights bill because, he said, in times of peace "justice is to be administered under the Constitution, according to the Constitution, and within the limitation of the Constitution."

The large majority of the Republicans, however, instructed by the sad history of Mr. Johnson's administration, deemed it both unsafe and unpardonable thus to remand the freedmen for protection to those whose tender mercies are cruel. In the pledge of the Proclamation of Emancipation to "maintain" the freedom it proclaimed they see something more than a word. Regarding it a solemn pledge to be fulfilled, they recognize the obligation to provide appropriate legislation therefor, though, as the debates have disclosed, not altogether clear that by so doing they have not transcended limits prescribed by both the letter and spirit of the Constitution. And it still remains an open question, as yet unsettled by any general agreement, where State sovereignty ends and the Federal prerogative begins. Though, as Mr. Frelinghuysen said, in his opening speech on the Civil Rights bill, "the whole struggle in field and forum is between national sovereignty and State sovereignty, a struggle between United States citizenship and State citizenship, and the superiority of allegiance due to each, “opinions are as divergent as ever on the answer to be given. It still remains a question not yet answered by those with whom alone rests the authority, whether this is a nation of people or a mere federation of States.

But more serious than constitutional difficulties remain. For, granting that all constitutional differences had been composed, that all questions of government had been answered to mutual satisfaction, and that everything that law, organic or other, can do had been done, there remains the far more serious difficulty of constituency. As never before, the question of man's ability to govern himself stares the nation in the face, and arrests attention by its sudden and startling distinctness. The numbers are increasing who cannot repress their doubts nor silence their misgivings as they contemplate the new dangers that loom up not only in the distant, but in the more immediate future. Manhood suffrage, with all that is involved therein, the figures of the census-tables, and their startling revelations of growing illiteracy, especially in the late slaveholding States, where the large per cent of voters can neither read nor write the ballots they cast, are facts to excite the gravest apprehensions. The fact, too, that the South, though defeated, with "sullen intensity and relentless purpose" still bemoans and defends the "lost cause"; though accepting the destruction of slavery, still believes it to be the proper condition of an inferior race, and the corner-stone of the most desirable civilization; though accepting negro enfranchisement because imposed by a superior force, still contends that this is a white man's government, in which the freedmen have no legitimate part, and from which they shall be excluded, even if violence and fraud be needful therefor, may well excite alarm in the most sanguine and hopeful. Conjoined with these is that alarming but correlated fact — the pregnant fault and the vulnerable heel of American politics — that good men can stand aloof from active participation in the work of the government, justify themselves in so doing, and lose little credit thereby. These facts and considerations invest with growing interest the subject, multiply questionings, and greatly deepen the solicitude of the thoughtful as they seek to forecast events, and, peering wistfully into the future, look with too little success for gleams of light or harbingers of better days.

Washington inculcated in his Farewell Address that intelligence and morality are "indispensable supports" of free institutions, and that all morality that is not the outgrowth of religious principle is of questionable worth. Nor is this the voice of the Father of his Country only. It is the generally accepted axiom of those who treat of republican institutions. And yet among the teachings of the census-tables are found such items as these. In the Southern States, of the white children alone sixty-one per cent are never seen at school; of the colored children "eighty-eight per cent are habitually absent." "Of every one hundred colored children in North Carolina ninety-one never enter a school. In Georgia ninety-five per cent receive no instruction. In Mississippi the per cent is ninety-six." "Ten years," says the United States Commissioner of Education, "without schools for children will insure an adult generation of ignorant citizens, who in losing the knowledge of will have lost the desire for letters." With truth he added: "Were an invading hostile army to threaten our frontiers the whole people would rise in arms to repel them; but these tables show the mustering of the hosts of a deadlier foe, a more relentless enemy, already within our borders and by our very firesides; a great army of ignorance growing ever stronger, denser, and more invincible."

The demon of slavery has indeed been exorcised and cast out of the body politic, but other evil spirits remain to torment, if not destroy. The same elements of character in the dominant race that not only rendered slavery endurable, but demanded it and made its protection, support, and conservation the condition precedent of all affiliation in church or state, still remain to be provided for, guarded against, or eliminated, in our efforts to maintain our free form of government. Perhaps, indeed, legislation has done its best or utmost, and all that now remains, or can be done, is to bring up the popular sentiment and character to its standard. Can it be done?

