Ohio History Journal

VERNON L. VOLPE

 

Benjamin Wade's Strange Defeat

 

Benjamin Wade is known to countless thousands of undergraduates

as "Bluff Ben," a grim, outspoken advocate of equal justice for freed

Southern slaves. The memorable but not completely flattering portrait

of Wade found in most college textbooks sometimes obscures the

prominent part the Ohio Senator played in national politics during the

great crisis of the Civil War and Reconstruction. A leading "radical"

Republican, he chaired the powerful Joint Committee on the Conduct

of the War. One more Senator's vote cast in favor of Andrew Johnson's

conviction would have made Wade the only president pro tempore of

the Senate to replace a President removed from office.

Over the last several decades revisionist historians have rescued

Wade's reputation from the even more unflattering caricature found in

older studies of the "legend of Reconstruction."¹ The work of Hans L.

Trefousse has been most influential in renewing respect for Wade's

long and impressive career. Yet even Trefousse (who admittedly was

preoccupied with other issues) did not stress the significance of an

unusual event early in Wade's political career.² Until the Democratic

Ohio Legislature refused to return Wade to the U.S. Senate in 1868, his

most frustrating political setback came in a little-known 1839 race for

reelection to the Ohio Senate. That year an "unholy alliance" between

Democrats and antiabolitionist Whigs in Geauga and Ashtabula coun-

ties combined to defeat Wade in two of the strongest Whig counties in

the state.

Not only should this episode be considered in evaluating Wade's life,

it also reveals critical considerations about antebellum politics. For

 

 

 

 

Vernon L. Volpe is Assistant Professor of History at Kearney State College.

 

1. For the "legend" see Kenneth M. Stampp, The Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877

(New York, 1965), 3-23.

2. Trefousse, Benjamin Franklin Wade: Radical Republican from Ohio (New York,

1963), 41-42, mentions Wade's 1839 defeat briefly but attributes it partly to conservative

Whig opposition to his general "independent course," especially on financial issues.

(Wade did vote with the "Vanocrats" on some issues. Ohio State Journal, January 3,

1838.)

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Benjamin Wade's Strange Defeat                              123

instance, this election can be seen as a corrective to the current tendency to discount ideological factors and stress instead the impor- tance of party loyalty and relative turnout. In this case at least, hundreds of voters felt strongly enough about issues and personalities to cross party lines and contribute to the rival party's victory. (Historians should remember that use of aggregate election statistics and advanced analytical techniques may sometimes "wash out" important considerations visible only at the local level.) Most of all, this episode demonstrates the difficulty abolitionism faced in antebel- lum society. Even old "Bluff Ben" Wade, a determined advocate of

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124                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

racial justice if there ever was one, understood that immutable political

realities required a careful approach to solving America's internal

struggle over racial oppression.

 

 

 

In 1838 Ohio Whigs had suffered a humiliating defeat, losing their

grasp on the governor's office as well as their control of both houses of

the state legislature. Some observers mistakenly attributed the unex-

pected Whig defeat to the defection of many abolition voters to the

Democrats.³ Whatever the actual role abolition votes played in 1838,

Whig party chieftains decided to take no chances with such an

important part of their electoral coalition. This was especially true in

Ohio's northeastern counties, known as the Western Reserve. Wade's

senatorial district covered two Reserve counties, Geauga and Ashta-

bula, where Whiggery and antislavery sentiment were both endemic to

the Yankee-dominated countryside.

Following the 1838 election worried Western Reserve Whigs worked

hard to keep abolition voters in line. This was particularly critical for

antislavery Whigs such as Ben Wade and his old law partner, Con-

gressman Joshua Giddings. Both depended on abolitionist support to

counter their more conservative opponents. After the 1838 election,

Wade thus reminded leading Reserve abolitionists they were indeed

responsible for the Whig defeat, in effect imploring them not to allow

another Democratic victory.⁴

Yet Wade soon discovered that an abolitionist endorsement could do

him more harm than good. As part of their conciliatory strategy, Whigs

gave Ashtabula abolitionists a prominent place in local conventions

prior to the 1839 canvass. In return abolitionists decided to work within

Whig ranks to achieve their political goals. This seemingly reasonable

strategy backfired, however, when angry antiabolitionist Whigs bolted

their party to support conservative Democratic candidates instead. As

many Geauga antiabolitionists also deserted the Whig ticket, Wade

suffered an unprecedented yet revealing defeat in a region long renown

for its strong Whiggish sympathies.

