Benjamin Wade

Benjamin Wade

Benjamin Wade was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, on October 27th 1800. He was from an extremely poor family and worked as a laborer on the Erie Canal. He taught school before studying medicine in Albany (1823-1825) and law in Ohio (1825-1828). In 1828, Wade began work as a lawyer in Jefferson, Ohio.

As a member of the Whig Party, Wade served in the Ohio Senate in 1837. Between 1847 and 1851 Wade was the judge of the third judicial court of Ohio. Wade then joined the Republican Party in 1851 and was elected to the U.S. Senate where he met other anti-slavery figures such as Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner. During 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, supporting votes for women, trade union rights, and equal civil rights for African Americans. He highly criticized 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 of 1861, Wade, along with Lyman Trumbull, James Grimes, and Zachariah Chandler, witnessed the Battle of Bull Run, which was a disaster for Union forces and Wade actually came close to being captured by the Confederate Army.

During the Civil War, Wade became one of the leaders of a group known as the Radical Republicans. He was highly critical of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. In 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 further angered by the fact that Lincoln was slow to support the recruitment of black soldiers into the Union Army.

Wade was also opposed to Lincoln’s Reconstruction Plan. In 1864, he 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.

In 1864, the Wade-Davis bill, named after Benjamin Wade and Henry W. Davis, came from congress with three