Benjamin
Wade
was
born in Springfield, Massachusetts, on 27th October, 1800. His family
were extremely poor and for a while worked as a labourer on the Erie
Canal. He also taught school before studying medicine in Albany (1823-25)
and law in Ohio (1825-28). Wade was admitted to the bar in 1828 and
began work as a lawyer in Jefferson, Ashtabula County.
In 1831 Wade formed a partnership with Joshua
Giddings, a leading figure in the anti-slavery
movement. A member of the Whig Party, in
1837 Wade served in the Ohio Senate (1837-38 and 1841-42). Between
1847 and 1851 Wade was the judge of the third judicial court of Ohio.
Wade joined the Republican Party and
in 1851 he was elected to the U.S. Senate where he associated with
other anti-slavery figures such as Thaddeus
Stevens and Charles Sumner. Over
the next few years he played an active role in the campaign against
the Fugitive Slave Act and the Kansas-Nebraska
Act.
Wade was one of the most radical politicians
in the United States. He supported votes for
women, trade union rights and equal civil
rights for African Americans. He was highly critical of capitalism
and argued that an economic system "which degrades the poor man
and elevates the rich, which makes the rich richer and the poor poorer,
which drags the very soul out of a poor man for a pitiful existence
is wrong."
In July, 1861, Wade was a member of a group of politicians, including
Lyman Trumbull, James
Grimes, and Zachariah Chandler,
who witnessed the Battle of Bull Run.
The battle was a disaster for the Union forces and at one stage Wade
came close to being captured by the Confederate
Army. After arriving back in Washington,
Wade was one of those who led the attack on the incompetence of the
leadership of the Union Army.
During the Civil War he became one of
the leaders of the group known as the Radical
Republicans. Wade was highly critical of Abraham
Lincoln during the American Civil War.
In September, 1861, Wade wrote to Zachariah
Chandler that Lincoln's views on slavery
"could only come of one, born of poor white trash and educated
in a slave State." Wade was especially angry with Lincoln when
he was slow to support the recruitment of black
soldiers into the Union Army.
Wade was also opposed to Lincoln's Reconstruction
Plan. In 1864 Wade and Henry Winter Davis
sponsored a bill that provided for the administration of the affairs
of southern states by provisional governors until the end of the war.
They argued that civil government should only be re-established when
half of the male white citizens took an oath of loyalty to the Union.
The Wade-Davis Bill was passed on
2nd July, 1864, with only one Republican
voting against it. However, Abraham Lincoln
refused to sign it. Lincoln defended his decision by telling Zachariah
Chandler, one of the bill's supporters, that
it was a question of time: "this bill was placed before me a
few minutes before Congress adjourns. It is a matter of too much importance
to be swallowed in that way." Six days later Lincoln issued a
proclamation explaining his views on the bill. He argued that he had
rejected it because he did not wish "to be inflexibly committed
to any single plan of restoration".
The Radical Republicans
were furious with Lincoln's decision. On 5th August, Wade and Henry
Winter Davis published an attack on Lincoln in the New
York Tribune. In what became known as the Wade-Davis Manifesto,
the men argued that Lincoln's actions had been taken "at the
dictation of his personal ambition" and accused him of "dictatorial
usurpation". They added that: "he must realize that our
support is of a cause and not of a man."
Wade also opposed Andrew Johnson and
like other Radical Republicans, argued
in Congress that Southern plantations should be taken from their owners
and divided among the former slaves. He also attacked Johnson when
he attempted to veto the extension of the Freeman's
Bureau, the Civil Rights Bill
and the Reconstruction
Acts.
At the beginning of the 40th Congress Wade became the new presiding
officer of the Senate. As Johnson did not have a vice-president this
meant that Wade was now the legal successor to the president.
In November, 1867, the Judiciary Committee voted 5-4 that Johnson
be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors. The majority report
written by Thomas Williams contained
a series of charges including pardoning traitors, profiting from the
illegal disposal of railroads in Tennessee, defying Congress, denying
the right to reconstruct the South and attempts to prevent the ratification
of the Fourteenth Amendment.
On 30th March, 1868, Johnson's impeachment trial began. Johnson was
the first and only president of the United States to be impeached.
The trial, held in the Senate in March, was presided over by Chief
Justice Salmon Chase. One of Johnson's
fiercest critics, Thaddeus Stevens was
mortally ill, but he was determined to take part in the proceedings
and was carried to the Senate in a chair.
Charles Sumner, another long-time opponent of Johnson led the
attack. He argued that: "This
is one of the last great battles with slavery.
Driven from the legislative chambers, driven from the field of war,
this monstrous power has found a refuge in the executive mansion,
where, in utter disregard of the Constitution and laws, it seeks to
exercise its ancient, far-reaching sway. All this is very plain. Nobody
can question it. Andrew Johnson is the impersonation of the tyrannical
slave power. In him it lives again. He is the lineal successor of
John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis; and he gathers about him the
same supporters."
Although a large number of senators believed that Johnson was guilty
of the charges, they disliked the idea of Wade becoming the next president.
Wade, who believed in women's suffrage
and trade union rights, was considered by
many members of the Republican Party
as being an extreme radical. James Garfield
warned that Wade was "a man of violent passions, extreme opinions
and narrow views who was surrounded by the worst and most violent
elements in the Republican Party."
Others Republicans such as James
Grimes argued that Johnson had less than a year left in office
and that they were willing to vote against impeachment if Johnson
was willing to provide some guarantees that he would not continue
to interfere with Reconstruction.
When the vote was taken all members of the Democratic
Party voted against impeachment. So also did those Republicans
such as Lyman Trumbull, William
Fessenden and James Grimes, who
disliked the idea of Wade becoming president. The result was 35 to
19, one vote short of the required two-thirds majority for conviction.
A further vote on 26th May, also failed to get the necessary majority
needed to impeach Johnson. The editor of The
Detroit Post wrote that "Andrew Johnson is innocent because
Ben Wade is guilty of being his successor."
In 1868 Ulysses S. Grant was urged by
Radical Republicans to to make Wade
his vice-presidental candidate. Grant refused and instead selected
another radical, Schuyler Colfax, as his
running mate.
After being defeated in the 1869 elections, Wade returned to his Ohio
law practice. Benjamin Wade
died on 2nd March, 1878.
(1)
Benjamin Wade, speech in the Senate (7th March, 1860)
I
know it is said that the African is an inferior race, incapable of
defending his own rights. My ethics teach me, if it be so, that this
fact, so far from giving me a right to enslave him, requires that
I shall be more scrupulous of his rights; but I know that, whether
he be equal to me or not, he is still a human being; negroes are still
men. They are animated by the same hopes, they are afflicted with
the same sorrows, they are actuated by the same motives that we are.
(2) Benjamin Wade, speech
in the Senate (21st April, 1862)
If
there is any stain on the present Administration, it is that they
have been weak enough to deal too leniently with those traitors. I
know it sprung from goodness of heart; it sprung from the best of
motives; but, sir, as a method of putting down this rebellion, mercy
to traitors is cruelty to loyal men. Look into the seceded States,
and see thousands of loyal men there coerced into their armies to
run the hazard of their lives, and placed in the damnable position
of perjured traitors by force of arms.
(3)
Thaddeus
Stevens,
letter to Edward McPherson about Abraham Lincoln's proclamation after
his rejection of the Wade-Davis
Bill (10th
July, 1864)
What
an infamous proclamation! The president is determined to have the
electoral votes of the seceded States. The idea of pocketing a bill
and then issuing a proclamation as how far he will conform to it is
matched only by signing a bill and then sending in a veto. How little
of the rights of war and the law of nations our president knows!
(4) Benjamin
Wade and Henry
Winter Davis
issued a joint statement in the New
York Tribune
after Abraham Lincoln vetoed the Wade-Davis
Bill (5th
August, 1864)
The
bill directed the appointment of provisional government by and with
the advice and consent of the Senate. The President, after defeating
the law, proposes to appoint, without law and without the advice and
consent of the Senate, military governors for the rebel States!
Whatever is done will be at his will and pleasure, by persons responsible
to no law, and more interested to secure the interests and execute
the will of the President than of the people; and the will of Congress
is to be "held for naught unless the loyal people of the rebel
States choose to adopt it."
The President must realize that our support is of a cause and not
of a man and that the authority of Congress is paramount and must
be respected; and if he wishes our support, he must confine himself
to his executive duties - to obey and execute, not make the laws -
to suppress by armed rebellion, and leave political reorganization
to Congress.
(5)
Benjamin
Wade, speech (9th January, 1865)
The
radical men are the men of principal;
they are the men who feel what they contend for. They are not your
slippery politicians who can jigger this way or that, or construe
a thing any way to suit the present occasion. They are the men who
go deeply down for principle, and having fixed their eyes upon a great
principle connected with the liberty of mankind or the welfare of
the people, are not to be detached by any of your higgling.
Do you suppose we are now to back down and to permit you to make a
dishonorable proslavery peace after all the bloodshed and all the
sacrifice of life and property? It cannot be. Such revolutions never
go backwards, and if God is just, and I think he is, we shall ultimately
triumph. If, however, the President does believe as they say, and
dare take the position they would ascribe to him, it is so much the
worse for the President. The people of the United States are greater
than the President. The mandate they have sent forth for the death
and execution of this monster, slavery, will be persisted in. The
monster must die, and die he shall.