 

 

3. I examine this issue in "The Ohio Election of 1838: A Study in the Historical

Method?" Ohio History, 95 (Summer-Autumn 1986), 85-100.

4. Wade to Milton Sutliff, December 8, 1838, Sutliff Papers, Western Reserve

Historical Society; Wade to Samuel Hendry, December 16, 1838, Joel Blakeslee Papers,

WRHS. See also Hans L. Trefousse, The Radical Republicans: Lincoln's Vanguard for

Racial Justice (Baton Rouge, 1968), 19. These letters do not mean the abolitionists had

indeed deserted the Whigs in October.

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Benjamin Wade's Strange Defeat                                   125

 

From the outset the political course of abolitionists dominated the

1839 campaign in Ashtabula and Geauga counties. For years bitter

feelings had been developing between Reserve abolitionists and their

opponents. The antislavery message not only threatened white suprem-

acy, but abolitionists' methods also seemed to undermine the authority

of groups who traditionally wielded power in American society.⁵

Moreover, the abolitionist approach to individual and social salvation

unsettled the Western Reserve churches, thereby intensifying religious

tensions and denominational disputes.⁶

Back in 1835 the city council of Painesville (then in Geauga County)

had advised antislavery agent Theodore Dwight Weld to discontinue

his controversial lectures in the town. When Weld refused, local

notable General Charles C. Paine led an attempt to disrupt Weld's

meeting with "noisy demonstrations." Weld also encountered strong

opposition in Chardon, the county seat, where he was "serenaded with

drums and horns, eggs and stones." Abolitionists would never forget

the role prominent Whigs played in this abuse of the "patron saint" of

Ohio abolitionism.⁷ (For example, the Whig candidate for prosecuting

attorney in 1839, William L. Perkins, had delivered the city council's

request to Weld in 1835.)

Tensions also surfaced in Ashtabula in the summer of 1835. During

Fourth of July celebrations community leaders customarily offered

toasts in the spirit of the occasion, but in this case a leading member of

the colonization society rebuked those who had joined the county

abolitionist society. Horace Wilder lifted his glass to "The Rights of

the States. Their protection from encroachment [presumably by the

abolitionists] is essential to the perpetuity of the Union." The coloni-

zation society continued to represent the community elite, but it did

suffer some embarrassing defections, such as Congressman Joshua

Giddings, O. H. Fitch, the editor of the Ashtabula Sentinel, and other

local notables.⁸

 

 

5. Leonard L. Richards elaborates on this theme in "Gentlemen of Property and

Standing": Anti-Abolition Mobs in Jacksonian America (London, 1970).

6. For these religious disputes see my "Forlorn Hope of Freedom: The Liberty

Party in the Old Northwest, 1838-1848" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Nebraska-

Lincoln, 1984).

7. Ohio State Journal, October 9, 1835; Weld to Elizur Wright, Jr., October 6, 1835,

in Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimke Weld and Sarah Grimke,

1822-1844, edited by Gilbert Hobbs Barnes and Dwight Lowell Dumond, vol. 1 (New

York; 1934), 236-40; Eber D. Howe, Autobiography and Recollections of a Pioneer

Printer (Painesville, Ohio, 1878), 49-50. Howe tells how Weld responded to the council's

request with a "humph!" while continuing to shave his beard. For abolitionists'

memories of the incident, Painesville Telegraph, October 1, 1839.

