Benjamin "Bluff" Wade (27 October 1800 – 2 March 1878) was a US Senator from Ohio (R) from 15 March 1851 to 4 March 1869, succeeding Thomas Ewing Sr. and preceding Allen G. Thurman.
Biography[]
Benjamin Wade was born in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1800, and he worked as a laborer on the Erie Canal before establishing a law practice in Jefferson County, Ohio. From 1837 to 1842, he served in the State Senate as a Whig, and, after a stint as a local judge, he served in the US Senate from 1851 to 1869. He opposed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and he joined the nascent Republican Party as the Whigs collapsed. He became known as one of the most radical of the era's Radical Republicans, favoring women's suffrage, labor union rights, and equality for African-Americans. During the American Civil War, he was highly critical of President Abraham Lincoln's leadership, and, after the war, he proposed strict terms for the re-admittance of Confederate states. In 1868, his unpopularity with his more moderate Republican colleagues was a factor in President Andrew Johnson's acquittal by the US Senate, and he lost for re-election. He remained active in law and politics until his death in 1878.