Wad-Wat: Wade through Wattles

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


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

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, pp. 310-311; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 2, p. 303; Blue, 2005, pp. 11-13, 213-237; Filler, 1960, pp. 103, 151, 229; Mitchell, 2007, pp. 23, 25, 48-49, 54, 71, 116, 132, 143-144, 172, 189, 216, 217, 227, 228, 230; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 499; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 22, p. 431; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe). 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A.H.M.


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

(Blue, 2005, pp. 11-13, 213, 226, 236, 268; Dumond, 1961, pp. 302, 363; Mitchell, 2007, pp. 23, 25, 26, 48, 65, 71, 72; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 56; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe).


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

T. M. S.


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

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


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

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

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

W. E. S-h.


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

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

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography :

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

E. D.


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

(Aptheker, 1965; Burrow, 2003; Drake, 1950, p. 131; Dumond, 1961, pp. 114-115; Hammond, 2011, pp. 96, 177; Hinks, 1997; Mabee, 1970, pp. 258, 340, 403n25; Pease, 1965, pp. 298-310; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 25, 39, 172, 463, 501-502, 581-585, 588; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, p. 340; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 22, p. 487; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 11, p. 378). 

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

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

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

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

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

M. G.


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

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


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

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


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

(Filler, 1960, p. 164; Mabee, 1970, pp. 266, 268, 269, 298; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 328). 


WALKER, Robert John (July 19, 1801- November 11, 1869), whose name is sometimes given as Robert James and most often as Robert J. Walker, United States senator, secretary of the treasury, governor of Kansas Territory, supported the free-soil movement.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

H.D.J.


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

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

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

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

J. H.J.P.


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

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 339; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 387-388; Locke, 1901, p. 93; Annals of Congress). 

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

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

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

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

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

J.C.M.


WARD, Marcus Lawrence (November 9, 1812-April 25, 1884), governor of New Jersey, congressman, philanthropist. In 1856 he first took an active part in politics, embracing with vigor the cause of the newly formed Republican party. Because of his intense anti-slavery convictions, he went to Kansas in 1858 to take part in the struggle against the admission of slavery there, but found too much mob violence for his taste.  In 1860 he was a delegate to the Republican convention at Chicago which nominated Abraham Lincoln for the presidency.  In 1865 he was elected governor of New Jersey by a large majority. 

(M. D. Ogden, Memorial Cyclopedia of New Jersey, volume I (1915); W. H. Shaw, History of Essex and Hudson Counties, New Jersey (1884), volume I; The Biographical Encyclopedia of New Jersey of the Nineteenth Century (1877).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 432-433:

WARD, MARCUS LAWRENCE (November 9, 1812-April 25, 1884), governor of New Jersey, congressman, philanthropist, was the son of Moses and Fanny (Brown) Ward. His paternal ancestor, John Ward, came with his widowed mother from England and settled in 1635 at Wethersfield, Connecticut; in 1666 he became one of the founders of Newark, New Jersey. Here his descendant, Moses Ward, was for many years a successful manufacturer of candles, and here Moses' son Marcus was born. Educated in local private schools, he became a clerk in a variety store in Newark and later entered his father's establishment, becoming in time a partner in the firm of M. Ward & Son. In this connection he became widely known throughout the state and made a private fortune.

From his early years Ward took an interest in everything concerning his native city. He became a director in the National State Bank in Newark in 1846, was long chairman of the executive committee of the New Jersey Historical Society, and aided in the formation of the Newark Library Association and the New Jersey Art Union. In 1856 he first took an active part in politics, embracing with vigor the cause of the newly formed Republican party. Because of his intense anti-slavery convictions, he went to Kansas in 1858 to take part in the struggle against the admission of slavery there, but found too much mob violence for his taste, and soon returned to Newark and his business. In 1860 he was a delegate to the Republican convention at Chicago which nominated Abraham Lincoln for the presidency.

Soon after the outbreak of the Civil War he began to devise means to ameliorate the condition of the families of those New Jersey soldiers who by death or illness had left their wives and children destitute, and also the condition of such soldiers themselves as needed better hospital accommodations than the Government had prepared. With his own funds, and assuming direct oversight of the project, he took possession of a whole floor in the Newark Custom House, employed eight clerks, and there laid plans for carrying out his patriotic and benevolent ideas. He established a kind of free pension bureau, through which he secured soldiers' pay and transmitted it to their families. He founded a soldiers' hospital in his city-The Ward U. S. Hospital, the foundation of the later Soldiers' Home. In 1862 he consented to run as a Republican candidate for governor, but was defeated by the Democrat Joel Parker [q.v.]. He was a delegate in 1864 to the convention at Baltimore that renominated Lincoln; in the same year he became a member of the Republican National Committee, and continued as such until the nomination of General Grant for the presidency. In 1865 he was elected governor of New Jersey by a large majority. During his administration of three years (January 16, 1866-January 18, 1869) he secured the passage of a public-school law, an act eliminating partisanship in the control of the state prison, and other measures of reform. After a few years of retirement he was elected in 1872 representative in Congress from the sixth New Jersey district and served from March 4, 1873, to March 3, 1875. He was renominated in 1874, but was defeated in a Democratic tidal wave. Declining the federal office of commissioner of Indian affairs, he now retired to private life. After two trips to Europe he visited Florida, where he contracted the malarial fever which brought his death.

On June 30, 1840, Ward married Susan, daughter of John and Elizabeth (Longworth) Morris, by whom he had eight children; two sons, with their mother, survived him. The younger son, Marcus L. Ward, Jr., who outlived his brother, put the family fortune to a unique use by establishing at Maplewood, New Jersey, in memory of his father, the Ward Homestead, with accommodations for 120 bachelors and widowers who have been prominent in the business or Social life of New Jersey and are over sixty-five years of age. The Homestead is like a large country club in appearance, and has a large endowment fund.

[M. D. Ogden, Memorial Cyclopedia of New Jersey, volume I (1915); W. H. Shaw, History of Essex and Hudson Counties, New Jersey (1884), volume I; The Biographical Encyclopedia of New Jersey of the Nineteenth Century (1877); Proceedings New Jersey Historical Society, 2 series VIII (1885), IX (1887); John Livingston Portraits of Eminent Americans Now Living (1854), volume IV; Harper's Weekly, December 9, 1865; Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); New York Times, April 26, 1884.]

A. V-D.H.


WARD, Samuel Ringgold, 1817-1866, New York, American Missionary Association (AMA), African American, abolitionist leader, newspaper editor, author, orator, clergyman.  Member of the Liberty Party and the Free Soil Party.  Wrote Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro, His Anti-Slavery Labours in the United States, Canada and England, 1855.  Lecturer for American Anti-Slavery Society.  Member and contributor to the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada.

(Dumond, 1961, p. 330; Mabee, 1970, pp. 128, 135, 136, 294, 307, 400n19; Sernett, 2002, pp. 54-55, 62-64, 94, 117, 121, 126, 142, 149, 157-159, 169, 171-172; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 34, 46, 48, 53, 166, 446-447, 454; Sorin, 1971, pp. 85-89, 96, 104, 132; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, p. 440; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 22, p. 649; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 11, p. 380; See Ward's Autobiography; W. J. Wilson, "A Leaf from my Scrap Book ...," Autographs for Freedom, volume II (1854), ed. by Julia Griffiths; Journal of Negro History, October 1925). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, p. 440:

WARD, SAMUEL RINGGOLD (October 17, 1817-1866 ?), negro abolitionist, was born of slave parents on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. His parents ran away to Greenwich, New Jersey, in 1820. Six years later they removed to New York where the boy received an elementary education and became a teacher in colored schools. He was married in 1838 to a Miss Reynolds. His ability as a public speaker attracted the attention of Lewis Tappan [q.v.] and others and led to his appointment in 1839 as an agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society from which he was soon transferred to the service of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society. Licensed to preach by the New York Congregational (General) Association in 1839, he subsequently held two pastorates, at South Butler, Wayne County, New York, from 1841 to 1843, where his congregation was entirely white, and at Cortland, New York, from 1846 to 1851. He resigned the earlier pastorate because of throat trouble and subsequently studied medicine for a few months. He resumed his antislavery labors in 1844 with the Liberty Party and spoke in almost every state oi the North. In 1851 he removed to Syracuse where, in October of that year, he took an active part in the rescue of the negro fugitive Jerry. Fearing arrest, he fled to Canada where he became an agent of the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada. He organized branches of the society, lectured, and le nt assistance to the numerous fugitives in Canada. In April 1853 he was sent to England to secure financial aid for the Canadian effort and with the help of a committee raised the sum of 1,200 [pounds] in ten months.