8. Astabula Sentinel, July 12, 1834, July 11, October 10, 1835, July 19, 1837,

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126                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

The 1838 Whig defeat, supposedly with the abolitionists' blessing,

exacerbated these lingering local tensions. Early in 1839 antiabolitionist

meetings were held in Geauga's Batavia and Mentor townships. In

February a "large and respected" Batavia gathering denounced abo-

litionists as a "class of fanatics and disjointed politicians" who were

under "European influence." Amalgamation was proclaimed an abo-

litionist scheme that would give blacks "the hands of our sons and

daughters in wedlock." The meeting insisted abolitionists' efforts

should be "promptly stopped," not the least reason being to relieve

Northern citizens of their constant "unwelcome lectures."⁹

Reserve abolitionists were not dissuaded by such veiled threats.

Instead they responded to a pledge by New York abolitionists only to

vote for candidates in favor of immediate abolition, by themselves

resolving to support no one "not heartily opposed to Slavery." This

was actually a compromise with the New York immediatist pledge, due

to the regard Reserve abolitionists had for antislavery Whigs such as

Giddings and Wade.¹⁰ Yet this new abolitionist position further frus-

trated antiabolitionist Whigs who determined to "proscribe" unwanted

abolition voters once and for all by expelling them from Whig ranks.

Caught directly in the middle, Congressman Giddings addressed the

growing Whig feud at a Fourth of July celebration in Wayne Township,

Ashtabula County. His fervent plea for unity nontheless failed to bring

the warring factions together. Fearing the worst, the Painesville

Telegraph warned that divisions among Whigs only played into Dem-

ocratic hands. The Whig press urged there be no proscription of the

abolitionists, but had to admit this had already happened in several

Geauga townships. Abolitionists were excluded from receiving or even

participating in local nominations.11

The Telegraph thus advised that the coming county convention

should work to prevent any further division in Whig ranks. As it turned

out the county Whig ticket proved quite unsatisfactory to most Geauga

abolitionists. Intentionally or not, the Whig ballot contained no aboli-

tionists and included some known to be hostile to them. Indeed, the

Whig convention again passed over Thomas Richmond for another

 

 

 

February 9, July 13, 20, 1839, July 17, 1841. For Giddings' see, James Brewer Stewart,

Joshua R. Giddings and the Tactics of Radical Politics (Cleveland, 1970).

9. Painesville Telegraph, February 28, March 21, 1839.

10. The Reserve Anti-Slavery convention and Giddings' Ashtabula Anti-Slavery

Society resolved not to be limited by the strict immediatist test. Instead they would

consider "the whole moral principles of candidates as constituting fitness for office."

Painesville Telegraph, September 12, 1839; Ashtabula Sentinel, July 13, August 3, 1839.

11. Ashtabula Sentinel, August 3, 1839; Painesville Telegraph, September 12, 1839.

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Benjamin Wade's Strange Defeat                                  127

 

term in the state house of representatives. Richmond was president of

the Painesville Anti-Slavery Society and a manager of the county

society. In 1837 he had been elected to the Ohio Legislature but was

then replaced in 1838 by Silas Axtell, who soon displeased the

abolitionists. In fact, Richmond had stood as an independent candidate

in 1838 and won an impressive 725 votes (or nearly 16 percent of the

total). This Whig treatment of Richmond caused some abolitionists to

claim that "proscription" had actually begun during the 1838 cam-

paign.12

For abolitionists the only saving grace was the common expectation

that Geauga Whigs would support Ben Wade for reelection to the state

senate. Wade was not a member of an abolitionist society, but he had

endorsed several causes favored by abolitionists, including support for

the right of petition and opposition to the annexation of Texas. Most

importantly, Wade was a strong advocate of repeal of Ohio's discrim-

inatory "black laws.^"13 He had recently supported the right of Ohio

blacks to petition the state legislature. These controversial positions no

doubt undermined Wade's popularity among many conservative Whigs

even on the Western Reserve.

Geauga antiabolitionists had fired the first shots in this local battle

over participation of abolition voters in the Whig party. The Painesville

Telegraph offered two possible explanations for the proscription effort.