In January, 1871, the author appealed, through the pages of the "Atlantic Monthly," to the members of the Republican party to take a " new departure " and incorporate philanthropic and patriotic with political action; in other words, to engage individually and socially, and outside of party organization, in missionary work to prepare those made free to use intelligently and wisely the power their enfranchisement has given them. "The two great necessities," he said, "of the country at the present time are unification and education." In behalf of the former he said: "To make the people one in spirit and purpose, to remove everything calculated to engender and perpetuate strife or promote sectional animosities and interests, should be regarded, during the generation now entered upon, as the special work of the bravest philanthropy and of the purest and most enlarged statesmanship," To the latter, after urging the usual considerations in support of its essential necessity to the maintenance of free institutions, and considering some of the serious difficulties in the way of its effective pro motion, he invited the earnest and thoughtful attention of his countrymen. "I do not assume the office of instructor," he said, "nor do I propose to indicate what is to be done, or how this grave exigency is to be met. I only bespeak here a careful study of this great social and national problem, thus suddenly forced upon the Republic. Fully believing that the nation has never witnessed an hour, not even in the darkest night of the Rebellion, when there were presented more pressing claims for special effort, or when there were demanded of the patriotic, philanthropic, and pious men of thought, more time, effort, and personal sacrifice, I present the matter as second to no question now before the country."

But if there was in 1871 foundation for such solicitude and alarm, how much greater the occasion now. Then the governments in the reconstructed States were mainly, if not entirely, in the hands of men loyal not only to their country, but to the principles and policy of the Republican party. Not wholly without mistakes or unworthy members in their administrations, the tendency was upward, and the drift was in the right direction. The freedmen were cared for, a policy was inaugurated embracing, as already noted, with their active participation in the affairs of government, a preparation, aided largely by Northern philanthropy and Christian beneficence, educational and industrial, for their new and untried position. Inadequate, almost ludicrously so, to the great and manifold exigencies of the situation, except as the beginning and earnest of greater and more systematic efforts, they excited hopes and encouraged expectations for the new-formed commonwealths of the South. But all this is now changed. A reaction has taken place. The old regime is reinstated, and everything, save legal chattelhood, is to be restored. Race distinctions, class legislations, the dogmas that this is a white man's government, that the negro belongs to an inferior race, that capital should control, if it does not own, labor, are now in the ascendant, and caste, if slavery may not be, is to be the "corner-stone" of Southern civilization. At least, this is the avowed purpose. "Labor," says, recently, a governor of one of these reconstructed States, "must be controlled by law. We may hold inviolate every law of the United States, and still so legislate upon our labor system as to retain our old plantation system, or, in lieu of that, a baronial system." Clothe these sentiments, uttered without rebuke or dissent from those he assumes to represent, with power, as they have been by restored Democratic ascendency in most of the Southern States, in several of the Northern, and in the popular branch of Congress, and the wonder ceases that education languishes, that the number of scholars diminishes, that school laws are repealed or rendered useless, and that Northern philanthropy is discouraged. But without some such agencies, whence can come the unification and education required?

The Christian, who traces God's hand in American history, recalls the many Divine interpositions therein recorded, gathers courage from the review, and, though the omens seem unpropitious, finds it hard to despair of the Republic. And yet even he whose trust is the strongest forgets not that God accomplishes his purposes by human instrumentalities, and that no faith, personal or national, is legitimate or of much avail that is not accompanied by corresponding works.

Source: Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Volume 3. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1878, 725-740.



WINDOM, William, 1827-1891, lawyer. Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Minnesota. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. Served in U.S. Congress 1859-1869, U.S. Senate, 1870-1877.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 562; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 2, pp. 383-384; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 23, p. 631; 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. 383-384:

WINDOM, WILLIAM (May 10, 1827-January 29, 1891), representative and senator from Minnesota, secretary of the treasury, was the son of Hezekiah and Mercy(Spencer) Windom, Quaker offspring of pioneer settlers in Ohio. Born in Belmont County, in that state, he moved with his family in 1837 to Knox County, a still newer frontier. The boy made up his mind to become a lawyer, to the distress of his parents, who, however, aided him as he worked his way through Martinsburg Academy and then read law with Judge R. C. Hurd of Mount Vernon. There, admitted to the bar at the age of twenty-three, he began practice, entered politics, and was elected public prosecutor as a Whig.