He spoke at both the 1853 and 1854 meetings of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society and delivered numerous other addresses during his stay in Great Britain. He attracted the interest of some of the nobility and met many of the leading philanthropists. His Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro (London, 1855), records that John Candler, of Chelmsford, a Quaker, presented him with fifty acres of land in the parish of St. George, Jamaica, and he apparently accepted the gift, for about 1855 he went to Jamaica and in Kingston became the pastor of a small body of Baptists. He continued in this post until early in 1860 when he left Kingston and settled in St. George Parish. The new venture did not prosper and he died in great poverty in or after 1866. During his pastorate in Kingston he is said to have exercised a powerful influence over the colored population and was the head of a political party which controlled local elections. In 1866 he published in Jamaica his Reflections Upon the Gordon Rebellion. Ward's extraordinary oratorical ability is mentioned by a number of his contemporaries. He was frequently advertised during his lecture tours as "the black Daniel Webster."

[See Ward's Autobiography; W. J. Wilson, "A Leaf from my Scrap Book ...," Autographs for Freedom, volume II (1854), ed. by Julia Griffiths; Journal of Negro History, October 1925; information from Mr. Frank Cundall, of the Institute of Jamaica, and from Lord Olivier.]

F.L.  


WARE, Henry (April 21, 1794-September 22, 1843), Unitarian clergyman.  He was one of the organizers and the president of the Cambridge Anti-Slavery Society, and was subjected to severe criticism in the University and the papers for publicly espousing the abolitionist movement. 
(E. F. Ware, Ware Genealogy (1901); John Ware; Memoir of the Life of Henry Ware, Jr. (1846); W. B. Sprague, Annals of the American Unitarian Pulpit (1865).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 448-449:

WARE, HENRY (April 21, 1794-September 22, 1843), Unitarian clergyman, son of Henry [q.v.] and Mary (Clark) Ware and brother of John and William Ware [qq.v.], was born in Hingham, Massachusetts, where his father was pastor, and lived there until 1805, when the elder Henry became professor of divinity at Harvard. The son received his early education in the schools of his native town and under tutors until 1807, in which year he was sent to Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. The year following he entered Harvard College, from which he graduated in 1812. He was a somewhat frail, serious-minded youth, religiously inclined from childhood, mingling little in the social life of the college, but taking commendable rank as a scholar. From 1812 to 1814 he taught under Benjamin Abbot [q.v.] at Phillips Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire, and then returned to Harvard to complete the preparation for the ministry which he had been carrying on privately. He had written some verse and at a public gathering held in 1815 after the signing of the Treaty of Ghent he delivered a poem, subsequently published under the title A Poem Pronounced .. at the Celebration of Peace (1815). On January 1, 1817, he was ordained pastor of the Second Church (Unitarian), Boston, and in October of that year was married to Elizabeth Watson Waterhouse, daughter of Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse [q.v.] of Cambridge. John Fothergill Waterhouse Ware [q.v.] was their son.

Ware's life was comparatively short and ill health continually interfered with his activities. He was below medium height, thin, and stooping, and was careless as to his dress and personal appearance. His manner did not invite approach and few were on terms of intimacy with him. In spite of these handicaps, however, he became one of the leading ministers of New England, and his writings were widely read both in America and abroad. The whole purpose of his life was usefulness rather than high accomplishment, and into the various fields that he entered he put the full measure of his devotion. He succeeded Noah Worcester [q.v.] as editor of the Christian Disciple (1819-23), and in 1821 contributed articles, signed Artinius, to the Christian Register. In 1822 he projected Sunday evening services for those who had no stated places of worship, a missionary endeavor later carried on by the ministry-at-large. An advocate of preaching without manuscript, he published in 1824 Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching. He took a prominent part in the establishment of the American Unitarian Association, and was long a member of its executive committee. At the annual Phi Beta Kappa meeting at Harvard, August 26, 1824, made memorable by the presence of Lafayette, he delivered a poem entitled "The Vision of Liberty." In 1823, one of his three children died, and in less than a year, his wife; on June II, 1827, he married Mary Lovell Pickard (see E.B. Hall, Memoir of Mary L. Ware, 1853). To this marriage were born six children, one of whom was William Robert Ware [q.v.]. The condition of Ware's health led him to resign his pastorate in 1828, but his parishioners would not consent to a separation and the following year gave him a colleague in the person of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Meanwhile, he had been appointed first professor of pulpit eloquence and pastoral care in the Harvard Divinity School. After a seventeen month sojourn in Europe, during which he visited Wordsworth, Southey, Maria Edgeworth, and other persons of note, he felt unable to carry on both pastoral and professorial duties and, relinquishing his parish, he moved to Cambridge.

During his career at Harvard, though in the latter part of it he took over much of his father's work, he found time for considerable writing. One of his works, On the Formation of the Christian Character (1831), went through some fifteen editions and was republished abroad. To provide young people with books suitable for Sunday reading, he projected "The Sunday Library," for which he wrote the first volume, The Life of the Saviour (1833). This also had wide circulation. Other publications included sermons, addresses, reviews, and memoirs of Joseph Priestley, Nathan Parker, and Noah Worcester. After his death The Works of Henry Ware, Jr., D.D. (4 volumes, 1846-47), edited by Chandler Robbins, appeared. He was one of the organizers and the president of the Cambridge Anti-Slavery Society, and was subjected to severe criticism in the University and the papers for publicly espousing the abolitionist movement. Later his ardor cooled, for the impatience and intolerance of the abolitionists were repellent to one of his nature. Forced by failing strength to resign his professorship in 1842, he retired to Framingham, Massachusetts, where he died in his forty-ninth year. His body was taken to Cambridge and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery.

[E. F. Ware, Ware Genealogy (1901); John Ware; Memoir of the Life of Henry Ware, Jr. (1846); W. B. Sprague, Annals of the American Unitarian Pulpit (1865); S. A. Eliot, Heralds of a Liberal Faith, volume II (1910); Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, volume II (1880); Christian Examiner, November 1843, March 1846.]

H.E.S.


WARE, John Fothergill Waterhouse (August 31, 1818-February 26, 1881), Unitarian clergyman.  He took great interest in the welfare of the freedmen, and had a leading part in establishing schools for colored children, which ultimately were taken over by the city. His activities in this field were carried on in the face of obstacles and at personal risk, necessitating at times his being attended by armed companions. 
(E. F. Ware, Ware Genealogy (1901); General Catalog of the Divinity School of Harvard University (1910); S. A. Eliot, .... Heralds of a Liberal Faith (1910), volume III; Boston Transcript, February, 28, 1881).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 450-451:

WARE, JOHN FOTHERGILL WATERHOUSE (August 31, 1818-February 26, 1881), Unitarian clergyman, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Henry Ware, 1794-1843 [q.v.] and Elizabeth Watson (Waterhouse) Ware. Willi am Robert Ware [q.v.] was his half-brother. Prepared for college in Cambridge, John graduated from Harvard in 1838, and would have been class poet, it is said, had not James Russell Lowell been in the same class. Entering the Harvard Divinity School, he finished the course there in 1842, and the following year became pastor of the Unitarian church in Fall River, Massachusetts, remaining there until 1846. His next pastorate, which lasted until 1864, was at Cambridgeport, Massachusetts.

During the Civil War, in an independent civil capacity, he rendered much service to the Union cause and especially to the soldiers themselves, lecturing or giving patriotic talks in various parts of the country, visiting the men in the camps-often in army boots and slouch hat-and preparing tracts, which were published and circulated among the soldiers by the American Unitarian Society. In 1864 he was called to be minister of the First Independent Society of Baltimore. His congregation, made up originally of old Marylanders, was augmented by many new-comers attracted by the quality of his preaching. The two elements did not mix readily, and the more conservative members found Ware's independence and disregard of ministerial conventions not to their liking. Accordingly, after some three years, July 1867, he resigned. Some of his friends then formed a new religious organization, the Church of the Saviour, the services of which were held in the Masonic Temple. So large did the evening attendance become that the use of an opera house was secured, and even this was sometimes over-crowded. In the summer time he held open-air services in Druid Hill Park. He took great interest in the welfare of the freedmen, and had a leading part in establishing schools for colored children, which ultimately were taken over by the city. His activities in this field were carried on in the face of obstacles and at personal risk, necessitating at times his being attended by armed companions. While living in Baltimore he spent his summers at Swampscott, Massachusetts, where he organized a church.

In July 1872 the condition of his health necessitated his returning North, and he became pastor of the Arlington Street Church, Boston, to which he mini3tered until his death. His preaching was direct and practical, more concerned with the problems of life than with those of theology. His interest was in men rather than in books, and his ruling ambition was to lessen the injustice and unhappiness of the world. A number of his sermons were printed separately and after his death some twenty-seven of them were published in a volume entitled Wrestling and Waiting (1882). Two of his books had wide circulation-The Silent Pastor, or Consolations for the Sick (1848) and Home Life: What It Is and What It Needs (1864). He was married on May 27, 1844, to Caroline Parsons, daughter of Nathan Rice of Cambridge; she died, September 18, 1848, and on October 10 of the following year he married Helen, daughter of Nathan Rice. By his first wife he had two children, and by his second, two. He died in Milton, Massachusetts, after a year of comparative inactivity caused by a coronary affection.

