New Hampshire. His parents being poor, with a large family of children
to support by their labor, he, with their consent, at the age of ten
years, apprenticed himself to Mr. William Knight, a farmer of his
native town, a man remarkable for his industry and habits of rigid
economy. He remained with Mr. Knight till the age of twenty-one, and
for these eleven years of incessant toil, he received one yoke of
oxen, and six sheep. During this period, he was annually allowed to
attend the public school four weeks. Throughout these years of
unremitting, severe, and scantily-rewarded toil, he devoted his
Sabbaths, and as much of his evenings as he could command, to reading.
Too poor to purchase lights, he was forced to read by the dim light of
wood fires; and after other members of the family had retired to rest,
though weary with the toils of the day, he spent the hours in reading,
which they employed in sleep. During his apprenticeship, he read more
than seven hundred volumes of history and biography, most of which
were selected and loaned to him by the wife of the Hon. Nehemiah
Eastman, a gentleman who was a member of Congress during the first
years of John Quincy Adams' administration. Mrs. Eastman was the
sister of Hon. Levi Woodbury, and a lady of rare intelligence. To the
judicious kindness of this accomplished lady, who thus early
discovered and appreciated his talents, he was indebted for the means
of acquiring a fund of solid and useful knowledge, and of forming
habits of study and reflection, which have largely contributed to his
subsequent success. To Judge Whitehouse, of his native town, he was
also largely indebted for the use of many valuable books. Poverty and
toil were the companions of his boyhood. His means of mental culture
were very limited, and his education, on attaining his majority, was
very deficient; yet very few young men at the age of twenty-one were
better read in history, especially in the history of the United
States, England, and modern France.
After attaining his majority, Mr. Wilson, for eight months, worked on
a farm, receiving nine dollars a month.
Hoping to better his condition, in December, 1833, he left Farmington,
and, with a pack on his back, made his way, on foot, to the town of
Natick, Massachusetts, his present residence. Here he hired himself to
a shoemaker, who agreed, for five months' service, to teach him the
art of bottoming shoes. At the end of six weeks, Mr. Wilson bought his
time, and went to work on his own account, at which employment he
continued for more than two years, working so hard and incessantly
that his health became seriously injured, and he was at length
compelled to quit for a time the shoemaker's bench; and in May, 1836,
he made a visit to Washington, where he remained for several weeks in
regular attendance upon the debates in Congress. During his stay at
the metropolis, Pinckney's Gag Resolutions were passed by the House of
Representatives, and Calhoun's Incendiary Publication bill passed the
Senate by the casting vote of the Vice-President, Martin Van Buren.
The exciting debates to which he listened during this memorable
period, and the scenes which he witnessed at Williams' slave-pen, to
which he paid a visit, made Henry Wilson an anti-slavery man, and he
returned to New England with the fixed resolution to do all in his
power to advance the anti-slavery cause, and overthrow the influence
of slavery in the nation. How steadily he has adhered to that
resolution, his subsequent career bears ample witness.
From Washington, Mr. Wilson returned to New Hampshire, and entered
Stafford Academy as a student, on the first of July, 1836. In the
autumn of that year, he attended the academy at Wolfsborough; and
during the winter of 1837, taught school in that town. In the spring
of 1837, he entered Concord Academy, where he remained six months.
While there, he was chosen a delegate to the Young Men's Anti-slavery
State Convention, before which body he made his first public speech in
behalf of freedom. In the autumn, he returned to Wolfsborough Academy,
and at the close of the academic term, went again to Natick, Mass.,
where he taught school during the winter of 1837-8. He had intended to
continue for some time longer at school, and to commence a course of
classical studies, but the failure of a friend, to whom he had
intrusted the few hundred dollars his own hands had earned, left him
penniless, and he was compelled to change his plans of life.
In the spring of 1838, he engaged in the shoe manufacturing business,
in which he continued till the autumn of 1848. During these ten years
he annually manufactured from 40,000 to 130,000 pairs of shoes, a
large portion of which he sold to southern merchants. One of his
southern customers, who owed him more than a thousand dollars, having
failed, wrote to him that he could pay him fifty per cent. of his
debt, and asked to be discharged. On examining his statement, Mr.
Wilson found that several slaves were included in his assets. Here was
a question to test his anti-slavery professions. Mr. Wilson promptly
signed the papers discharging him from all obligations, and wrote to
him, never to send him a dollar of the dividend if it included the
money received for slaves.
In November, 1839, Mr. Wilson was a candidate for representative to
the legislature from the town of Natick, but being a zealous
temperance man, and an advocate of the fifteen-gallon law, he was
defeated by the opponents of that measure. In the spring of 1840, he
took the stump for General Harrison, and during that memorable
campaign, made upward of sixty speeches. In 1840, he was married to
Miss Harriet M. Howe, of Natick. In 1840, and again in 1841, the
people of Natick elected him their representative to the legislature.
