WILSON, HENRY (1812-1875), vice-president of the United States from 1873 to 1875, was born at Farmington, N.H., on Feb. 16, 1812. At the age of 21, for some unstated reason, he had his name changed by act of the legislature to Henry Wilson. At Natick, Mass., whither he travelled on foot, he learned the trade of shoemaker, and during his leisure hours studied much. After successfully establishing himself as a shoe manufacturer, he attracted attention as a public speaker in support of William Henry Harrison during the campaign of 1840. In 1855 he was elected to the United States Senate and remained there by re-elections until 1873. His uncompromising opposition to the institution of slavery furnished the keynote of his earlier sena torial career, and he soon took rank as one of the ablest and most effective anti-slavery orators in the United States. Upon the out
break of the Civil War he was made chairman of the military committee of the Senate, and in this position performed most laborious and important work for the four years of the war. The Republicans nominated Wilson for the vice-presidency in 1872, and he was elected. He died on Nov. 22, 1875.
He published, besides many orations, a History of the Anti Slavery Measures of the Thirty-Seventh and Thirty-Eighth United States Congresses (1865); Military Measures of the United States Congress (1868) ; History of the Reconstruction Measures of the Thirty-Ninth and Fortieth Congresses (1868) and History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America (1872-75), his most important work.
The best biography is that by Elias Nason and Thomas Russell, The Life and Public Services of Henry Wilson (Boston, 1876).