Henry Wilson

Henry Wilson was an abolitionist, businessman, Massachusetts legislator, U.S. senator, and the eighteenth vice president. Born Jeremiah Jones Colbath into a poor New Hampshire family, he changed his name to Henry Wilson at age twenty-one and eventually built a successful business before devoting himself to politics. His opposition to slavery became the central theme of his public career, which carried him from Massachusetts politics to the U.S. Senate and finally to the vice presidency under Ulysses S. Grant.

Wilson was born in Farmington, New Hampshire, and grew up in poverty. At age ten he was indentured to a farmer and received little formal education, although he developed a strong habit of reading. After completing his indenture, he changed his name to Henry Wilson and apprenticed himself to a cobbler. He moved to Natick, Massachusetts, in 1833 and eventually became successful in the shoe business.

Wilson entered politics in Massachusetts during the 1830s and 1840s. He served in the state legislature for approximately eleven years and became increasingly active in the antislavery movement. He left the Whig Party in 1848 and helped establish the Free Soil Party, later becoming a Republican. In 1855, the Massachusetts legislature elected him to the U.S. Senate, where he would remain for eighteen years.

Wilson became one of the Senate's leading antislavery Republicans. During the Civil War he chaired the Senate Committee on Military Affairs and helped shape legislation concerning the Union war effort. He advocated emancipation and the enlistment of Black men in the Union Army and was involved in legislation freeing enslaved people in the District of Columbia. He also introduced an early postwar civil-rights bill in 1865. In 1872, Republicans nominated him for vice president alongside Grant, and the ticket won the election.

His vice presidency was cut short by illness. He suffered a stroke in 1873, which significantly limited his activities. On November 22, 1875, he suffered another attack while in the U.S. Capitol and was taken to the Vice President's Room, where he died. The Senate later commissioned a marble bust of Wilson, beginning its Vice Presidential Bust Collection.

Wilson's legacy is particularly important in the history of abolition, Civil War legislation, and the early Republican Party. He combined political advocacy with legislative work, helping advance emancipation and civil-rights measures through Congress. His three-volume History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, written during his later years, also became an important contemporary account of the antislavery struggle.