[E. F. Ware, Ware Genealogy (1901); General Catalog of the Divinity School of Harvard University (1910); S. A. Eliot, .... Heralds of a Liberal Faith (1910), volume III; Boston Transcript, February, 28, 1881.]

H. E. S.


WASHBURN, Cadwallader Colden (April 22, 1818-May 14, 1882), soldier, congressman, governor of Wisconsin, anti-slavery Republican congressman. Washburn's excellent reputation, and his early adherence to the principles upon which the Republican party was founded, brought him an unsolicited nomination and election to Congress in 1854. He sat in three successive congresses, his brother Israel [q.v.] represented a Maine district, and his brother Elihu an Illinois district. The three brothers, to the satisfaction of their respective constituencies, lent one another much aid, particularly on local matters. His outstanding act was to oppose vigorously a House plan to pacify the South by so amending the Constitution as to continue slavery indefinitely. His participation in the Washington Peace Convention of 1861 showed his desire to prevent war.

(Gaillard Hunt, Israel, Elihu and Cadwallader Washburn (1925) ; David Atwood and others, "In Memoriam: Hon. Cadwallader C. Washburn," Wisconsin Historical Society Collection,   volume IX (1882) ; C. W. Butterfield, "Cadwallader C. Washburn," Northwest Review (Minneapolis), March 1883).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 405-496:

WASHBURN, CADWALLADER COLDEN (April 22, 1818-May 14, 1882), soldier, congressman, governor of Wisconsin, pioneer industrialist, was one of the seven sons (an eighth died in infancy) of Israel and Martha (Benjamin) Washburn. His ancestry on both sides went back to early Massachusetts Puritans on the paternal side to John Washburn who settled in Duxbury in 1632-and his two grandfathers, Captain Israel Washburn and Lieutenant Samuel Benjamin, served with distinction in the Revolutionary War. In 1809 Washburn's father, who had left the ancestral home in Raynham, Massachusetts, three years before, bought a farm and a store at Livermore, Androscoggin County, Maine. Here he married and brought up his numerous brood of children, which included, besides the boys, three girls; Members of so large a family could not stay for long under the parental rooftree; hence, in 1839, equipped with what education he could get from the town schools, and deeply impressed by the advice of Reuel Washburn, a lawyer uncle, Cadwallader borrowed enough money to pay his way to the West, and was soon in Davenport, Iowa. Here, and across the Mississippi in Illinois, he taught school, worked in a store, did some surveying, and read law. In 1842 he opened a law office at Mineral Point, Wisconsin a small town not far from Galena, Illinois, where his brother Elihu B. Washburne [q.v.] had settled two years before. The foundation of his great fortune was soon laid. In 1844 he formed a partnership with Cyrus Woodman, an experienced land agent, and gradually abandoned the law for the far more lucrative business of entering public lands for settlers. Before long he partners owned in their own right valuable pine, mineral, and agricultural lands, and for a short time they operated the Mineral Point Bank. After 1855, when the partnership was amicably dissolved, Washburn carried on his now extensive operations alone. Even politics and the Civil War did not interfere seriously with the normal growth of this pioneer fortune. Proud of his honesty, and of the record of his bank, which never suspended specie payments and liquidated by meeting every obligation in full, Washburn rarely won the ill will of his neighbors; but his judgment on business matters was sound, and the opportunities for making money in a rapidly developing country were abundant. Washburn's excellent reputation, and his early adherence to the principles upon which the Republican party was founded, brought him an unsolicited nomination and election to Congress in 1854. He sat in three successive congresses, in each of which, by an odd coincidence, his brother Israel [q.v.] represented a Maine district, and his brother Elihu an Illinois district. The three brothers, to the satisfaction of their respective constituencies, lent one another much aid, particularly on local matters, but the representative from Wisconsin achieved no very great national prominence. His outstanding act was to oppose vigorously a House plan to pacify the South by so amending the Constitution as to continue slavery indefinitely; but his participation in the Washington Peace Convention of 1861 showed his desire to prevent war. When war came nevertheless, his record was admirable. He raised the 2nd Wisconsin Volunteer Cavalry, became its colonel, and by the encl of 1862 was a major-general. His command saw hard service in most of the campaigns west of the Mississippi River, and participated in the fighting around Vicksburg. When the war ended, he was in charge of the Department of Western Tennessee, with headquarters at Memphis. After the war, as a rich man and a former major-general of volunteers, Washburn was clearly marked for a political career if he desired it, but politics never absorbed his chief interest. He served two more terms in Congress, 1867-71, as a thoroughly regular Republican, and one term,  January 1, 1872, to December 31, 1873, as governor of Wisconsin. He would probably have welcomed a seat in the United States Senate, or a cabinet appointment, but these honors were denied him, and he was content to devote his later years to the operation and expansion of his vast industrial enterprises. His pine lands brought him into the lumber business and his shrewd acquisition of water-power rights at the Falls of St. Anthony (Minneapolis) on the upper Mississippi enabled him to become one of the nation's foremost manufacturers of flour. In 1856 he helped organize the Minneapolis Mill Company, of which his younger brother, William D. Washburn [q.v.] became secretary. Some fifteen years later C. C. Washburn was one of the first to adopt the "New Process" of milling, which created a demand for the spring wheat of the Northwest and completely revolutionized the flour industry in the United States. Like his great rival, Charles A. Pillsbury [q.v.], he was prompt in substituting rollers for millstones. In 1877 Washburn, Crosby & Company was organized, and two years later reorganized, with Washburn, John Crosby, Charles J. Martin, and William E. Dunwoody [q.v.], as partners. Naturally Washburn's wealth drew him into many other lines of business. He was, for example, one of the projectors and builders of the Minneapolis & St. Louis Railroad. His private life was saddened, though not embittered, by the insanity of his wife, Jeannette Garr, a visitor to the West from New York City, whom he married  January 1, 1849. She became an invalid after the birth of their second child in 1852, and although she survived her husband by many years her mind was never restored. Perhaps as an outlet to his feelings, Washburn took much satisfaction in his philanthropies, among which were the Washburn Observatory of the University of Wisconsin, the Public Library at La Crosse (his residence after 1859), and an orphan asylum in Minneapolis. He suffered a stroke of paralysis in 1881, and died a year later at Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

[A manuscript sketch of C. C. Washburn's life, prepared by his brother Elihu, together with an extensive collection of Washburn and Woodman papers, is in the possession of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. See also Gaillard Hunt, Israel, Elihu and Cadwallader Washburn (1925) ; David Atwood and others, "In Memoriam: Hon. Cadwallader C. Washburn," Wisconsin Historical Society Collection,   volume IX (1882) ; C. W. Butterfield, "Cadwallader C. Washburn," Northwest Review (Minneapolis), March 1883; Biographical History of La Crosse, Trempealeau and Buffalo Counties, Wisconsin (1892) ; C. B. Kuhlmann, The Development of the Flour-Milling Industry in the U. S. (1929); W. C. Edgar, The Medal of Gold (1925); New York Times, May 1s, 1882; Republican and Leader (La Crosse), May 20, 27, 1882.]

J. D. H-s.


WASHBURN, Elihu Benjamin [See WASHBURNE, Elihu Benjamin, 1816-1887 ].


WASHBURN, Israel (June 6, 1813-May 12, 1883), lawyer, congressman, governor of Maine, was a brother of Elihu B. Washburne, Cadwallader C. Washburn, and William D. Washburn [qq.v.]. In 1850 was elected, and for the next ten years represented the Penobscot district, first as a whig and later as a Republican. During part of that time his brothers Cadwallader and Elihu were all in the House, representing Wisconsin and Illinois respectively. His part in founding the Republican party was his most distinctive work in Washington. On May 9, 1854, the day after the Kansas-Nebraska bill passed the House, he called a meeting of some thirty anti-slavery representatives at the rooms of two Massachusetts congressmen; this group took further steps toward organizing a new party and Washburn is a strong contender for the honor of having been the first to suggest the name "Republican." He used it publicly shortly afterwards in a speech at Bangor. Washburn steadily and strongly opposed the extension of slavery.