One was that antiabolitionists sought to "disengage themselves from

the odium that attaches to the hacks of an old broken down party that

once ruled the county." (Most likely a reference to the prominent

Paine family, a leading member of which was now an active abolition-

ist. Giddings also suspected that the "old Paine party" was somehow

involved.) Aside from this local political controversy, the Whig press

offered the intriguing insight that Geauga Whigs were willing to adopt

proscription due to the comfortable "strength of the whig party in this

county." Concerned as much with state and national offices, the

Telegraph warned local antiabolitionists not to allow their overconfi-

dence to play into Democratic hands.¹⁴

 

 

 

 

12. Painesville Telegraph, October 16, 1835, October 14, 1836, October 18, 1838,

August 6, September 6, 12, 13, 19, October 1, 1839. In 1837, Axtell had taken several

hundred votes from Richmond as an independent candidate! Returns are in Painesville

Republican, October 19, 1837, and Painesville Telegraph, October 13, 1837.

13. Ohio State Journal, January 3, 23, February 26, 1838, January 23, February 13,

March 29, 1839; Painesville Telegraph, February 2, 1838.

14. Painesville Telegraph, September 12, 1839; Giddings to Milton Sutliff, July 22,

1840, Sutliff Papers, WRHS.

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128                                               OHIO HISTORY

 

Geauga abolitionists slowly began to resist the antiabolitionist offen-

sive. A Whig meeting in Chester Township, an abolition stronghold,

suggested replacing the regular Whig nominee for state representative

with the popular former representative (and abolitionist) Thomas

Richmond.15 Then the final straw came when Geauga Whig represen-

tatives to the senatorial convention refused to cooperate with the

Ashtabula delegates. For unexplained reasons, the Geauga members

hesitated to support Wade until the Ashtabula delegation agreed that

Geauga would get one more vote than Ashtabula County. When

Ashtabula at first refused this strange request, the Geauga delegates

promptly withdrew from the meeting. Abolitionists not surprisingly

interpreted this incident as a refusal by antiabolitionist Geauga Whigs

to support Wade for reelection to the state senate.¹⁶

Responding to the threat of proscription and the unfavorable Whig

ticket, Geauga abolitionists decided to support their own candidates.

At a Madison meeting abolitionists nominated a separate slate. Wade

won their endorsement but the Whig candidates for representative

were replaced by two more friendly to abolition (including Richmond).

Eventually abolitionists made nominations for several additional local

offices as well. This experiment with independent political abolition

was avoided in Ashtabula where abolitionists had been given a

prominent part in the county convention and several friendly candi-

dates were included on the Whig ticket.¹⁷

The "Anti-Whig" nominations incensed Geauga Whigs who charged

abolition voters were in league with the Democrats. The Painesville

Telegraph defended the Whig ticket as a strong one and dismissed

abolitionist charges of proscription. To mollify the dissident abolition-

ists, however, the Geauga Whig press itself put Wade's name into

nomination, despite the earlier refusal of the county senatorial delega-

tion to support him.18

Ashtabula antiabolitionist Whigs were even more upset by the

prominent role abolitionists had played in their local party. (The Whig

candidate for prosecuting attorney was the abolitionist Flavel Sutliff,

who after his rejection by Whig voters in 1839, helped organize the

 

 

 

15. Richmond at first declined this nomination. Painesville Telegraph, September 20,

October 4, 1838.

16. Ashtabula Sentinel, September 28, 1839; Painesville Telegraph, September 26,

October 1, 1839.

17. Painesville Telegraph, September 20, 1838, September 26, October 1, 1839;

Ashtabula Sentinel, September 28, October 5, November 30, 1839.

