Henry Wilson

• Vice President to:       General Ulysses S. Grant - Republican, from Ohio.
  
  
• Dates Served: Wilson served as Vice President from 1873 - 1875.
  
• Political Party: Wilson was a Republican, from Massachusetts.
  
• Born: 1812.
  
• Died: 1875, while in office, at the age of 63.
  
• The presidential opponent during the 1872 campaign was:
  
  
  • Horace Greeley - Liberal Republican - New York newspaper publisher.
    
    (Greeley was nominated by a liberal wing of Grant's own Republican Party who was unhappy with his performance as President. Greeley was even backed by the Democratic Party, who didn't even bother to nominate any candidate of their own that year. Incidentally, Greely's newspaper, the New York Tribune, had a little-known London correspondant on its payroll named Karl Marx, who was working as the paper's European correspondant.)
    
    
• Campaign issues in 1872:
  
  
  • The main issue this year was the past 4 years of scandals, the likes of which America had never seen before. It was time to clean up government and bring honor back to the White House, a campaign pledge that would be brought up from time to time again in future campaigns. The Republican Party split along lines of support for Grant and opposition against him, due to the scandals in his Administration. The anti-Grant wing, the so-called Liberal Republicans, selected the colorful newspaper publisher Horace Greeley and ran him as a candidate who was clean and honest. The Democrats' morale was so low that they didn't even bother nominating anyone this year, and instead backed Greeley. They knew that he was vocally anti-Slavery, but anything was better than Grant and his version of Reconstruction. But Grant managed to appear removed from the scandals rampant in his own Administration and his status as a war hero was enough to guarantee his victory. Greeley died only weeks after loosing the popular election, but before the Electoral College cast their ballots, so he technically didn't get any Electoral votes.
    
    
  
  
• Notable Facts about Henry Wilson:
  
  
  • Religious affiliation: Henry was a Congregationalist.
    
    
  • He was born with the name Jeremiah Jones Colbath, but changed his name to Henry Wilson when he was 21 years old, after a character in a book he had read.
    
    
  • He never attended school, and educated himself.
    
    
  • He was a shoemaker and ran his own shoe factory by age 27, and made a lot of money from the business.
    
    
  • He began his political career by serving in both houses of the Massachusetts State Legislature, running as a Whig from 1840 - 1846, and again from 1850 - 1852.
    
    
  • He helped form the Free-Soil Party and then switched to the American Party, otherwise known as the Know-Nothing party, then joined the new Republican party, attracted by it's anti-slavery stance.
    
    
  • He was elected to the US Senate, representing Massachusetts from 1855 - 1873, at which point he was nominated for the Vice Presidency due to his party loyalty and lack of any past scandals and his support for Radical Reconstruction.
    
    
  • Wilson died 2 years in to his term, after a series of strokes while in office.
    

Notable events during his Vice Presidency:

• The Panic of 1873, kicking off a 5-year Depression. The basic causes were the hyper-growth of the railroads, the failures of several large companies, and the crash of the Vienna Stock Market.
  
  
• The first train-robbery in the US, on July 21, 1873. Pulled off by Jesse James and his gang, who made off with $3,000 from the Rock Island Express in Adair, Iowa.
  
  
• The Civil Rights Act, in 1875, which guaranteed blacks equal access to all public facilities. However, the Supreme Court later ruled the Act unconstitutional in 1883.
  
  
• The Resumption of Specie Act, in 1875. A "hard money" man, like Andrew Jackson, President Grant signed this legislation that required the US Treasury Dept. to keep enough gold in reserve such that any and all US paper money could be redeemed for pieces of gold.
  
  
• Colorado admitted to Union in 1876.