(Gaillard Hunt, Israel, Elihu and Cadwallader Washburn (1925); In Memoriam: Israel Washburn, Jr. (1884); L. C. Hatch, Maine, a History (3 volumes, 1919); Henry Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power (3 volumes, 1873-77).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 502-503:

WASHBURN, ISRAEL (June 6, 1813-May 12, 1883), lawyer, congressman, governor of Maine, was a brother of Elihu B. Washburne, Cadwallader C. Washburn, and William D. Washburn [qq.v.]. They were born in Livermore, Maine, the sons of Israel and Martha (Benjamin) Washburn. Their father sat in the Massachusetts legislature from 1815 to 1819. The failure of his store in 1829 prevented Israel, eldest of eleven children, from attending college, but he studied law with his uncle, Reuel Washburn, and in 1834 was admitted to the bar. He made his home at Orono until 1863, when he moved to Portland. He held several local offices and sat in the Maine legislature in 1842 during the Northeast Boundary dispute. In 1848 he was defeated for Congress but in 1850 was elected, and for the next ten years represented the Penobscot district, first as a whig and later as a Republican. During part of that time his brothers Cadwallader and Elihu were all in the House, representing Wisconsin and Illinois respectively.

His part in founding the Republican party was his most distinctive work in Washington. On May 9, 1854, the day after the Kansas-Nebraska bill passed the House and ten weeks after the original meeting at Ripon, Wisconsin, he called a meeting of some thirty anti-slavery representatives at the rooms of two Massachusetts congressmen; this group took further steps toward organizing a new party and Washburn is a strong contender for the honor of having been the first to suggest the name "Republican." He used it publicly shortly afterwards in a speech at Bangor. Washburn steadily and strongly opposed the extension of slave1'y; in 1856 he supported Nathaniel P. Banks [q.v.] for the speakership; for a time he was chairman of the committee on ways and means.

On January 1, 1861, he resigned from the House to succeed Lot M. Morrill [q.v.] as governor of Maine; later that year he was reelected. He has been ranked with John A. Andrew and Oliver P. Morton [qq.v.] among "the great war governors of the North" (Hamlin, post, p. 357), because of his contribution to Maine's excellent war record. Immediately upon the call for volunteers, he summoned the legislature to meet in special session and, though Maine was asked for only two regiments, that body provided for ten, appropriating a million dollars. By 1862, however, recruiting had slackened, and Washburn wrote Lincoln that he would have to resort to drafting to secure "three-year" men. He declined renomination for the governorship and in 1863 was appointed collector of the port of Portland. He was several times disappointed in his cherished ambition of a Senate seat, partly through the opposition of James G. Blaine [q.v.]. In 1878, he lost his collectorship, after planning to buy a newspaper to attack the Blaine group. From March 3 of that year until his death he was president of the Rumford Falls & Buckfield Railroad.

Washburn has been described as a "solid, hard-working man of sound knowledge and of rigid integrity" (Hunt, post, p. 40). Short, serious, and spectacled, he was less impressive than his brothers i; appearance. He was quick-tempered, was a good story-teller, and had a strong love of literature. He wrote Notes, Historical, Descriptive, and Personal, of Livermore ... Maine (1874), read papers on the "North-Eastern Boundary" and on Ether Shepley before the Maine Historical Society (Collections, I series, VIII, 1881), and was a frequent contributor to the Universalist Quarterly. He was a trustee oi Tufts College from its opening in 1852 until his death, declining an offer of the presidency in 1878. On October 24, 1841, he married Mary Maud Webster of Orono, by whom he had two sons and two daughters. She died in 1873 and he married in January 1876 Rebina Napier Brown of Bangor. He died in Philadelphia, whither he had gone for medical treatment, and was buried in Bangor.

[Gaillard Hunt, Israel, Elihu and Cadwallader Washburn (1925); In Memoriam: Israel Washburn, Jr. (1884); L. C. Hatch, Maine, a History (3 volumes, 1919); Henry Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power (3 volumes, 1873-77); J. S. Pike, First Blows of the Civil War (1879); C. E. Hamlin, Life and Times of Hannibal Hamlin (1899); Francis Curtis, The Republican Party, a History (2 volumes, 1904); F. A. Shannon, Organization and Administration of the Union Army, (2 volumes, 1928), I, 272; Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); New England Historical and Genealogical Register, January 1884; New York Herald, May 13, 1883; Daily Eastern Argus (Portland), May 14, 1883.]

J.B.P.


WASHBURN, William Barrett, 1820-1887, businessman. Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts.  U.S. Senator.  Served in Congress 1863-1872, and U.S. Senate May 1874-March 1875.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 372; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)


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

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 370-371; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, p. 504; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 22, p. 750; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe).  Dictionary of

American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, p. 504:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

L. E. E.


WASHINGTON, Augustus, 1820-1875, African American, abolitionist, newspaper publisher, Liberian statesman, Black civil rights activist, educator.  Rejected, then later supported African colonization.  Emigrated to Liberia.  Elected to Liberian House of Representatives in 1863 and later became Speaker.  In 1871, elected to Liberian Senate.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 11, p. 458). 


WATTERSON, Harvey Magee (November 23, 1811-October 1, 1891), editor and congressman from Tennessee.  In 1851 he went to Washington as editor of the Washington Union. Watterson had always been a Democrat, but he was opposed to the extension of slavery and retired from the editorship of the Union because he could not support the policy of the administration in regard to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. He opposed session and remained a Unionist throughout the Civil War.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 551-552:

WATTERSON, HARVEY MAGEE (November 23, 1811-October 1, 1891), editor and congressman from Tennessee, was born at Beech Grove, Bedford County, Tennessee. His father, William S. Waterson, emigrated from Virginia to Tennessee in 1804, served on Andrew Jackson's staff in the War of 1812, accumulated a fortune as a cotton planter, and was a prominent figure in the Tennessee railroad movement at the time of his death in 1851. Harvey Watterson was educated at Cumberland College, Princeton, Kentucky. He studied law, was admitted to the bar, and began the practice of his profession at Shelbyville, Tennessee, in 1830. The next year he was elected to the lower house of the state legislature and by successive reëlections served until 1839 (Courier-Journal, post). In that year he was elected to the federal House of Representatives and was reelected in 1841. According to the testimony of his son, Watterson did not take his duties at Washington seriously, but, provided with an excellent income by his father, directed his energies to revelry and occasional escapades of a graver nature, "his principal yokemate in the pleasures and dissipations of those times being Franklin Pierce" (Marse Henry, post, I, 26). At the end of his second term in the house he was sent by President Tyler on a diplomatic mission to Buenos Aires to obtain information on the foreign relations of Argentina, commercial matters, and the war then raging with Uruguay. In February 1844 he was nominated charge, but the Senate in the following June rejected the nomination (S. F. Bemis, American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy, volume V, 1928, p. 216).

Returning to Tennessee in 1845, Watterson was at once elected to the state Senate and was made its presiding officer. In September 1849 he became the proprietor of the Nashville Daily Union, whose editorship he took over the following year (S. L. Sioussat, "Tennessee, the Compromise of 1850, and the Nashville Convention," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, December 1915, p. 235 n.). He remained as editor of the Nashville paper until 1851, when he went to Washington as editor of the Washington Union. Watterson had always been a Democrat, but he was opposed to the extension of slavery and retired from the editorship of the Union because he could not support the policy of the administration in regard to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. He retired to private life in Tennessee, refusing the governorship of Oregon, and, in 1857, a nomination to Congress. He supported Stephen A. Douglas [q.v.] in the campaign of 1860. He was a member of the secession convention of Tennessee but opposed secession. He remained a Unionist throughout the war, living in retirement on his plantation at Beech Grove. He supported Andrew Johnson [q.v.] during his presidency, and for the ten years after the war lived at Washington engaged in the practice of law. After the death of his wife he divided his time between Washington and Louisville, Kentucky, where his son, Henry Watterson [q.v.], was editor of the Courier-Journal. At the time of his death he was on the editorial staff of the Courier-Journal, in which his writings were signed "An Old Fogy." He was buried in the Cave Hill Cemetery at Louisville. Watterson married in 1830 Talitha Black, daughter of James Black of Maury County, Tennessee. He was a member of the Presbyterian Church. He was sponsored in his political life by Andrew Jackson [q.v.], the close friend of his father. In ante-helium days he was a man of great influence in Tennessee politics and was the recognized leader of the Union wing of the Democratic party in the last decade before the war. He was a vigorous editor and a writer of merit, but his reputation in that line as in others has been obscured by the fame of his son, and only child.

[See obituary in Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky), October 2, 1891; Henry Watterson, "Marse Henry"; an A1ttobiography (2 volumes, 1919); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); and The South in the Building of the Nation (1909), volume XII.]

R.S.C.


WATTLES, Augustus, 1807-1883, established school for free Blacks.  Agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society.  Worked with Emigrant Aid Society in Lawrence, Kansas.  Edited Herald of Freedom. 

(Dumond, 1961, pp. 164-165; Mabee, 1970, pp. 104, 155, 394n31, 403n29).  Dictionary of American Biography)WADE, Benjamin Franklin, 1800-1878, lawyer, jurist, U.S. Senator, strong and active opponent of slavery.  In 1839, opposed enactment of stronger fugitive slave law, later calling for its repeal.  U.S. Senator, March 1851-1869.  Opposed Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854.  Reported bill to abolish slavery in U.S. Territories in 1862.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. 

