Benjamin Wade

Notable people · Senator · Abolitionist

Benjamin Wade

Jefferson lawyer and Radical Republican senator from Ohio (1851-1869) who co-wrote the Wade-Davis Bill and, as Senate president pro tempore, stood next in line for the presidency during Andrew Johnson's impeachment trial.

Born October 27, 1800, Feeding Hills (then part of West Springfield, now Agawam), Massachusetts
Died March 2, 1878, Jefferson

Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

At a glance

Born: October 27, 1800, Feeding Hills (then part of West Springfield, now Agawam), Massachusetts source
Died: March 2, 1878, Jefferson (Ashtabula County) source
Buried: Oakdale Cemetery, Jefferson (within sight of Joshua Giddings's grave) (Ashtabula County) source
Also known as: Benjamin Wade, Ben Wade, Bluff Ben Wade, B. F. Wade
Education: Read law under Elisha Whittlesey, Canfield, OH, admitted to bar 1828
Known as: Senator, Abolitionist

Life story

Benjamin Wade was born in Massachusetts in 1800 and came to Ohio's Western Reserve as a young man after working as a laborer, including on the Erie Canal, and teaching school.

He read law with Elisha Whittlesey and was admitted to the bar in 1828. In 1831 he became law partner of Joshua Giddings in Jefferson, Ohio, the start of a long antislavery alliance.

He served as Ashtabula County prosecutor, as a state senator, and as a common pleas judge before the legislature sent him to the U.S. Senate in 1851.

During the Civil War he chaired the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. After Lincoln's death he was a leading Radical Republican and served as Senate president pro tempore from 1867 to 1869.

He lost his Senate seat in 1868 and died in Jefferson in 1878.

Ohio ties

Andover (1821-c. 1825)
family's pioneer farm after leaving Massachusetts; worked as a farm hand and cattle drover Ashtabula County · source
Canfield (1825-1827)
read law in the office of Whittlesey & Newton (Elisha Whittlesey) Mahoning County · source
Jefferson (1827-1878)
admitted to the bar here in 1827; law partner of Joshua Giddings (1831-1837) and Rufus P. Ranney; county prosecutor; home until his death Ashtabula County · source
Columbus (1837-1842)
member of the Ohio Senate Franklin County · source
Akron (1847-1851)
presiding judge of common pleas for the third circuit, sitting at Akron Summit County · source
Oakdale Cemetery, Jefferson (1878)
grave Ashtabula County · source

Timeline

1800 Born on 27 October at Feeding Hills, Massachusetts, the tenth of eleven children of James and Mary (Upham) Wade. source
1821 His parents brought the family to Ashtabula County, Ohio, where older siblings had settled at Andover in 1820. source
1823 In the autumn hired on with a drover and helped drive a herd of cattle over the mountains to Philadelphia. source
1824 While living near his brother James in the Albany area, worked as a pick-and-shovel labourer on the Erie Canal. source
1827 Admitted to the bar, with his brother Edward, at a term of the Ohio Supreme Court in Jefferson after reading law at Canfield with Elisha Whittlesey. source
1831 Formed the law firm of Giddings & Wade with Joshua R. Giddings in Jefferson. source
1836 Was prosecuting attorney of Ashtabula County by this year. source
1837 Giddings retired from the firm in the spring and Wade formed Wade & Ranney with Rufus P. Ranney; in October he was elected to the Ohio Senate as a Whig. source
1839 Nominated again for the Ohio Senate and defeated; re-elected in 1841. source
1847 Elected presiding judge of the third judicial circuit, sitting at Akron until 1851. source
1851 Elected to the U.S. Senate by the Ohio legislature; took his seat on 15 March. source
1854 Left the Whigs over the Kansas-Nebraska Act and helped organize the Republican Party in Ohio. source
1859 On 14 December spoke in the Senate on John Brown's raid ('Invasion of Harper's Ferry'), published as a pamphlet. source
1860 On 17 December, as Southern states prepared to secede, told the Senate that silence about threats of disunion 'seems to me akin to treason itself'. source
1861 Watched the Union defeat at First Bull Run in July and was nearly captured; became chairman of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. source
1862 As chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories helped abolish slavery in the federal territories, and backed the Homestead and Morrill Land-Grant acts. source
1864 The Senate passed the Wade-Davis Bill on 2 July; Lincoln pocket-vetoed it on 8 July, and on 4 August Wade and Davis issued their manifesto attacking him. source
1866 Proposed that cavalry regiments of Black enlisted men be added to the peacetime army; the act of 28 July created the 9th and 10th Cavalry and four infantry regiments. source
1867 Elected president pro tempore of the Senate on 2 March, putting him next in line to the presidency. source
1868 Sworn by Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase as a juror in Andrew Johnson's impeachment trial; voted to convict on 16 May, but the Senate fell one vote short. source
1869 Left the Senate on 3 March after Democrats won the Ohio legislature, and returned to his law practice in Jefferson. source
1871 Served on the commission studying the purchase of Santo Domingo (the Dominican Republic). source
1876 Served as a presidential elector for Rutherford B. Hayes, then broke with him in 1877 over the withdrawal of federal troops from the South. source
1878 Died in Jefferson on 2 March; the village closed its businesses for his funeral at the Wade home, and Zachariah Chandler and Rufus Ranney were among the pallbearers. source
1965 His Jefferson home was designated a National Historic Landmark on 21 December. source
1968 The Historic American Buildings Survey photographed the house in February; it was demolished that summer and its lot became a bank parking lot. source

