ALMOST PRESIDENT: BENJAMIN WADE
In spite of how close our recent election was, there have been closer ones. In fact, two men lost the Presidency by just one single vote. One was Samuel Tilden. (See the earlier article "The Stolen Election of 1876" published on November 12, 1999.) The other man was Benjamin Wade of Ohio.
Benjamin Wade was born in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts on October 27, 1800. In 1821, he moved with his parents to Andover, Ohio. He taught school for a while, and then left to study medicine in Albany, New York. After two years, he returned to Ohio and began to study law. In 1828, he was admitted to the bar and opened his practice in Jefferson, in Ashtabula County, Ohio.
He began his political career as prosecuting attorney of Ashtabula County, a post he held from 1835-1837. He next served in the Ohio state senate from 1837-1838 and again from 1841-1842. He next served as a judge of the third judicial court of Ohio from 1847-1851.
In 1851, Benjamin Wade was elected to the United States Senate as a Whig. He was actually elected to fill a vacancy caused by the failure of the Ohio legislature to elect a Senator. The seat was declared vacant, and the legislature then proceeded to elect a substitute. He served all but two weeks of the six-year term. He was re-elected in 1856 as a Republican, and again in 1863. He served from March 15, 1851 until the end of his term on March 3, 1869. He was defeated for re-election in a very close vote in the Ohio legislature after the Democrats won a narrow majority in state elections.
In the Senate, Wade became identified with the anti-slavery faction. After the Civil War began, he became one of the main leaders, along with Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, of the Radical faction of the Republican Party. For his last four years in the Senate, Wade was the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, an elected position of leadership made more important by the absence of a Vice President.
As the war came to a close, Radical Republicans began to oppose President Lincoln's gentle plans for the South. Lincoln outlined his "10% Plan" which called for the southern states to be "reconstructed" as soon as 10% of the citizens took an oath of loyalty to the Union. Many Republicans felt that was letting the South off too lightly. Many Republicans also feared that allowing the southern states back into the Union, and into Congress, would give the majority back to the Democratic Party. For both these reasons, a growing number of Republicans opposed Lincoln's plan.
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