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, pp. 310-311; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 2, p. 303; Blue, 2005, pp. 11-13, 213-237; Filler, 1960, pp. 103, 151, 229; Mitchell, 2007, pp. 23, 25, 48-49, 54, 71, 116, 132, 143-144, 172, 189, 216, 217, 227, 228, 230; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 499; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 22, p. 431; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe). 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A.H.M.


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

(Blue, 2005, pp. 11-13, 213, 226, 236, 268; Dumond, 1961, pp. 302, 363; Mitchell, 2007, pp. 23, 25, 26, 48, 65, 71, 72; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 56; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe).


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

T. M. S.


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

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


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

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

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

W. E. S-h.


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

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

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography :

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

E. D.


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

(Aptheker, 1965; Burrow, 2003; Drake, 1950, p. 131; Dumond, 1961, pp. 114-115; Hammond, 2011, pp. 96, 177; Hinks, 1997; Mabee, 1970, pp. 258, 340, 403n25; Pease, 1965, pp. 298-310; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 25, 39, 172, 463, 501-502, 581-585, 588; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, p. 340; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 22, p. 487; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 11, p. 378). 

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

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

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

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

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

M. G.


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

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


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

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


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

(Filler, 1960, p. 164; Mabee, 1970, pp. 266, 268, 269, 298; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 328). 


WALKER, Robert John (July 19, 1801- November 11, 1869), whose name is sometimes given as Robert James and most often as Robert J. Walker, United States senator, secretary of the treasury, governor of Kansas Territory, supported the free-soil movement.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

H.D.J.


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

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

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

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

J. H.J.P.


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

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 339; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 387-388; Locke, 1901, p. 93; Annals of Congress). 

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

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

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

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

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

J.C.M.


WARD, Marcus Lawrence (November 9, 1812-April 25, 1884), governor of New Jersey, congressman, philanthropist. In 1856 he first took an active part in politics, embracing with vigor the cause of the newly formed Republican party. Because of his intense anti-slavery convictions, he went to Kansas in 1858 to take part in the struggle against the admission of slavery there, but found too much mob violence for his taste.  In 1860 he was a delegate to the Republican convention at Chicago which nominated Abraham Lincoln for the presidency.  In 1865 he was elected governor of New Jersey by a large majority. 

(M. D. Ogden, Memorial Cyclopedia of New Jersey, volume I (1915); W. H. Shaw, History of Essex and Hudson Counties, New Jersey (1884), volume I; The Biographical Encyclopedia of New Jersey of the Nineteenth Century (1877).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 432-433:

WARD, MARCUS LAWRENCE (November 9, 1812-April 25, 1884), governor of New Jersey, congressman, philanthropist, was the son of Moses and Fanny (Brown) Ward. His paternal ancestor, John Ward, came with his widowed mother from England and settled in 1635 at Wethersfield, Connecticut; in 1666 he became one of the founders of Newark, New Jersey. Here his descendant, Moses Ward, was for many years a successful manufacturer of candles, and here Moses' son Marcus was born. Educated in local private schools, he became a clerk in a variety store in Newark and later entered his father's establishment, becoming in time a partner in the firm of M. Ward & Son. In this connection he became widely known throughout the state and made a private fortune.

From his early years Ward took an interest in everything concerning his native city. He became a director in the National State Bank in Newark in 1846, was long chairman of the executive committee of the New Jersey Historical Society, and aided in the formation of the Newark Library Association and the New Jersey Art Union. In 1856 he first took an active part in politics, embracing with vigor the cause of the newly formed Republican party. Because of his intense anti-slavery convictions, he went to Kansas in 1858 to take part in the struggle against the admission of slavery there, but found too much mob violence for his taste, and soon returned to Newark and his business. In 1860 he was a delegate to the Republican convention at Chicago which nominated Abraham Lincoln for the presidency.

Soon after the outbreak of the Civil War he began to devise means to ameliorate the condition of the families of those New Jersey soldiers who by death or illness had left their wives and children destitute, and also the condition of such soldiers themselves as needed better hospital accommodations than the Government had prepared. With his own funds, and assuming direct oversight of the project, he took possession of a whole floor in the Newark Custom House, employed eight clerks, and there laid plans for carrying out his patriotic and benevolent ideas. He established a kind of free pension bureau, through which he secured soldiers' pay and transmitted it to their families. He founded a soldiers' hospital in his city-The Ward U. S. Hospital, the foundation of the later Soldiers' Home. In 1862 he consented to run as a Republican candidate for governor, but was defeated by the Democrat Joel Parker [q.v.]. He was a delegate in 1864 to the convention at Baltimore that renominated Lincoln; in the same year he became a member of the Republican National Committee, and continued as such until the nomination of General Grant for the presidency. In 1865 he was elected governor of New Jersey by a large majority. During his administration of three years (January 16, 1866-January 18, 1869) he secured the passage of a public-school law, an act eliminating partisanship in the control of the state prison, and other measures of reform. After a few years of retirement he was elected in 1872 representative in Congress from the sixth New Jersey district and served from March 4, 1873, to March 3, 1875. He was renominated in 1874, but was defeated in a Democratic tidal wave. Declining the federal office of commissioner of Indian affairs, he now retired to private life. After two trips to Europe he visited Florida, where he contracted the malarial fever which brought his death.

On June 30, 1840, Ward married Susan, daughter of John and Elizabeth (Longworth) Morris, by whom he had eight children; two sons, with their mother, survived him. The younger son, Marcus L. Ward, Jr., who outlived his brother, put the family fortune to a unique use by establishing at Maplewood, New Jersey, in memory of his father, the Ward Homestead, with accommodations for 120 bachelors and widowers who have been prominent in the business or Social life of New Jersey and are over sixty-five years of age. The Homestead is like a large country club in appearance, and has a large endowment fund.

[M. D. Ogden, Memorial Cyclopedia of New Jersey, volume I (1915); W. H. Shaw, History of Essex and Hudson Counties, New Jersey (1884), volume I; The Biographical Encyclopedia of New Jersey of the Nineteenth Century (1877); Proceedings New Jersey Historical Society, 2 series VIII (1885), IX (1887); John Livingston Portraits of Eminent Americans Now Living (1854), volume IV; Harper's Weekly, December 9, 1865; Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); New York Times, April 26, 1884.]

A. V-D.H.


WARD, Samuel Ringgold, 1817-1866, New York, American Missionary Association (AMA), African American, abolitionist leader, newspaper editor, author, orator, clergyman.  Member of the Liberty Party and the Free Soil Party.  Wrote Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro, His Anti-Slavery Labours in the United States, Canada and England, 1855.  Lecturer for American Anti-Slavery Society.  Member and contributor to the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada.

(Dumond, 1961, p. 330; Mabee, 1970, pp. 128, 135, 136, 294, 307, 400n19; Sernett, 2002, pp. 54-55, 62-64, 94, 117, 121, 126, 142, 149, 157-159, 169, 171-172; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 34, 46, 48, 53, 166, 446-447, 454; Sorin, 1971, pp. 85-89, 96, 104, 132; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, p. 440; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 22, p. 649; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 11, p. 380; See Ward's Autobiography; W. J. Wilson, "A Leaf from my Scrap Book ...," Autographs for Freedom, volume II (1854), ed. by Julia Griffiths; Journal of Negro History, October 1925). 

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, p. 440:

WARD, SAMUEL RINGGOLD (October 17, 1817-1866 ?), negro abolitionist, was born of slave parents on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. His parents ran away to Greenwich, New Jersey, in 1820. Six years later they removed to New York where the boy received an elementary education and became a teacher in colored schools. He was married in 1838 to a Miss Reynolds. His ability as a public speaker attracted the attention of Lewis Tappan [q.v.] and others and led to his appointment in 1839 as an agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society from which he was soon transferred to the service of the New York State Anti-Slavery Society. Licensed to preach by the New York Congregational (General) Association in 1839, he subsequently held two pastorates, at South Butler, Wayne County, New York, from 1841 to 1843, where his congregation was entirely white, and at Cortland, New York, from 1846 to 1851. He resigned the earlier pastorate because of throat trouble and subsequently studied medicine for a few months. He resumed his antislavery labors in 1844 with the Liberty Party and spoke in almost every state oi the North. In 1851 he removed to Syracuse where, in October of that year, he took an active part in the rescue of the negro fugitive Jerry. Fearing arrest, he fled to Canada where he became an agent of the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada. He organized branches of the society, lectured, and le nt assistance to the numerous fugitives in Canada. In April 1853 he was sent to England to secure financial aid for the Canadian effort and with the help of a committee raised the sum of 1,200 [pounds] in ten months.

