Henry Alexander Wise (December 3, 1806 – September 12, 1876) was an American attorney, diplomat, politician and slave owner from Virginia. As the 33rd governor of Virginia, Wise served as a significant figure on the path to the American Civil War, becoming heavily involved in the 1859 trial of abolitionist John Brown. After leaving office in 1860, Wise also led the move toward Virginia's secession from the Union in reaction to the election of Abraham Lincoln and the Battle of Fort Sumter.
In addition to serving as governor, Wise represented Virginia in the United States House of Representatives from 1833 to 1844 and was the United States Minister to Brazil during the presidencies of John Tyler and James K. Polk. During the American Civil War, he was a general in the Confederate States Army. In politics, Wise was consecutively a Jacksonian Democrat, a Whig supporter of the National Bank, a dissident Whig supportive of President Tyler, a Democratic secessionist, and a Republican supporter of President Ulysses S. Grant during Reconstruction. His sons Richard Alsop Wise and John Sergeant Wise both also served in the Confederate Army and the post-war United States House as Republicans. After the Civil War ended, Wise accepted that slavery had been abolished and advocated a peaceful national reunification.
Early life Wise was born in Drummondtown in Accomack County, Virginia, to Major John Wise and his second wife Sarah Corbin Cropper; their families had long been settled there. Wise was of English and Scottish descent. He was privately tutored until his twelfth year, when he entered Margaret Academy, near Pungoteague in Accomack County. He graduated from Washington College (now Washington & Jefferson College) in 1825. He was a member of the Union Literary Society at Washington College.
After attending Henry St. George Tucker's Winchester Law School, Wise was admitted to the bar in 1828.Renee M. Savits, "Blame It On Rio", UncommonWealth: Voices from the Library of Virginia, Library of Virginia, accessed December 2, 2020 He settled in Nashville, Tennessee, in the same year to start a practice, but returned to Accomack County in 1830.
Marriage and family Wise was considered a dependable family man. He was married three times. He was first married in 1828 to Anne Jennings, the daughter of Rev. Obadiah Jennings and Ann Wilson of Washington, Pennsylvania.Jennings Cropper Wise, Col. John Wise of England and Virginia (1617–1695): His Ancestors and Descendants, Richmond: Virginia Historical Society, 1918; Digitized 2007 by University of California, p. 196 , accessed March 20, 2008 In 1837, Anne and one of their children died in a fire, leaving Henry with four children: two sons and two daughters.
Wise married a second time in November 1840 to Sarah Sergeant, the daughter of U.S. Representative John Sergeant (Whig-Pennsylvania) and Margaretta Watmough of Philadelphia. Sarah gave birth to at least five children. She died of complications, along with her last child, soon after their birth on October 14, 1850.1850 US Census, St. George's Parish, Accomack Co, VA , accessed March 5, 2008; John S. Wise, The End of an Era, New York: Houghton Mifflin & Co., 1899, p. 39; Documents of the South Collection, University of North Carolina Website , accessed February 11, 2008 Sarah's sister Margaretta married George G. Meade, who was a major general for the Union in the American Civil War.
In the nineteen years of marriage to his first two wives, Wise fathered fourteen children; seven survived to adulthood.Simpson, p. 23
Henry married a third time to Mary Elizabeth Lyons in 1853.Simpson, p. 95. After serving as governor, Wise settled with Mary and his younger children in 1860 at Rolleston, an plantation which he bought from his brother John Cropper Wise, who also continued to live there.Simpson, p. 222. It was located on the Eastern Branch Elizabeth River near Norfolk, Virginia. The property was first owned and developed by William and Susannah Moseley, English immigrants who settled there in 1649. Their descendants owned the property into the 19th century.Idris Bowen, "Rolleston Hall, Virginia" , The Rollestonian, Spring 2002, accessed February 2, 2008
After Wise entered Confederate service, he and his family abandoned Rolleston in 1862 as U.S. Army soldiers took over Norfolk. Wise arranged for his family to reside in Rocky Mount, Franklin County, Virginia. After the Civil War, Henry and Mary Wise lived in Richmond, where he resumed his legal career.
Political career
U.S. Representative Henry A. Wise served as a U.S. Representative from 1833 to 1844. He was elected Representative in 1832 as a Jackson Democrat. To settle this election, Wise successfully fought a duel with his opponent. Wise was re-elected in 1834, but then broke with the Jackson administration over the rechartering of the Bank of the United States. He became a Whig but was sustained by his constituents. Wise was re-elected as a Whig in 1836, 1838, and 1840.
While in Congress, Wise was the "faithful" opponent of John Quincy Adams in the latter's attempt to end the gag rule and force Congress to respond to the many petitions asking it to end slavery in the District of Columbia. Adams described Wise in his diary as "loud, vociferous, declamatory, furibund, he raved about the hell-hound of abolition".
On February 24, 1838, Wise served as the second to William J. Graves of Kentucky during the latter's duel with Jonathan Cilley of Maine at the Bladensburg Dueling Grounds, in which Cilley was mortally wounded. He later wrote an account of the event that was published by his son John in the Saturday Evening Post in 1906.