In 1842, he was a candidate for the State Senate, for Middlesex
County, but in that year the Whig ticket was defeated. The next year,
however, and in that following, 1844, he was chosen senator.
During the session of 1845, the State was deeply agitated by the
discussion of the annexation of Texas. In February of that year, a
State convention was called to be held in Faneuil Hall, to protest
against the annexation. Mr. Wilson drew up the paper calling the
convention, for the signatures of the members of the legislature, and
applied to every Whig member for his name. The president of the
Senate, Hon. Levi Lincoln, and other Whig members, refused to sign the
call. Mr. Abbot Lawrence, Mr. Nathan Appleton, Mr. John Davis, Mr.
Winthrop, and other eminent Whigs also declined to unite in, or to
approve the movement. This was the beginning of that division among
the Whigs of Massachusetts on the slavery question, which resulted in
an open rupture in 1848, and finally in the utter overthrow of that
great and powerful party in Massachusetts.
In September, 1845, Mr. Wilson got up a call for a mass convention, in
Middlesex County, to oppose the admission of Texas as a slave State.
The call was responded to by the people, and at an adjourned meeting
in Cambridge, over which Mr. Wilson presided, a state committee was
appointed, composed of men of all parties, to procure signatures to
petitions against the admission of Texas. Sixty-five thousand names
were procured in a few weeks, and Henry Wilson and John G. Whittier
were appointed to carry the petitions to Washington.
In the autumn of 1845, Mr. Wilson declined being a candidate for the
Senate, and was chosen Representative from the town of Natick. In the
legislature he introduced a resolution announcing the unalterable
hostility of Massachusetts to the further extension and longer
existence of slavery in America, and her fixed determination to use
all constitutional and legal means for its extinction. In spite of the
coldness and opposition of several leading Whigs, this resolution was
adopted by ninety-three majority in the House, but was lost in the
Senate by four votes. Mr. Wilson made an elaborate speech in its
behalf, and Mr. Garrison, in the "Liberator," pronounced it the
fullest and most comprehensive speech upon the slavery question, ever
made in any legislative body in this country. In 1846, Mr. Wilson
declined to be again a candidate for the legislature.
In 1843, the officers of the First Regiment of Artillery elected Mr.
Wilson its Major without his knowledge. He accepted the position, and
in June, 1846, he was chosen Colonel, and was elected Brigadier
General of the Third Brigade in August, which position he continued to
hold for five years.
In March, 1848, a Whig district convention was held at Dedham, to
nominate a candidate for Congress to fill the vacancy occasioned by
the death of John Quincy Adams. Henry Wilson, Horace Mann, and William
Jackson, were the leading candidates. After three ballotings Mr.
Wilson declined being considered a candidate, and Mr. Mann was
nominated. The convention, at the same time, by an almost unanimous
vote, elected Mr. Wilson a delegate to the National Whig Convention.
That the vote was not unanimous was owing to the fact that he had
stated in public and in private that if General Taylor should be fixed
upon by the Whig party as its candidate, unpledged to the Wilmot
Proviso, he not only would not support him, but would do all in his
power to defeat him.
When General Taylor was nominated, and the Wilmot Proviso voted down
by the Whig National Convention, in June, 1848, General Wilson, and
his colleague, Hon. Charles Allen, denounced the action of the
convention, and left it. Gen. Wilson then got up a meeting of a few
northern men, which was held in the evening, to consider what steps
should be taken.
Gen. Wilson called the meeting to order, and after stating its
purposes, moved the appointment of a committee to call a convention of
the opponents of the Slave Power. The committee was accordingly
appointed, and united with others in calling the Buffalo Convention,
which nominated Mr. Van Buren and Mr. Chas. Francis Adams.
In the summer of 1848, General Wilson purchased the "Boston
Republican" a free-soil newspaper, which he edited from January, 1849,
to January, 1851, during which two years he gave his whole time to the
free-soil cause, and spent more than seven thousand dollars of his own
property, in the support of the newspaper, whose continued existence
was deemed essential to the welfare of the party of which it was the
organ. In 1849, he was chosen chairman of the Free-soil State
Committee, in which capacity he acted for four years. In the fall of
1849, a coalition was formed between the free-soilers, and the
Democrats of Middlesex County, for the election of senators, and
General Wilson was pressed by both parties to stand as a candidate for
the Senate, which he steadfastly refused to do. He was, however, in
that year, chosen a representative from the town of Natick. When the
legislature met, he was unanimously nominated by the free-soilers, as
their candidate for Speaker. During the session, he was in his seat
every day, always attentive to business.