He spoke at both the 1853 and 1854 meetings of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society and delivered numerous other addresses during his stay in Great Britain. He attracted the interest of some of the nobility and met many of the leading philanthropists. His Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro (London, 1855), records that John Candler, of Chelmsford, a Quaker, presented him with fifty acres of land in the parish of St. George, Jamaica, and he apparently accepted the gift, for about 1855 he went to Jamaica and in Kingston became the pastor of a small body of Baptists. He continued in this post until early in 1860 when he left Kingston and settled in St. George Parish. The new venture did not prosper and he died in great poverty in or after 1866. During his pastorate in Kingston he is said to have exercised a powerful influence over the colored population and was the head of a political party which controlled local elections. In 1866 he published in Jamaica his Reflections Upon the Gordon Rebellion. Ward's extraordinary oratorical ability is mentioned by a number of his contemporaries. He was frequently advertised during his lecture tours as "the black Daniel Webster."

[See Ward's Autobiography; W. J. Wilson, "A Leaf from my Scrap Book ...," Autographs for Freedom, volume II (1854), ed. by Julia Griffiths; Journal of Negro History, October 1925; information from Mr. Frank Cundall, of the Institute of Jamaica, and from Lord Olivier.]

F.L.  


WARE, Henry (April 21, 1794-September 22, 1843), Unitarian clergyman.  He was one of the organizers and the president of the Cambridge Anti-Slavery Society, and was subjected to severe criticism in the University and the papers for publicly espousing the abolitionist movement. 
(E. F. Ware, Ware Genealogy (1901); John Ware; Memoir of the Life of Henry Ware, Jr. (1846); W. B. Sprague, Annals of the American Unitarian Pulpit (1865).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 448-449:

WARE, HENRY (April 21, 1794-September 22, 1843), Unitarian clergyman, son of Henry [q.v.] and Mary (Clark) Ware and brother of John and William Ware [qq.v.], was born in Hingham, Massachusetts, where his father was pastor, and lived there until 1805, when the elder Henry became professor of divinity at Harvard. The son received his early education in the schools of his native town and under tutors until 1807, in which year he was sent to Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. The year following he entered Harvard College, from which he graduated in 1812. He was a somewhat frail, serious-minded youth, religiously inclined from childhood, mingling little in the social life of the college, but taking commendable rank as a scholar. From 1812 to 1814 he taught under Benjamin Abbot [q.v.] at Phillips Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire, and then returned to Harvard to complete the preparation for the ministry which he had been carrying on privately. He had written some verse and at a public gathering held in 1815 after the signing of the Treaty of Ghent he delivered a poem, subsequently published under the title A Poem Pronounced .. at the Celebration of Peace (1815). On January 1, 1817, he was ordained pastor of the Second Church (Unitarian), Boston, and in October of that year was married to Elizabeth Watson Waterhouse, daughter of Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse [q.v.] of Cambridge. John Fothergill Waterhouse Ware [q.v.] was their son.

Ware's life was comparatively short and ill health continually interfered with his activities. He was below medium height, thin, and stooping, and was careless as to his dress and personal appearance. His manner did not invite approach and few were on terms of intimacy with him. In spite of these handicaps, however, he became one of the leading ministers of New England, and his writings were widely read both in America and abroad. The whole purpose of his life was usefulness rather than high accomplishment, and into the various fields that he entered he put the full measure of his devotion. He succeeded Noah Worcester [q.v.] as editor of the Christian Disciple (1819-23), and in 1821 contributed articles, signed Artinius, to the Christian Register. In 1822 he projected Sunday evening services for those who had no stated places of worship, a missionary endeavor later carried on by the ministry-at-large. An advocate of preaching without manuscript, he published in 1824 Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching. He took a prominent part in the establishment of the American Unitarian Association, and was long a member of its executive committee. At the annual Phi Beta Kappa meeting at Harvard, August 26, 1824, made memorable by the presence of Lafayette, he delivered a poem entitled "The Vision of Liberty." In 1823, one of his three children died, and in less than a year, his wife; on June II, 1827, he married Mary Lovell Pickard (see E.B. Hall, Memoir of Mary L. Ware, 1853). To this marriage were born six children, one of whom was William Robert Ware [q.v.]. The condition of Ware's health led him to resign his pastorate in 1828, but his parishioners would not consent to a separation and the following year gave him a colleague in the person of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Meanwhile, he had been appointed first professor of pulpit eloquence and pastoral care in the Harvard Divinity School. After a seventeen month sojourn in Europe, during which he visited Wordsworth, Southey, Maria Edgeworth, and other persons of note, he felt unable to carry on both pastoral and professorial duties and, relinquishing his parish, he moved to Cambridge.

During his career at Harvard, though in the latter part of it he took over much of his father's work, he found time for considerable writing. One of his works, On the Formation of the Christian Character (1831), went through some fifteen editions and was republished abroad. To provide young people with books suitable for Sunday reading, he projected "The Sunday Library," for which he wrote the first volume, The Life of the Saviour (1833). This also had wide circulation. Other publications included sermons, addresses, reviews, and memoirs of Joseph Priestley, Nathan Parker, and Noah Worcester. After his death The Works of Henry Ware, Jr., D.D. (4 volumes, 1846-47), edited by Chandler Robbins, appeared. He was one of the organizers and the president of the Cambridge Anti-Slavery Society, and was subjected to severe criticism in the University and the papers for publicly espousing the abolitionist movement. Later his ardor cooled, for the impatience and intolerance of the abolitionists were repellent to one of his nature. Forced by failing strength to resign his professorship in 1842, he retired to Framingham, Massachusetts, where he died in his forty-ninth year. His body was taken to Cambridge and was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery.

[E. F. Ware, Ware Genealogy (1901); John Ware; Memoir of the Life of Henry Ware, Jr. (1846); W. B. Sprague, Annals of the American Unitarian Pulpit (1865); S. A. Eliot, Heralds of a Liberal Faith, volume II (1910); Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, volume II (1880); Christian Examiner, November 1843, March 1846.]

H.E.S.


WARE, John Fothergill Waterhouse (August 31, 1818-February 26, 1881), Unitarian clergyman.  He took great interest in the welfare of the freedmen, and had a leading part in establishing schools for colored children, which ultimately were taken over by the city. His activities in this field were carried on in the face of obstacles and at personal risk, necessitating at times his being attended by armed companions. 
(E. F. Ware, Ware Genealogy (1901); General Catalog of the Divinity School of Harvard University (1910); S. A. Eliot, .... Heralds of a Liberal Faith (1910), volume III; Boston Transcript, February, 28, 1881).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 450-451:

WARE, JOHN FOTHERGILL WATERHOUSE (August 31, 1818-February 26, 1881), Unitarian clergyman, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Henry Ware, 1794-1843 [q.v.] and Elizabeth Watson (Waterhouse) Ware. Willi am Robert Ware [q.v.] was his half-brother. Prepared for college in Cambridge, John graduated from Harvard in 1838, and would have been class poet, it is said, had not James Russell Lowell been in the same class. Entering the Harvard Divinity School, he finished the course there in 1842, and the following year became pastor of the Unitarian church in Fall River, Massachusetts, remaining there until 1846. His next pastorate, which lasted until 1864, was at Cambridgeport, Massachusetts.

During the Civil War, in an independent civil capacity, he rendered much service to the Union cause and especially to the soldiers themselves, lecturing or giving patriotic talks in various parts of the country, visiting the men in the camps-often in army boots and slouch hat-and preparing tracts, which were published and circulated among the soldiers by the American Unitarian Society. In 1864 he was called to be minister of the First Independent Society of Baltimore. His congregation, made up originally of old Marylanders, was augmented by many new-comers attracted by the quality of his preaching. The two elements did not mix readily, and the more conservative members found Ware's independence and disregard of ministerial conventions not to their liking. Accordingly, after some three years, July 1867, he resigned. Some of his friends then formed a new religious organization, the Church of the Saviour, the services of which were held in the Masonic Temple. So large did the evening attendance become that the use of an opera house was secured, and even this was sometimes over-crowded. In the summer time he held open-air services in Druid Hill Park. He took great interest in the welfare of the freedmen, and had a leading part in establishing schools for colored children, which ultimately were taken over by the city. His activities in this field were carried on in the face of obstacles and at personal risk, necessitating at times his being attended by armed companions. While living in Baltimore he spent his summers at Swampscott, Massachusetts, where he organized a church.

In July 1872 the condition of his health necessitated his returning North, and he became pastor of the Arlington Street Church, Boston, to which he mini3tered until his death. His preaching was direct and practical, more concerned with the problems of life than with those of theology. His interest was in men rather than in books, and his ruling ambition was to lessen the injustice and unhappiness of the world. A number of his sermons were printed separately and after his death some twenty-seven of them were published in a volume entitled Wrestling and Waiting (1882). Two of his books had wide circulation-The Silent Pastor, or Consolations for the Sick (1848) and Home Life: What It Is and What It Needs (1864). He was married on May 27, 1844, to Caroline Parsons, daughter of Nathan Rice of Cambridge; she died, September 18, 1848, and on October 10 of the following year he married Helen, daughter of Nathan Rice. By his first wife he had two children, and by his second, two. He died in Milton, Massachusetts, after a year of comparative inactivity caused by a coronary affection.