What Benjamin is known for

US Senator 1851-1869
President pro tem 1867-1869
Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War

Stories

Drover and canal digger

In the autumn of 1823 the 23-year-old Wade hired himself to a drover and helped walk a herd of Western Reserve cattle 'over the mountains' to Philadelphia, a trip of five or six weeks, for perhaps ten dollars and his expenses. General Brisbin later told his biographer that Wade's job was to lead a bullock at the front of the herd, and that once, on a long high bridge, the herd stampeded behind him and he was found hanging from the bridge's upper frame. From Philadelphia he went to his brother James near Albany and worked for a time with pick, shovel and barrow on the Erie Canal for perhaps 50 cents a day. Albert G. Riddle, his biographer, notes that years later William H. Seward told the incident on the floor of the U.S. Senate, with Wade sitting there as a senator.

Source

A landmark nobody would move

In 1965 the National Park Service designated Wade's two-storey, mansard-roofed clapboard house in Jefferson a National Historic Landmark. By then the Jefferson Savings and Loan Company owned it, and it offered the house to a local historical society, which turned it down because it could not pay to move it. In January 1968 the company told the Ohio Historical Society the house would be demolished unless a rescue plan came together quickly. None did. The Historic American Buildings Survey photographed it in February, it came down that summer, and its lot became the bank's parking lot. Its landmark status was simply dropped, since a formal de-designation process did not exist until 1980.

Source

Giddings & Wade

In 1831 Wade joined Joshua R. Giddings, who had been admitted to the bar in 1821, in a law firm in Jefferson, the Ashtabula County seat. Giddings & Wade became the leading firm in the neighbourhood. Riddle says Wade was so bashful as a young man that he forced himself into a gruff, self-possessed manner by sheer will, which became the 'Bluff Ben' of later years. Giddings left the firm in the spring of 1837, and Wade formed a new partnership with Rufus P. Ranney. When the two old partners died, they were buried in the same Jefferson cemetery so close together that, as Riddle put it, each man's monument can be seen from the other's grave.

Source

Why Ohio's radical was not president

When the 40th Congress opened in March 1867, Wade was elected president pro tempore of the Senate. With no vice president in office, that made him next in line if Andrew Johnson were removed. In March 1868 Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, another Ohioan, swore Wade in as one of the senators who would judge Johnson, and critics said Wade had an unseemly interest in the outcome. Many moderate Republicans, including William P. Fessenden of Maine, distrusted his support for labour unions, a soft currency and full Black civil rights, and Northern business interests disliked him too. Johnson was acquitted by one vote, and one newspaper wrote that 'Andrew Johnson is innocent because Ben Wade is guilty of being his successor.'