After a few years he determined to try his fortune in Minnesota Territory, and in 1855 settled in Winona. Becoming a member of the firm of Sargent, Wilson & Windom, he practised law, dabbled in real estate, and was elected to Congress as a Republican, when the state was admitted in 1858. His service in the House lasted until 1869. He was a member of the Committee of Thirty-Three, a supporter and friend of Lincoln, and in the contest between Johnson and the Radicals, allied himself with the latter. For two term she was chairman of the committee on Indian affairs; he headed a special committee to visit the Indian tribes in 1865 and also a committee to investigate the conduct of the Indian commissioner in 1867. After the Sioux outbreak he was one of the signers of the memorial urging the President to have all the captured Indians hanged. While generally fair in his attitude towards Indians, he always considered the Sioux beyond the pale.

Windom sought a senatorial position in 1865, but it was not until 1870 that he reached the Senate, being appointed to fill the vacancy caused by the death of D. S. Norton. In the following session the legislature elected another for the remaining weeks of Norton's term, but chose Windom for the full term from 1871 to 1877. He was reelected in 1877, resigned in 1881 to become secretary of the treasury (March 8-November 14), and then, after Garfield's death, was again selected to complete his own term. His most notable service in the Senate was probably his chairmanship of the special committee on transportation routes to the seaboard, which submitted a two-volume report (Senate Report, 307, 43 Congress, I Session) advocating competitive routes under government al control, development of waterways, and the establishment of a bureau to collect and publish facts. Both in the House and in the Senate he urged a liberal policy towards railroads, and he was a supporter of homestead legislation. A strong nationalist, he declared, February 28, 1881, when the Panama canal project was being pushed by a French company, that "under no circumstances [should] a foreign government, or a company chartered by a foreign government, have control over an isthmian highway" (Congressional Record, 46 Congress, 3 Session, p. 2212). From 1876 to 1881 he was chairman of the committee on appropriations, and after 1881 chairman of the committee on foreign relations.

In the Republican National Convention of 1880 Windom's name was brought forward by the Minnesota delegation, which supported him faithfully until the stampede to Garfield. As Garfield's second choice for secretary of the treasury, opposed vigorously by James G. Blaine for the place, Windom obtained high commendation for his successful refunding of over $600,000,000 in bonds at a lower interest rate and without specific legal authorization. The secretaryship made no real break in his senatorial career and he confidently expected to be reelected in 1883, but a combination of circumstances--notably his mistake in opposing the renomination of Mark Hill Dunnell for Congress, since he feared Dunnell had an eye on his own seat, dashed his hopes ("Benjamin Back number," in the Daily News, St. Paul, January 23, 1921). His chagrin was such that after a year's vacation in Europe he took up his residence in the East and never returned to Minnesota. For six years Windom was out of office, devoting himself to the law and his considerable holdings in real estate and railroad securities. In 1889 he was again called to the treasury department and held the secretaryship until his death, which occurred suddenly at Delmonico's, New York, after he had delivered an address to the New York Board of Trade and Transportation. His tenure was marked by no especially significant features, although an unstable economic situation, aggravated by monetary disturbance, made his position both important and delicate.

A high-tariff man and generally an advocate of sound money, although he was a believer in international bimetalism and had voted for the Bland-Allison Act of 1878, Windom stood out from the rank and file of his Western contemporaries and hence, for the most part, was looked upon as safe by conservative Eastern Republicans. No scandal ever attached to his name in a period when too many of his contemporaries had to defend reputations not altogether invulnerable (C. T. Murray in Philadelphia Times, reprinted in Daily Pioneer Press, June 2, 1880). On August 20, 1856, Windom married Ellen Towne Hatch of Warwick, Massachusetts, who survived him, with a son and two daughters.

[W. W. Folwell, A History of Minnesota, volumes II, III (1924-26); G. A. Wright, "William Windom, 1827- 1890" (MS.), University of Wisconsin thesis in Minnesota Historical Society; Memorial Tributes to the Character and Public Services of William Windom, Together with His Last Address (18 91); C. E. Flandrau, Encyclopedia of Biography of Minnesota (1900); H. C. Folsom, Fifty Years in the Northwest (1888); T. C. Smith, The Life and Letters of James Abram Garfield (1925), volume II; R. P. Herrick, Windom the Man and the School (1903); Biographical Dir. American Congress (1928); New York Times, January 30, 1891; Daily Pioneer Press (St. Paul), January 30-February 1, 1891; Washington Post, January 30-February 3, 1891.]