[E. F. Ware, Ware Genealogy (1901); General Catalog of the Divinity School of Harvard University (1910); S. A. Eliot, .... Heralds of a Liberal Faith (1910), volume III; Boston Transcript, February, 28, 1881.]

H. E. S.


WASHBURN, Cadwallader Colden (April 22, 1818-May 14, 1882), soldier, congressman, governor of Wisconsin, anti-slavery Republican congressman. Washburn's excellent reputation, and his early adherence to the principles upon which the Republican party was founded, brought him an unsolicited nomination and election to Congress in 1854. He sat in three successive congresses, his brother Israel [q.v.] represented a Maine district, and his brother Elihu an Illinois district. The three brothers, to the satisfaction of their respective constituencies, lent one another much aid, particularly on local matters. His outstanding act was to oppose vigorously a House plan to pacify the South by so amending the Constitution as to continue slavery indefinitely. His participation in the Washington Peace Convention of 1861 showed his desire to prevent war.

(Gaillard Hunt, Israel, Elihu and Cadwallader Washburn (1925) ; David Atwood and others, "In Memoriam: Hon. Cadwallader C. Washburn," Wisconsin Historical Society Collection,   volume IX (1882) ; C. W. Butterfield, "Cadwallader C. Washburn," Northwest Review (Minneapolis), March 1883).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 405-496:

WASHBURN, CADWALLADER COLDEN (April 22, 1818-May 14, 1882), soldier, congressman, governor of Wisconsin, pioneer industrialist, was one of the seven sons (an eighth died in infancy) of Israel and Martha (Benjamin) Washburn. His ancestry on both sides went back to early Massachusetts Puritans on the paternal side to John Washburn who settled in Duxbury in 1632-and his two grandfathers, Captain Israel Washburn and Lieutenant Samuel Benjamin, served with distinction in the Revolutionary War. In 1809 Washburn's father, who had left the ancestral home in Raynham, Massachusetts, three years before, bought a farm and a store at Livermore, Androscoggin County, Maine. Here he married and brought up his numerous brood of children, which included, besides the boys, three girls; Members of so large a family could not stay for long under the parental rooftree; hence, in 1839, equipped with what education he could get from the town schools, and deeply impressed by the advice of Reuel Washburn, a lawyer uncle, Cadwallader borrowed enough money to pay his way to the West, and was soon in Davenport, Iowa. Here, and across the Mississippi in Illinois, he taught school, worked in a store, did some surveying, and read law. In 1842 he opened a law office at Mineral Point, Wisconsin a small town not far from Galena, Illinois, where his brother Elihu B. Washburne [q.v.] had settled two years before. The foundation of his great fortune was soon laid. In 1844 he formed a partnership with Cyrus Woodman, an experienced land agent, and gradually abandoned the law for the far more lucrative business of entering public lands for settlers. Before long he partners owned in their own right valuable pine, mineral, and agricultural lands, and for a short time they operated the Mineral Point Bank. After 1855, when the partnership was amicably dissolved, Washburn carried on his now extensive operations alone. Even politics and the Civil War did not interfere seriously with the normal growth of this pioneer fortune. Proud of his honesty, and of the record of his bank, which never suspended specie payments and liquidated by meeting every obligation in full, Washburn rarely won the ill will of his neighbors; but his judgment on business matters was sound, and the opportunities for making money in a rapidly developing country were abundant. Washburn's excellent reputation, and his early adherence to the principles upon which the Republican party was founded, brought him an unsolicited nomination and election to Congress in 1854. He sat in three successive congresses, in each of which, by an odd coincidence, his brother Israel [q.v.] represented a Maine district, and his brother Elihu an Illinois district. The three brothers, to the satisfaction of their respective constituencies, lent one another much aid, particularly on local matters, but the representative from Wisconsin achieved no very great national prominence. His outstanding act was to oppose vigorously a House plan to pacify the South by so amending the Constitution as to continue slavery indefinitely; but his participation in the Washington Peace Convention of 1861 showed his desire to prevent war. When war came nevertheless, his record was admirable. He raised the 2nd Wisconsin Volunteer Cavalry, became its colonel, and by the encl of 1862 was a major-general. His command saw hard service in most of the campaigns west of the Mississippi River, and participated in the fighting around Vicksburg. When the war ended, he was in charge of the Department of Western Tennessee, with headquarters at Memphis. After the war, as a rich man and a former major-general of volunteers, Washburn was clearly marked for a political career if he desired it, but politics never absorbed his chief interest. He served two more terms in Congress, 1867-71, as a thoroughly regular Republican, and one term,  January 1, 1872, to December 31, 1873, as governor of Wisconsin. He would probably have welcomed a seat in the United States Senate, or a cabinet appointment, but these honors were denied him, and he was content to devote his later years to the operation and expansion of his vast industrial enterprises. His pine lands brought him into the lumber business and his shrewd acquisition of water-power rights at the Falls of St. Anthony (Minneapolis) on the upper Mississippi enabled him to become one of the nation's foremost manufacturers of flour. In 1856 he helped organize the Minneapolis Mill Company, of which his younger brother, William D. Washburn [q.v.] became secretary. Some fifteen years later C. C. Washburn was one of the first to adopt the "New Process" of milling, which created a demand for the spring wheat of the Northwest and completely revolutionized the flour industry in the United States. Like his great rival, Charles A. Pillsbury [q.v.], he was prompt in substituting rollers for millstones. In 1877 Washburn, Crosby & Company was organized, and two years later reorganized, with Washburn, John Crosby, Charles J. Martin, and William E. Dunwoody [q.v.], as partners. Naturally Washburn's wealth drew him into many other lines of business. He was, for example, one of the projectors and builders of the Minneapolis & St. Louis Railroad. His private life was saddened, though not embittered, by the insanity of his wife, Jeannette Garr, a visitor to the West from New York City, whom he married  January 1, 1849. She became an invalid after the birth of their second child in 1852, and although she survived her husband by many years her mind was never restored. Perhaps as an outlet to his feelings, Washburn took much satisfaction in his philanthropies, among which were the Washburn Observatory of the University of Wisconsin, the Public Library at La Crosse (his residence after 1859), and an orphan asylum in Minneapolis. He suffered a stroke of paralysis in 1881, and died a year later at Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

[A manuscript sketch of C. C. Washburn's life, prepared by his brother Elihu, together with an extensive collection of Washburn and Woodman papers, is in the possession of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. See also Gaillard Hunt, Israel, Elihu and Cadwallader Washburn (1925) ; David Atwood and others, "In Memoriam: Hon. Cadwallader C. Washburn," Wisconsin Historical Society Collection,   volume IX (1882) ; C. W. Butterfield, "Cadwallader C. Washburn," Northwest Review (Minneapolis), March 1883; Biographical History of La Crosse, Trempealeau and Buffalo Counties, Wisconsin (1892) ; C. B. Kuhlmann, The Development of the Flour-Milling Industry in the U. S. (1929); W. C. Edgar, The Medal of Gold (1925); New York Times, May 1s, 1882; Republican and Leader (La Crosse), May 20, 27, 1882.]

J. D. H-s.


WASHBURN, Elihu Benjamin [See WASHBURNE, Elihu Benjamin, 1816-1887 ].


WASHBURN, Israel (June 6, 1813-May 12, 1883), lawyer, congressman, governor of Maine, was a brother of Elihu B. Washburne, Cadwallader C. Washburn, and William D. Washburn [qq.v.]. In 1850 was elected, and for the next ten years represented the Penobscot district, first as a whig and later as a Republican. During part of that time his brothers Cadwallader and Elihu were all in the House, representing Wisconsin and Illinois respectively. His part in founding the Republican party was his most distinctive work in Washington. On May 9, 1854, the day after the Kansas-Nebraska bill passed the House, he called a meeting of some thirty anti-slavery representatives at the rooms of two Massachusetts congressmen; this group took further steps toward organizing a new party and Washburn is a strong contender for the honor of having been the first to suggest the name "Republican." He used it publicly shortly afterwards in a speech at Bangor. Washburn steadily and strongly opposed the extension of slavery.

