Charles Henry Van Wyck (10 May 1824 – 24 October 1895) was a member of the US House of Representatives (R-NY 10) from 4 March 1859 to 3 March 1863 (succeeding Ambrose S. Murray and preceding William Radford) and from NY-11 from 4 March 1867 to 3 March 1869 (succeeding Charles H. Winfield and preceding George Woodward Greene) and from 7 February 1870 to 3 March 1871 (succeeding Greene and preceding Charles St. John), and a US Senator from Nebraska from 4 March 1881 to 3 March 1887 (interrupting Algernon Paddock's terms).
Biography[]
Charles Henry Van Wyck was born in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1824, and he became a lawyer in Bloomingburg in 1847 and served as district attorney from 1850 to 1856. He went on to serve in the US House of Representatives from 1859 to 1863, from 1867 to 1869, and from 1870 to 1871 as a Republican, and his abolitionist stance was so strong that he was nearly assassinated by knife-wielding pro-slavery activists on Capitol Hill on 22 February 1861 (surviving only because a notebook had been kept in his breast pocket). He also served as a Union Army colonel during the American Civil War, leading the 56th New York in the Army of the Potomac during the Peninsula Campaign, being wounded in the knee at the Battle of Fair Oaks, and ending the war at Charleston, South Carolina. In 1874, he settled in Otoe County, Nebraska, and he served in the State Senate in 1877, 1879, and 1881 before serving in the US Senate from 1881 to 1887. He later joined the Populist Party, and he unsuccessfully ran for Governor in 1892. He died in Washington DC in 1895 at the age of 71.