18. Painesville Telegraph, September 19, 26, October 1, 8, 1839.

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Benjamin Wade's Strange Defeat                                     129

 

abolitionist Liberty party the next year.) The Ashtabula Sentinel was

forced to deny charges by its rival the Conneaut Gazette that the

county convention had demonstrated an "intolerant spirit." Always at

the center of controversy, the editor of the Gazette attempted to stir up

trouble by claiming the county convention "wholly disregarded" those

who were not political abolitionists. (In other words, the Gazette

countered that in Ashtabula it was the antiabolitionists who had been

"proscribed.") The Sentinel dismissed this charge, but it also an-

nounced it was as opposed as any to making "abolition a political

hobby for aspiring demagogues or greedy office seekers" in order to

suit their "selfish and sordid purposes."19

To retaliate against the abolitionists, Ashtabula Whigs took the

drastic step of uniting with Democrats on an "amalgamation" ticket

aimed at defeating Wade and other antislavery candidates. The defec-

tors attempted to justify their sudden alliance with the hated "loco

focos" by claiming the abolitionists had supported the Democrats the

year before. Yet the voting returns demonstrate that antiabolitionists

proved much more willing to desert their party than abolitionists had in

1838.20

The shocking result in the two banner Whig counties was that

Wade's Democratic rival was selected senator and Democrats were

swept into office (for the first time) in Ashtabula as well.21 In Geauga,

Wade was the only Whig candidate not elected. Abolition voters

provided the core of his support (his percentage of the vote correlated

at + .53 with that of the Geauga antislavery ticket), but they were too

few to overcome the antiabolitionist alliance.²² Wade managed a small

margin in Geauga, but the antiabolition "Union" ticket in Ashtabula

sealed his defeat. (In 1838 the Whigs had swept Ashtabula by over

 

 

 

 

19. G. W. St. John, a Whig candidate for state representative, felt compelled to deny

he favored an abolition party, although he affirmed his support for repeal of the black

laws. Ashtabula Sentinel, September 28, October 5, 1839.

20. See my analysis in "Ohio Election of 1838." Antiabolition Whigs also justified

their support of the Democrats by claiming the county convention deliberately convened

too late to allow them to organize an antiabolition ticket. Willard D. Loomis, "The

Anti-Slavery Movement in Ashtabula County, Ohio, 1834-1854" (MA thesis, Western

Reserve University, 1936), 23-24.

21. Ashtabula Sentinel, October 12, 1839; Painesville Telegraph, October 15, 1839.

The Ohio State Journal, October 23, 1839, attributed Wade's defeat to "the uncompro-

mising hostility of the Whigs of these two counties to political abolition." See also

Philanthropist, May 26, 1840.

22. A correlation coefficient demonstrates the strength of association between two

variables. The statistical measure ranges from + 1.0, indicating a perfect positive

relationship, to - 1.0, or a negative one.

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130                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

thirteen hundred votes. In 1839 Wade lost by nearly one hundred fifty

ballots.) Recriminations over the unsettling Whig defeat dragged on for

months.23

 

 

 

In a public ceremony early the next year Ashtabula Whigs, including

Wade, struggled to reestablish party unity. Still, the proscription of

abolitionists continued into the 1840 campaign. Once again Giddings

was caught in the middle of the dispute but was careful to avoid being

gored by it as Wade had been. Wade was defeated partly by local

causes; his Ashtabula opposition was centered in rival Conneaut.²⁴

Most of all, however, the episode revealed the depth of antiabolitionist

feeling even in Whig strongholds where antislavery sentiment was also

strong. Abolitionist political activity only invited an even stronger

antiabolitionist response. This was the dilemma abolitionists faced as

they considered organizing politically to achieve their primarily hu-

manitarian objectives.

The 1839 Geauga antislavery ticket was one of the first independent

abolition tickets in the nation. The same year Jackson County,

Michigan, abolitionists also made independent local nominations.²⁵

Both provided an opportunity to test the appeal of an independent

antislavery party, but both proved premature. Despite the abolitionists'

determined efforts, an abolition party seemed impractical even where

abolition voters were not a hopeless minority. Considering the repudi-

ation Western Reserve voters gave an independent antislavery ticket in

1839, it was hard to see how abolitionists could be more successful on

the state or national level, where abolition voters were not only rare,

but resented.