(Gaillard Hunt, Israel, Elihu and Cadwallader Washburn (1925); In Memoriam: Israel Washburn, Jr. (1884); L. C. Hatch, Maine, a History (3 volumes, 1919); Henry Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power (3 volumes, 1873-77).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 502-503:

WASHBURN, ISRAEL (June 6, 1813-May 12, 1883), lawyer, congressman, governor of Maine, was a brother of Elihu B. Washburne, Cadwallader C. Washburn, and William D. Washburn [qq.v.]. They were born in Livermore, Maine, the sons of Israel and Martha (Benjamin) Washburn. Their father sat in the Massachusetts legislature from 1815 to 1819. The failure of his store in 1829 prevented Israel, eldest of eleven children, from attending college, but he studied law with his uncle, Reuel Washburn, and in 1834 was admitted to the bar. He made his home at Orono until 1863, when he moved to Portland. He held several local offices and sat in the Maine legislature in 1842 during the Northeast Boundary dispute. In 1848 he was defeated for Congress but in 1850 was elected, and for the next ten years represented the Penobscot district, first as a whig and later as a Republican. During part of that time his brothers Cadwallader and Elihu were all in the House, representing Wisconsin and Illinois respectively.

His part in founding the Republican party was his most distinctive work in Washington. On May 9, 1854, the day after the Kansas-Nebraska bill passed the House and ten weeks after the original meeting at Ripon, Wisconsin, he called a meeting of some thirty anti-slavery representatives at the rooms of two Massachusetts congressmen; this group took further steps toward organizing a new party and Washburn is a strong contender for the honor of having been the first to suggest the name "Republican." He used it publicly shortly afterwards in a speech at Bangor. Washburn steadily and strongly opposed the extension of slave1'y; in 1856 he supported Nathaniel P. Banks [q.v.] for the speakership; for a time he was chairman of the committee on ways and means.

On January 1, 1861, he resigned from the House to succeed Lot M. Morrill [q.v.] as governor of Maine; later that year he was reelected. He has been ranked with John A. Andrew and Oliver P. Morton [qq.v.] among "the great war governors of the North" (Hamlin, post, p. 357), because of his contribution to Maine's excellent war record. Immediately upon the call for volunteers, he summoned the legislature to meet in special session and, though Maine was asked for only two regiments, that body provided for ten, appropriating a million dollars. By 1862, however, recruiting had slackened, and Washburn wrote Lincoln that he would have to resort to drafting to secure "three-year" men. He declined renomination for the governorship and in 1863 was appointed collector of the port of Portland. He was several times disappointed in his cherished ambition of a Senate seat, partly through the opposition of James G. Blaine [q.v.]. In 1878, he lost his collectorship, after planning to buy a newspaper to attack the Blaine group. From March 3 of that year until his death he was president of the Rumford Falls & Buckfield Railroad.

Washburn has been described as a "solid, hard-working man of sound knowledge and of rigid integrity" (Hunt, post, p. 40). Short, serious, and spectacled, he was less impressive than his brothers i; appearance. He was quick-tempered, was a good story-teller, and had a strong love of literature. He wrote Notes, Historical, Descriptive, and Personal, of Livermore ... Maine (1874), read papers on the "North-Eastern Boundary" and on Ether Shepley before the Maine Historical Society (Collections, I series, VIII, 1881), and was a frequent contributor to the Universalist Quarterly. He was a trustee oi Tufts College from its opening in 1852 until his death, declining an offer of the presidency in 1878. On October 24, 1841, he married Mary Maud Webster of Orono, by whom he had two sons and two daughters. She died in 1873 and he married in January 1876 Rebina Napier Brown of Bangor. He died in Philadelphia, whither he had gone for medical treatment, and was buried in Bangor.

[Gaillard Hunt, Israel, Elihu and Cadwallader Washburn (1925); In Memoriam: Israel Washburn, Jr. (1884); L. C. Hatch, Maine, a History (3 volumes, 1919); Henry Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power (3 volumes, 1873-77); J. S. Pike, First Blows of the Civil War (1879); C. E. Hamlin, Life and Times of Hannibal Hamlin (1899); Francis Curtis, The Republican Party, a History (2 volumes, 1904); F. A. Shannon, Organization and Administration of the Union Army, (2 volumes, 1928), I, 272; Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); New England Historical and Genealogical Register, January 1884; New York Herald, May 13, 1883; Daily Eastern Argus (Portland), May 14, 1883.]

J.B.P.


WASHBURN, William Barrett, 1820-1887, businessman. Republican Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts.  U.S. Senator.  Served in Congress 1863-1872, and U.S. Senate May 1874-March 1875.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, p. 372; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)


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

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume VI, pp. 370-371; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, p. 504; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 22, p. 750; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe).  Dictionary of

American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, p. 504:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

L. E. E.


WASHINGTON, Augustus, 1820-1875, African American, abolitionist, newspaper publisher, Liberian statesman, Black civil rights activist, educator.  Rejected, then later supported African colonization.  Emigrated to Liberia.  Elected to Liberian House of Representatives in 1863 and later became Speaker.  In 1871, elected to Liberian Senate.

(Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 11, p. 458). 


WATTERSON, Harvey Magee (November 23, 1811-October 1, 1891), editor and congressman from Tennessee.  In 1851 he went to Washington as editor of the Washington Union. Watterson had always been a Democrat, but he was opposed to the extension of slavery and retired from the editorship of the Union because he could not support the policy of the administration in regard to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. He opposed session and remained a Unionist throughout the Civil War.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 10, Pt. 1, pp. 551-552:

WATTERSON, HARVEY MAGEE (November 23, 1811-October 1, 1891), editor and congressman from Tennessee, was born at Beech Grove, Bedford County, Tennessee. His father, William S. Waterson, emigrated from Virginia to Tennessee in 1804, served on Andrew Jackson's staff in the War of 1812, accumulated a fortune as a cotton planter, and was a prominent figure in the Tennessee railroad movement at the time of his death in 1851. Harvey Watterson was educated at Cumberland College, Princeton, Kentucky. He studied law, was admitted to the bar, and began the practice of his profession at Shelbyville, Tennessee, in 1830. The next year he was elected to the lower house of the state legislature and by successive reëlections served until 1839 (Courier-Journal, post). In that year he was elected to the federal House of Representatives and was reelected in 1841. According to the testimony of his son, Watterson did not take his duties at Washington seriously, but, provided with an excellent income by his father, directed his energies to revelry and occasional escapades of a graver nature, "his principal yokemate in the pleasures and dissipations of those times being Franklin Pierce" (Marse Henry, post, I, 26). At the end of his second term in the house he was sent by President Tyler on a diplomatic mission to Buenos Aires to obtain information on the foreign relations of Argentina, commercial matters, and the war then raging with Uruguay. In February 1844 he was nominated charge, but the Senate in the following June rejected the nomination (S. F. Bemis, American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy, volume V, 1928, p. 216).

Returning to Tennessee in 1845, Watterson was at once elected to the state Senate and was made its presiding officer. In September 1849 he became the proprietor of the Nashville Daily Union, whose editorship he took over the following year (S. L. Sioussat, "Tennessee, the Compromise of 1850, and the Nashville Convention," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, December 1915, p. 235 n.). He remained as editor of the Nashville paper until 1851, when he went to Washington as editor of the Washington Union. Watterson had always been a Democrat, but he was opposed to the extension of slavery and retired from the editorship of the Union because he could not support the policy of the administration in regard to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. He retired to private life in Tennessee, refusing the governorship of Oregon, and, in 1857, a nomination to Congress. He supported Stephen A. Douglas [q.v.] in the campaign of 1860. He was a member of the secession convention of Tennessee but opposed secession. He remained a Unionist throughout the war, living in retirement on his plantation at Beech Grove. He supported Andrew Johnson [q.v.] during his presidency, and for the ten years after the war lived at Washington engaged in the practice of law. After the death of his wife he divided his time between Washington and Louisville, Kentucky, where his son, Henry Watterson [q.v.], was editor of the Courier-Journal. At the time of his death he was on the editorial staff of the Courier-Journal, in which his writings were signed "An Old Fogy." He was buried in the Cave Hill Cemetery at Louisville. Watterson married in 1830 Talitha Black, daughter of James Black of Maury County, Tennessee. He was a member of the Presbyterian Church. He was sponsored in his political life by Andrew Jackson [q.v.], the close friend of his father. In ante-helium days he was a man of great influence in Tennessee politics and was the recognized leader of the Union wing of the Democratic party in the last decade before the war. He was a vigorous editor and a writer of merit, but his reputation in that line as in others has been obscured by the fame of his son, and only child.

[See obituary in Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky), October 2, 1891; Henry Watterson, "Marse Henry"; an A1ttobiography (2 volumes, 1919); Biographical Directory American Congress (1928); and The South in the Building of the Nation (1909), volume XII.]

R.S.C.


WATTLES, Augustus, 1807-1883, established school for free Blacks.  Agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society.  Worked with Emigrant Aid Society in Lawrence, Kansas.  Edited Herald of Freedom. 

(Dumond, 1961, pp. 164-165; Mabee, 1970, pp. 104, 155, 394n31, 403n29).  Dictionary of American Biography)



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