Source

Honors and things named for them

New York Times obituary called him 'the last of the Congressional champions of freedom'

Family

wife: Caroline Rosekrans Wade
law partner: Joshua Reed Giddings

Sites to know

Homes, graves, markers, museums and monuments; the numbered ones are on the map.

1 Site of the Benjamin F. Wade House (National Historic Landmark 1965; demolished 1968), 22 Jefferson Street (demolished)
22 Jefferson Street, Jefferson Ashtabula County · source
Wade grave, Oakdale Cemetery
Oakdale Cemetery, Jefferson Ashtabula County · source
2 Joshua Reed Giddings Law Office (1823), 102 East Jefferson Street, Jefferson; the office of Wade's first law partner, used by Giddings from 1838
102 East Jefferson Street, Jefferson Ashtabula County · source

Places in Ohio to see

Oakdale Cemetery (burial) (grave)
Jefferson, Ashtabula County ZIP 44047 (approximate) · Jefferson · Ashtabula County

Ohio places

Where Benjamin Wade was born, lived, worked and is remembered, with the ZIP code, town and county pages for each.

Lived: Jefferson, Ashtabula County ZIP 44047 · Jefferson · Ashtabula County
Buried: Jefferson, Ashtabula County (Oakdale Cemetery) ZIP 44047 · Jefferson · Ashtabula County

Myths and corrections

Things often said about Benjamin Wade, and what the record shows.

Often said Wade was admitted to the bar in 1828 (Wikipedia).

The record His biographer A. G. Riddle says he and his brother Edward were admitted late in the summer of 1827 at a term of the Ohio Supreme Court held in Jefferson. The National Park Service gives '1827 or 1828'. source

Often said Wade practised law with Giddings in the restored Giddings Law Office in Jefferson.

The record The 1823 building served as Giddings's law office from 1838 to 1859, after Giddings & Wade had been dissolved in the spring of 1837. source

Documents

Primary records: patents, letters, court and government files, nominations and old county histories, each at the archive that holds it.

A. G. Riddle, The Life of Benjamin F. Wade (Cleveland: Williams Publishing, 1888) 1888, Wellesley College Library (Internet Archive)
Invasion of Harper's Ferry: speech of Hon. Benjamin F. Wade, of Ohio, U.S. Senate, 14 December 1859 1859, Johns Hopkins University Sheridan Libraries (Internet Archive)
Property in the territories: speech of Hon. Benjamin F. Wade, of Ohio, U.S. Senate, March 1860 1860, Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection (Internet Archive)
Speech of Hon. B. F. Wade, of Ohio, on the state of the Union, U.S. Senate, 17 December 1860 1860, Johns Hopkins University Sheridan Libraries (Internet Archive)
Biographical History of Northeastern Ohio, embracing the counties of Ashtabula, Trumbull and Mahoning (Lewis Publishing, 1893), Wade sketch from p. 139 1893, Cornell University Library (Internet Archive)
National Park Service, Benjamin F. Wade Home (former National Historic Landmark) summary 2018, National Park Service

Pictures

Free to use with the credit shown. Select a picture for the original and its license.

Benjamin Wade. Library of Congress description: "Hon. Ben. F. Wade of Ohio"
Public domain
Drawing of Benjamin F. Wade, US Senator 1867 First published in en:Harper's Weekly, en:March 23, en:1867.
Public domain
No known restrictions
Title: Benjamin F. Wade, Senator from Ohio, Thirty-fifth Congress, half-length portrait Abstract/medium: 1 pho...
Public domain
Benjamin F. Wade Identifier: abrahamlincol1479coff (find matches) Title: Abraham Lincoln Year: 1897 (1890s) Au...
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Benjamin Wade. Library of Congress description: "Hon. Benj. Franklin Wade of Ohio"
Public domain
by Unidentified after James E. Taylor Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper Wood engraving, black and white, 18...
Public domain
No known restrictions
Public domain
Public domain
Political illustration of the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson
Public domain
Political illustration of the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson
Public domain