Benjamin Wade

Wade's home in Jefferson, Ohio

In March 1861, Wade became chairman of the Committee on Territories, and in July 1861, along with other politicians, he witnessed the defeat of the Union Army at the First Battle of Bull Run. There, he was almost captured by the Confederate Army. After arriving back at Washington, D.C., he was one of those who blamed the attack on the supposed incompetence of the leadership of the Union Army. From 1861 to 1862 he was chairman of the important Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, and in 1862, as chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, was instrumental in abolishing slavery in the Federal Territories.

During the American Civil War, Wade was highly critical of President Abraham Lincoln; in a September 1861 letter, he privately wrote that Lincoln's views on slavery "could only come of one born of poor white trash and educated in a slave State." He was especially angry when Lincoln was slow to recruit African-Americans into the armies, and actively advocated for the bill that abolished slavery and had a direct hand in the passing of the Homestead Act of 1862 and the Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1862.

Wade was also critical of Lincoln's Reconstruction Plan; in December 1863, he and Henry Winter Davis sponsored a bill that would run the South, when conquered, their way. The Wade–Davis Bill mandated that there be a fifty-percent White male Iron-Clad Loyalty Oath, Black male suffrage, and Military Governors that were to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The House of Representatives passed the bill on May 4, 1864, by a margin of 73 ayes to 59 nays; the Senate passed it on July 2, 1864 by a margin of 18 ayes to 14 nays and was brought to Lincoln's desk. Wade signed, along with Davis, the Wade–Davis Manifesto, which accused the president of seeking reelection by the executive establishment of new state governments.

On July 28, 1866, the 39th Congress passed an act to adjust the peacetime establishment of the United States military. Wade proposed that two of the cavalry regiments should be composed of African-American enlisted personnel. After strong opposition, the legislation was passed which provided for the first black contingent in the regular U.S. Army, consisting of six regiments: 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 38th, 39th, 40th, and 41st Infantry Regiments. These units, made up of black enlisted personnel and white officers, were not the first of such units to serve on the Western Frontier. During late 1865 through early 1866, companies from the 57th US Colored Infantry Regiment and the 125th United States Colored Infantry Regiment had been assigned to posts in New Mexico Territory to provide protection for settlers in the area, and escort those going further west.

Blunt, outspoken, and above all uncompromising, Wade was among the best known of the Radicals in American politics. He played a major role in founding the new Republican Party, emancipating the slaves, and battling the enemies of the Freedmen's Bureau. Wade thought Lincoln was laggard in battling slavery, but Lincoln proved the better politician, building a deeper coalition in support of policies that would hold the Union together by destroying the economic base of plantation slavery that supported the Confederacy. As the descendant of leading Puritans, and an activist in the militant Western Reserve in Ohio, Wade’s constituents enthusiastically supported his radicalism. His defeat for reelection in the Senate in 1868 demonstrated that his statewide base was shaky. In addition to his anti-slavery activities, he also fought for free land, women's rights, and labor reform.[1]

Wade in his later years

Wade, along with most other Radical Republicans, was highly critical of President Andrew Johnson (who became President after Lincoln's assassination). Wade supported the Freedmen's Bureau and Civil Rights Bills (which he succeeded in extending to the District of Columbia) and was a strong partisan of the Fourteenth Amendment. He also strengthened his party in Congress by forcefully advocating the admission of Nebraska and Kansas. These actions made him so prominent that at the beginning of the 40th Congress (in 1867), Wade became the President pro tempore of the U.S. Senate, which meant that he was next in line for the presidency (as Johnson had no vice president).

After many fallouts with the Republican-dominated Congress, the Judiciary Committee voted to impeach President Johnson (who had been a Democrat). When Johnson was impeached, Wade was sworn in as one of the senators sitting in judgment, but was greatly criticized because of his unseemly interest in the outcome of the trial. Although most senators believed that Johnson was guilty of the charges, they did not want the extremely radical Wade to become acting president. One newspaper wrote, "Andrew Johnson is innocent because Ben Wade is guilty of being his successor."[2]

According to John Roy Lynch (R-MS, 1873–77, 1882–83), one of the twenty-two African Americans elected to Congress from the South during Reconstruction, in his book Facts Concerning Reconstruction:

It was believed by many at the time that some of the [moderate] Republican Senators that voted for acquittal [of Andrew Johnson] did so chiefly on account of their antipathy to the man who would succeed to the presidency in the event of the conviction of the [sitting] president. This man was Senator Benjamin Wade, of Ohio, President pro tempore of the Senate who as the law then stood, would have succeeded to the presidency in the event of a vacancy in the office from any cause. Senator Wade was an able man … He was a strong party man. He had no patience with those who claimed to be [Radical] Republicans and yet refused to abide by the decision of the majority of the party organization [as did Grimes, Johnson, Lincoln, Pratt, and Trumbull] … the sort of active and aggressive man that would be likely to make for himself enemies of men in his own organization who were afraid of his great power and influence, and jealous of him as a political rival. That some of his senatorial Republican associates should feel that the best service they could render their country would be to do all in their power to prevent such a man from being elevated to the Presidency … for while they knew he was an able man, they also knew that, according to his convictions of party duty and party obligations, he firmly believed he who served his party best served his country best…that he would have given the country an able administration is concurrent opinion of those who knew him best.[3]

In 1868, then-presidential candidate Ulysses S. Grant was urged by his fellow Republicans to choose Wade as his vice presidential running mate; but he refused, instead choosing another radical, Speaker Schuyler Colfax (presiding officer of the House), who coincidentally married Wade's niece, Ellen Maria Wade, shortly after the election. After being defeated in the 1868 elections, Wade returned to his Ohio law practice. Though no longer a government official, Wade continued to contribute to the world of law and politics. He became an agent of the Northern Pacific Railroad, continued his party activities, became a member of the commission researching the likelihood of the purchase of the Dominican Republic in 1871 and served as an elector for Rutherford Hayes in the election of 1876. He died on March 2, 1878, in Jefferson, Ohio.

• Wade, Benjamin Franklin, and Daniel Wheelwright Gooch. Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War: Sherman. Vol. 3. (US Government Printing Office, 1865) online.
• Wade, Benjamin F. Speech, “Nebraska and Kansas Bills” Senate of the United States, March 3, 1854. online