After Mr. Webster made his seventh of March speech, an effort was made
to instruct him to vote for the doctrines embodied in the resolutions
pending before the legislature; but the proposition was resisted, and
voted down by the Whig majority. General Wilson told the House that
the people would repudiate that speech, and the men who indorsed it,
and that at the coming election, the men who had deserted the cause of
freedom would be crushed by the people. This prediction, which was
received with defiance by the Whig leaders, was fulfilled, and no one
in Massachusetts contributed more to its fulfillment than the man who
made it.
In the summer of 1850, General Wilson called together, at the Adams
House in Boston, the State Committee, and the leading men of the
free-soil party, to the number of about seventy. He stated to the
meeting that the people would make a coalition; that it would be
successful if the committee would aid it; that Mr. Webster's seventh
of March speech could be rebuked; the Fillmore administration
condemned; a free-soiler sent to the United States Senate in place of
Mr. Webster for the long term; and an anti-compromise Democrat for the
short term; and in short, that by a coalition, Massachusetts could be
placed in such a position that the anti-slavery men could control her
policy. After a debate of five hours, in which Messrs. Marcus Morton,
Samuel Hoar, J. G. Palfrey, C. F. Adams, R. H. Dana, Jr., and others
took part, the meeting declined to sanction the coalition, only nine
gentlemen, and they the youngest present, advocating the coalition.
The people, however, made it, in spite of the disapprobation of the
eminent men, and the State was carried against the Whigs, and Geo. S.
Boutwell made Governor, and Charles Sumner and Robert Rantoul sent to
the United States Senate.
In 1850, General Wilson was unanimously nominated for senator from
Middlesex County by the free-soil and Democratic conventions, and
elected by twenty-one hundred majority. When the legislature met, he
was chosen President of the Senate. In 1851, he was reelected and
again chosen president. While President of the Senate, he was made
Chairman of the Committee to welcome President Fillmore to
Massachusetts, and also Chairman of the Committee to welcome Kossuth.
In 1852, he was a delegate to the free-soil National Convention at
Pittsburg, and was selected to preside over that body, and also made
Chairman of the National Free-soil Committee. In the same year, he was
unanimously nominated for Congress by the free-soilers of the eighth
district, and, although the majority against the free-soilers in that
district exceeded seventy-five hundred, he failed of an election by
only ninety-three votes. A large portion of the free-soilers desired
him that year to be a candidate for Governor, and most of the
coalition Democrats likewise desired his nomination. In a public
letter he peremptorily declined to be a candidate, notwithstanding
which he received more than a third of the votes of the Free-soil
State Convention at Lowell.
In March, 1853, General Wilson was elected to the Constitutional
Convention by the town of Berlin, and also by his own town of Natick.
He was not absent from the convention for an hour during the session,
and the journal and report of the debates show the active part taken
by him in its transactions. During the temporary illness of the
president, Mr. Banks, he was chosen president _pro tem_. In September,
1853, he was nominated by the Free Democratic State Convention, as
candidate for the office of Governor. Out of six hundred votes cast by
the convention, he received all but three. At the time he was
nominated, men of all parties conceded the probability of his
election. But the letter of Caleb Cushing, denouncing, in behalf of
the administration, the cooperation of Democrats and free-soilers in
State affairs--the bitter hostility of conservatism toward the new
constitution, and the Irish vote against it--all contributed to
overthrow the State reform party, and to defeat General Wilson and his
friends.
When the proposition was made in 1854 to abrogate the Missouri
Compromise, the country was profoundly excited, and the opponents of
slavery extension in all parties hoped to bring about the union of men
who were ready to resist the slave-power. Believing that the time had
come to effect the union of men who were opposed to the Kansas
Nebraska Act, Gen. Wilson labored with unflagging zeal to accomplish
that result, and for that end he visited Washington, in May, and
consulted with the opponents of the bill, to repeal the prohibition of
slavery in Kansas and Nebraska. Returning home, he avowed in the
Free-soil State Convention, assembled in Boston on the 31st of May,
the readiness of the free-soilers to abandon their organization,
everything but their principles, to bring about the union of men who
were ready to crush out the members from the North who had betrayed
the people, and to sustain the faithful men of all parties who had
been true to principle, and who were ready to resist hereafter the
policy of the slavery propagandists. Speaking for the men of the
free-soil party, he said they "were ready to go into the rear;" if a
forlorn hope was to be led, they would lead it; they would toil;
others might take the lead, hold the offices, and win the honors. The
hour had come to form one great Republican party, which should
hereafter guide the policy and control the destinies of the Republic.