In 1840 Wise was active in securing the nomination and election of John Tyler as Vice President on the Whig ticket. Tyler succeeded to the presidency and then broke with the Whigs. Wise was one of a small group of Congress members, known derisively as the "Corporal's Guard," who supported Tyler during his struggles with the Whigs and was re-elected as a Tyler Democrat in 1842. Tyler nominated Wise three times as U.S. Minister to France, but the Senate did not confirm the nomination.
U.S. Minister to Brazil In 1844, Tyler appointed Wise as U.S. Minister (ambassador) to Brazil. Wise resigned as Representative to take up this office. He served from 1844 to 1847. Two of his children were born in Rio de Janeiro. In Brazil, Wise worked on issues related to trade and tariffs, Brazilian concerns about the US annexation of Texas, and establishing diplomatic relations with Paraguay. (Wise supported the annexation of Texas by the United States. Wise County, Texas, was named in his honor.)
Return to Virginia and slavery Wise returned to Virginia after leaving his minister post in Brazil. While in Brazil, Wise condemned the slave trade between the U.S. and Brazil. He thought it was the work of "hypocritical Yankees" and against American law. With such harsh criticism, he had given up his usefulness as a U.S. minister and was withdrawn. The Brazilian government practically kicked him out of office.
After Wise returned to Virginia, he planned to sell the people he enslaved. In 1849, Wise bought 19 people, one shy of planter status, and considered them his "children" and "responsibility". He knew that farming was not profitable in soil-depleted Virginia. Nevertheless, rather than emancipation, Wise intended to profit from selling the people he enslaved to California after gold had been discovered there in 1849. An enslaved person in Virginia was worth $1,000, but in California, an enslaved person would be worth $3,000 to $5,000 digging gold. Wise's plan, however, was thwarted when California joined the United States as a free state in the Compromise of 1850.California Admission Day September 9, 1850.
Wise's plantation comprised 400 acres, and only about half were productive. Wise grew corn, oats, and sweet potatoes. Wise also raised livestock and maintained peach and pear orchards. His farm most likely profited $500 a year.
Governor of Virginia Wise returned to the United States in 1847 and resumed legal practice. He identified with the Jacksonian Democratic Party and was active in politics. A delegate to the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1850, Wise opposed any reforms, insisting that the protection of slavery came first.Shade, William G., Democratizing the Old Dominion: Virginia and the Second Party System, 1824–1861. 1996 , pp. 276–277 In the statewide election of 1855, Wise was elected Governor of Virginia as a Democrat, defeating Know-Nothing candidate Thomas S. Flournoy. He was the 33rd governor of Virginia, serving from 1856 to 1860, and the last Eastern Shore governor until Ralph Northam was elected in 2017.Vaughn, Carol; 'Eastern Shore native Ralph Northam will be the next Virginia governor' ; Delmarva Now, November 7, 2017 Wise County, Virginia, was named after him when it was established in 1856.
Although he was visibly and unapologetically a defender of slavery, he opposed the imposition of the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution on Kansas Territory, as residents of Kansas had not approved it: "And why impose this Constitution of a minority on a majority? Cui bono? ["Who would that benefit?"] Does any Southern man imagine that this is a practicable or sufferable way of making a slave State?" This stance played a large role in scuttling his preparations for a bid to challenge incumbent Robert M.T. Hunter in the Senate election in 1858, as Hunter was a supporter of the Lecompton Constitution.
Under the Virginia Constitution, governors cannot serve successive terms, so he was not a candidate for reelection in 1860.
John Brown
Wise was intensely interested in the case of John Brown, who briefly assaulted the town of Harpers Ferry. Wise refers several times to the need to "avenge the insulted honor of the state". He said he found it humiliating that Brown's ragtag group could take Harpers Ferry, Virginia, and hold it for even one hour. He traveled from Richmond to Harpers Ferry immediately and interviewed him at length. After returning to Richmond, in a widely reported speech, he praised Brown, but he also called Brown and his men "murderers, traitors, robbers, insurrectionists," and "wanton, malicious, unprovoked felons."
However, Governor Wise did many things to augment rather than reduce tensions: by insisting he was tried in Virginia and turning Charles Town into an armed camp full of state militia units. "At every juncture he chose to escalate rather than pacify sectional animosity."
Some sources say that Wise signed John Brown's death warrant, but this is incorrect; under Virginia law, the governor did not need to sign such a document, as Wise pointed out. After Brown was sentenced to death, Wise could have commuted his sentence to life imprisonment, as was recommended to him by many people. The efforts to pressure Wise became so intense that, according to the Richmond Enquirer, he was offered the presidency in exchange for a pardon. An unsigned letter from "a Green Mountain Boy" threatened Wise with assassination if Brown was executed, and there was an unfunded project to kidnap Wise and sequester him at sea, on a boat, until Brown was released.
One option Wise considered was to find Brown insane, which would have avoided the death penalty and sent him to an insane asylum. He had been given 19 affidavits from relatives and friends about the alleged madness of Brown and several of his relatives. This would have de-escalated the crisis, not turning Brown into abolition's martyr and hero, as he immediately became. However, after his interview with Brown in the engine house, Wise had said publicly that Brown was not insane at all. Before the trial, Brown had insisted that he did not want an insanity defense.