L. B. S-e.



WINTHROP, Robert Charles, statesman, born in Boston, 12 May, 1809. After a brief professional career he became active in local politics as a Henry Clay Whig. From 1834 till 1840 he was a member of the lower house of the Massachusetts legislature, of which he was chosen speaker in 1838, 1839, and 1840. In the last-named year, he was elected to Congress, where he served ten years with much distinction.

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

WINTHROP, Robert Charles, statesman, born in Boston, 12 May, 1809, was graduated at, Harvard in 1828, studied law with Daniel Webster, was admitted to the bar in 1831. After a brief professional career he became active in local politics as a Henry Clay Whig. From 1834 till 1840 he was a member of the lower house of the Massachusetts legislature, of which he was chosen speaker in 1838, 1839, and 1840. In the last-named year, he was elected to Congress, where he served ten years with much distinction, maintaining the reputation he had already acquired as a ready debater and accomplished parliamentarian, and adding to it by a series of impressive speeches upon public questions, many of which are still consulted as authorities. The earliest resolution in favor of international arbitration by a commission of civilians was offered by him. In 1847-9 he was Speaker of the House, but he was defeated for a second term by a plurality of two, after a contest that lasted three weeks. In 1850, he was appointed by the governor of Massachusetts to Daniel Webster's seat in the U.S. Senate, when the latter became Secretary of State. His course on the slavery question was often distasteful to men of extreme opinions in both sections of the Union, and in 1851 he was defeated for election to the Senate by a coalition of Democrats and Free-Soilers, after a struggle of six weeks. In the same year, he was Whig candidate for governor of the state, and received a large plurality; but the constitution then required a majority, and the election was thrown into the legislature, where the same coalition defeated him. This occasioned a change in the state constitution, which now requires merely a plurality, but Mr. Winthrop declined to be a candidate again, and successively refused various other candidacies and appointments, preferring gradually to retire from political life and devote himself to literary, historical, and philanthropic occupations. From time to time, however, his voice was still heard in presidential elections, and he gave active and influential support to General Winfield Scott in 1852, to Millard Fillmore in 1856, to John Bell in 1860, and to General McClellan in 1864, when a speech of his at New London was the last, but not the least memorable, of his political addresses. Of the Boston provident association, he was the laborious president for twenty-five years, of the Massachusetts Historical Society for thirty years, of the Alumni of Harvard for eight years, besides serving as chairman of the overseers of the poor of Boston, and in many other posts of dignity and usefulness. He was the chosen counsellor of George Peabody in several of his munificent benefactions, and has been from the outset at the head of the latter's important trust for southern education. It is as the favorite orator of great historical anniversaries that Mr. Winthrop has long been chiefly associated in the popular mind, and he has uniformly received the commendation of the best judges, not merely for the scholarship and finish of these productions, but for the manifestation in them of a fervid eloquence that the weight of years has failed to quench. They may be found scattered through four volumes of "Addresses and Speeches." the first of which was published in 1852 and the last in 1886. Among the most admired of them have been an "Address on laying the Corner-Stone of the National Monument to Washington" in 1848,and one on the completion of that monument in 1885, the latter prepared at the request of Congress; an "Address to the Alumni of Harvard." in 1857: an "Oration on the 250th Anniversary of the Landing of the Pilgrims," in 1870; the " Boston Centennial Oration," 4 July, 1876; an address on unveiling the statue of Colonel Prescott on Bunker Hill, in 1881; and, in the same year, an oration on the hundredth anniversary of the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, delivered by invitation of Congress. He has been thought equally to excel in shorter and less formal utterances. Several speeches of his on Boston common during the Civil War excited much enthusiasm by their patriotic ring; while his brief tributes to John Quincy Adams, John C. Calhoun, Edward Everett, Daniel Webster, Abraham Lincoln, and many other eminent men with whom he had been associated at different periods, are models of graceful and discriminating eulogy. Besides the collected works already cited, he is the author of the "Life and Letters of John Winthrop" (2 vols., Boston, 1864), and ' Washington, Bowdoin. and Franklin " (1876). A portrait of him, in the capitol at Washington, presented by citizens of Massachusetts, commemorates at once his speakership and his Yorktown oration; while another, in the hall of the Massachusetts Historical Society, is a fit reminder of his services to New England history. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American
Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 576.

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.