Due primarily to their religious commitment (or what one historian

has termed "the martyr spirit"), abolitionists refused to read the

political handwriting and persisted in organizing an abolition party.

Indeed, memories of the 1839 debacle worsened relations between

 

 

 

23. Ashtabula Sentinel, October 20, 1838, October 12, November 23, 30, 1839. After

the election the Sentinel printed statistical evidence to support its contention that

abolitionists had not controlled the county convention as antiabolitionists charged.

24. Ashtabula Sentinel, October 12, November 23, 1839, January 18, 1840; Giddings

to Milton Sutliff, February 4, April 12, July 22, 1840, Sutliff Papers, WRHS; Giddings to

J. A. Giddings, February 8, 13, 1840. Giddings Papers, Ohio Historical Society.

25. Arthur Raymond Kooker, "The Anti-Slavery Movement in Michigan, 1796-1840:

A Study in Humanitarianism on an American Frontier" (Ph.D. dissertation, University

of Michigan, 1941), 293-301; Emancipator, November 14, 1839.

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Benjamin Wade's Strange Defeat                           131

 

Whigs and abolitionists. (Recall that abolitionists such as Flavel Sutliff

had been personally rejected by many Whig voters.) Although the

antiabolitionist opposition had begun partly as a "grass roots" move-

ment, the result further alienated abolition voters from the Whig party

establishment that ruled the Reserve. Once the election passed, indeed

after the Geauga independent ticket entered the field, Whig leaders

quickly joined in denouncing the abolitionists. Party Whigs now did not

shrink from calling the kettle black by claiming the abolitionists were

interested only in winning office! Yet the Whig Telegraph may have

been correct in arguing that the abolitionists had succeeded only in

embittering "the community against them instead of winning the

community over to their cause."26

Abolitionists nonetheless had few choices. In Geauga County they

had been deliberately "proscribed" by the largely unprovoked hostility

of local antiabolitionists. As many as three hundred Geauga Whigs (and

even more in Ashtabula) deserted Wade, a popular candidate who was

not even an abolitionist. In Ashtabula County, Whig leaders had

attempted to maintain abolitionist loyalty by allowing them to take part

in party affairs. Even as abolitionists welcomed this sensible policy,

however, antiabolition Whigs refused to cooperate by "amalgamating"

with the despised Reserve Democratic party. Political abolitionism

stood little chance of success inside or outside the parties.

Once organized in the wake of the 1840 campaign, the Liberty party

received an even smaller minority of the Geauga vote than had the 1839

abolition ticket. (Thomas Richmond, the antislavery candidate in 1839,

received 20.6 percent of Geauga's total vote. In 1842 a respected

Liberty candidate for governor received just 6.4 percent of the county

vote.) The Liberty party represented just one element of the antislavery

electorate, often repelling others who did not share its vision of

political and religious abolitionism.²⁷

Ben Wade, however, did read the verdict of the 1839 election. For

years thereafter he strove to separate himself from the political stigma

of abolitionism. Named to a local Liberty party ticket in 1841, he

refused the nomination and instead repudiated political abolitionism by

insisting he "never yet belonged to an abolition society."²⁸ Even as

 

 

 

 

 

26. Painesville Telegraph, October 1, 15, 1839.

27. For this aspect of the Liberty party see my dissertation, "Forlorn Hope of

Freedom." Geauga returns are in Painesville Telegraph, October 15, 1839 and Geauga

Freeman, October 22, 1842.

28. Painesville Telegraph, October 6, 13, 1841.

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132                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

Free Soil sentiment swept his region, Wade was named to the U.S.

Senate in 1851 as a loyal Whig. Like other officeholders he maintained

his ties with the Whig party until passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act

left him literally no choice. (As Wade put it, one must now either be a

"dough-face, flunky, or an abolitionist.") Thus, only in May 1854 did

"Bluff Ben" finally dare declare "I am an Abolitionist at heart.^"29

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

29. Congressional Globe, 33rd Congress, 1st Session, Appendix, 765. See also

Trefousse, Wade, 335.

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