A State Convention was called at Worcester on the 10th of August, with
the view of uniting the people in one organization, and Gen. Wilson
addressed the people in all sections of the State in favor of the
fusion, in which he assured men of all political creeds that the men
of the free-soil party would gladly yield to others the lead and the
honors; all they asked was the acceptance of their doctrines of
perpetual hostility to the aggressive policy of the slave power. But
the leaders of the Whig party in Massachusetts, then in the pride of
power, resisted all attempts to unite the people, and the convention
at Worcester, on the 10th of August, failed to accomplish that decided
result. Gen. Wilson, and other members of the free-soil party at this
convention, again avowed their desire for union, for the sake of the
cause of freedom, and their readiness to yield to men of other
parties, everything but principle. The people desired fusion, and in
spite of the efforts of the Whig leaders, they rushed into the
councils of the American organization to effect that object. Gen.
Wilson, finding that all efforts to unite the people in the Republican
movement had been defeated by men who had personal ends to secure,
urged his friends to unite in that rising organization, liberalize its
platform and action, and make it a party for freedom. With the view of
bringing about harmonious action among men who desired to unite the
people, he accepted the nomination of the Republican party for
Governor, and exerted every effort to conciliate and bring together
men in favor of organizing a great party of freedom. Some of his
political friends doubted the wisdom of his policy, as they did in
1850 the wisdom of the coalition with the Democrats; but that
coalition placed Rantoul and Sumner in the Senate of the United
States, and this union largely contributed to the influence of
anti-slavery men, enabling them to choose a delegation to Congress, of
true men, a majority of whom were free-soilers, and to elect the most
radical anti-slavery legislature ever chosen in America.
In the elections of 1854, the Americans had in the free States
cooperated with men of other parties in opposition to the pro-slavery
policy of the Administration. But in November of that year, a national
council assembled at Cincinnati, and through the management of
southern men, anxious to win local power, and corrupt and weak
politicians from the North, hungry for place, the American
organization was placed in an equivocal attitude on the slavery
question. The work of treachery to freedom commenced, and men who had
labored to combine the opponents of slavery in one organization, as
Gen. Wilson had done, were marked for swift destruction, and men who
were ready to compromise away the cause of freedom, were to be the
trusted leaders of the now nationalized American party.
The legislature of Massachusetts, which assembled in January, 1855,
had to choose a United States senator in place of Mr. Everett, who had
resigned and whose term expired on the 3d of March, 1859. General
Wilson had publicly and privately declared that the slavery question
was with him the paramount question, and in the spring and summer of
1854, while a member of the American organization, he had at all times
openly labored to unite men of all parties for freedom. He had taken
this position, and his declared opinions and acts were well known in
and out of his State, and the men who were ready to sacrifice the
anti-slavery cause, to adhere to the compromising policy of the past,
were bitterly hostile to his elevation to the Senate. But the
anti-slavery men in and out of the State were enthusiastic in his
support. He was nominated in the caucus of the members of the
legislature, by more than one hundred majority on the first ballot.
While the election was pending, several gentlemen representing that
portion of the party who wished to nationalize the organization,
called upon him, and urged him to write something to modify his
recorded opinions, and thus give the men who claimed to be national
men, an opportunity to assent to his elevation. In answer to this
request, he said he had not travelled a single mile, expended a single
dollar, nor conversed with a single member to secure votes for his
election;--that his opinions upon the slavery questions were the
matured convictions of his life, and that he would not qualify them to
win the loftiest position on earth. If elected, he should carry these
opinions with him into the Senate, and if the party with which he
acted proved recreant to freedom, he would, if he had the power,
shiver it to atoms. His position was distinctly avowed and fully
comprehended, and he was opposed to the end by members who dissented
from his principles, and supported and chosen by men who concurred
with him in opinion and policy. He received 234 to 130 votes in the
House of Representatives, and 21 to 19 votes in the Senate, and took
his seat in the Senate of the United States on the 8th of February,
1855.
When he arrived in Washington, leading politicians were assembled
there from the South, endeavoring to organize a National American
party, which should ignore the slavery issues, and contest the
supremacy of the Democracy in the South. In his speech at Springfield,
before the State Council, he thus described the efforts made to seduce
him to assent to this policy:
"On my arrival at Washington, I saw at a glance that the
politicians of the South--men who had deserted their northern
associates upon the Nebraska issue, were resolved to impose upon
the American party by the aid of doughfaces from New York and
Pennsylvania, as the test of nationality, fidelity to the slave
power. Flattering words from veteran statesmen were poured into my
ears--flattering appeals were made to me to aid in the work of
nationalizing the party whose victories in the South were to be as
brilliant as they had been in the North. But I resolved that upon
my soul the sin and shame of silence or submission should never
rest. I returned home, determined to baffle if I could the
meditated treason to freedom and to the North."
Two weeks after taking his seat, he addressed the senate upon Mr.
Toucey's "bill to protect persons executing the fugitive slave act,
from prosecution by State courts." Extracts from this speech show that
his sentiments had undergone no change in Washington, under the
pressing influences of political leaders: