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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Henry Wilson Biography WILSON,
Henry (1812-75). An American political leader, Vice President of the United
States in 1873-75. He was born at Farmington, N. H., and his original name was
Jeremiah Jones Colbath, but when he reached manhood he legally assumed the name
of Henry Wilson. From the age of 10 till that of 21 he served an apprenticeship
to a farmer. He then learned the shoemaking trade at Natick, Mass., where he
later established a prosperous manufactory. In
1840 he was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives as a Whig; was
reelected in the following year; and then served two terms in the State Senate.
About this time he began to be an active opponent of slavery, and in 1848 he
bought the Boston Recorder and edited it in the interests of the Free-Soil party. In
1850 he was again elected to the State Senate, and was chosen president of that
body. In 1852 he presided over the Free-Soil Convention at Pittsburgh. In 1865
he was chosen by a combination of Free Soilers and Americans or Know Nothings to
succeed Edward Everett in the United States Senate, and retained his seat until
1873. He denounced the assault of Preston R. Brooks upon Charles
Sumner, and was challenged by Brooks, but declined, although he expressed
his determination to defend himself if attacked. Before the Civil
War he was considered one of the most effective speakers against slavery,
and one of the foremost leaders of those who believed in fighting that
institution through the machinery supplied by the Federal Constitution. In
March, 1861, he was made chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs. After
hostilities began he raised the Twenty-second Massachusetts Regiment and took it
to the field, serving on the staff of General McClellan
until Congress met. In 1872 he was nominated for the Vice Presidency by the
Republicans on the ticket with Grant and was elected. In
the following year he was stricken with paralysis, and died two years later. He
was widely known during his political career as the "Natick Cobbler,"
a nickname given to him in allusion to his early life. Among his published works
are: History of the Anti-slavery Measures
of the Thirty-seventh and Thirty-eighth Congresses, 1861-64 (1864); History
of the Reconstruction Measures of the Thirty-ninth and Fortieth Congresses,
1865-68 (1868); and the almost completed History
of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America (3 vols., 1872-77), an
exceedingly valuable work. Consult Russell and Nason, Life and Public Services of Henry Wilson (Boston, 1872), and Stowe, Men
of Our Times (Hartford, 1868). The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XXIII (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 599-600. |