28 Facts About Benjamin Wade

Benjamin Franklin "Bluff" Wade was an American lawyer and politician who served as a United States Senator for Ohio from 1851 to 1869.

Benjamin Wade is known for his leading role among the Radical Republicans.

Benjamin Wade established a reputation as one of the most radical American politicians of the era, favoring women's suffrage, trade union rights, and equality for African-Americans.

Benjamin Wade helped pass the Homestead Act of 1862 and the Morrill Act of 1862.

Benjamin Wade's unpopularity with his senatorial Moderate Republican colleagues was a factor in Johnson's acquittal by the Senate.

Benjamin Wade lost his Senate re-election bid in 1868, though remained active in law and politics until his death in 1878.

Benjamin Wade was born in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts, on October 27,1800, to Mary and James Benjamin Wade.

Benjamin Wade taught school before studying law in Ohio with Elisha Whittlesey.

Benjamin Wade formed a partnership with Joshua Giddings, a prominent anti-slavery figure, in 1831.

Benjamin Wade became the prosecuting attorney of Ashtabula County by 1836, and as a member of the Whig Party, Wade was elected to the Ohio State Senate, serving two two-year terms between 1837 and 1842.

Benjamin Wade established a new law practice with Rufus P Ranney and was elected presiding judge of the third district in 1847.

Between 1847 and 1851, Benjamin Wade was a judge of common pleas in what is Summit County.

In 1851 Benjamin Wade was elected by his legislature to the United States Senate.

Benjamin Wade was critical of how certain aspects of capitalism were practiced in the 19th century, opposing the imprisonment of debtors and special privileges for corporations.

In March 1861, Benjamin 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.

Benjamin Wade was 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.

Benjamin Wade proposed that two of the cavalry regiments should be composed of African-American enlisted personnel.

Blunt, outspoken, and above all uncompromising, Benjamin Wade was among the best known of the Radicals in American politics.

Benjamin Wade played a major role in founding the new Republican Party, emancipating the slaves, and battling the enemies of the Freedmen's Bureau.

Benjamin 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.

Benjamin Wade supported the Freedmen's Bureau and Civil Rights Bills and was a strong partisan of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Benjamin Wade strengthened his party in Congress by forcefully advocating the admission of Nebraska and Kansas.

When Johnson was impeached, Benjamin 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.

Benjamin Wade 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.

Benjamin Wade became a lobbyist for Jay Cooke and the Northern Pacific Railroad in the 1870s.

Benjamin Wade wrote in a subsequently published letter to Uriah Hunt Painter of The New York Times:.

Benjamin Wade's progressively worsening health, attributed by doctors to a form of typhoid fever, would subsequently result in his death.

On March 1,1878, Benjamin Wade, while lying on his bed, summoned his wife Caroline and whispered his last words:.