Waitman Thomas Willey (18 October 1811 – 2 May 1900) was a US Senator from Virginia (U) from 9 July 1861 to 3 March 1863 (succeeding James Murray Mason and preceding Lemuel J. Bowden) and from West Virginia from 4 August 1863 to 3 March 1871 (preceding Henry G. Davis).
Biography[]
Waitman Thomas Willey was born in Marion County, West Virginia in 1811, and he became a lawyer in 1832. In 1840, he was a presidential elector for the William Henry Harrison/John Tyler; from 1841 to 1852, he was the Monongalia County clerk. In 1850, he argued for universal manhood suffrage for white men at the state constitutional convention, and he was an unsuccessful Whig congressional candidate in 1852. He supported the Constitutional Union Party in the 1860 presidential election, and he was also a conservative and a slaveowner; however, he supported the secession of West Virginia from Virginia. A US Senator from Virginia from 1861, he became a Senator from West Virginia that same year after it seceded from the Confederacy. He served until 1871, changing party affiliation to Republican in 1865, but he lost when the Democrats regained power in the state, and he died in 1900.