Henry Wilson: From Indentured Servant to Vice President

Henry Wilson portrait

     Few American political figures embody the ideals of self-determination and moral conviction quite like Henry Wilson. Born Jeremiah Jones Colbath on February 16, 1812, in Farmington, New Hampshire, Wilson's journey from indentured servitude to the second-highest office in the nation stands as a testament to perseverance and principle. His lifelong crusade against slavery would define not only his career but also shape the course of American history during its most turbulent era.

Wilson's early life was marked by hardship. At just ten years old, his impoverished father bound him out as an apprentice to a local farmer, where he would labor until age twenty-one with minimal formal education. Yet this experience of servitude, however mild compared to chattel slavery, instilled in him a profound understanding of bondage that would fuel his abolitionist fire. Upon gaining his freedom, he legally changed his name to Henry Wilson and walked over one hundred miles to Natick, Massachusetts, where he learned the shoemaking trade. Through determination and business acumen, the young cobbler eventually built a thriving shoe factory, earning wealth and the enduring nickname "The Natick Cobbler."

Wilson's political awakening came during a trip to Washington, D.C., where he witnessed slavery firsthand—the auctions, the chains, the systematic dehumanization. After seeing slaves at work and visiting the slave pens in Maryland, he became a committed abolitionist. This would become the central mission of his life. He entered politics through the Massachusetts legislature in 1840, initially as a Whig, but his frustration with the party's compromises on slavery led him to help establish the Free Soil Party in 1848. He worked diligently to build an anti-slavery coalition that united various factions—Free Soilers, anti-slavery Democrats, Liberty Party members, and eventually the newly formed Republican Party.

Sir Henry Wilson, First Baronet

Elected to the United States Senate in 1855, Wilson served with distinction until 1873, becoming Chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs during the Civil War. His legislative achievements were substantial and consequential. In April 1862, he authored the District of Columbia Emancipation Act, which President Lincoln signed into law, freeing approximately three thousand enslaved people in the nation's capital. He championed equal pay for African American soldiers, successfully adding provisions to the 1864 Enrollment Act that guaranteed formerly enslaved people who enlisted would be considered permanently free by federal action, preventing any possibility of re-enslavement. This single measure freed over twenty thousand individuals in Kentucky alone.

After the war, Wilson aligned with the Radical Republicans, pushing for comprehensive civil rights protections and opposing President Andrew Johnson's lenient approach to Reconstruction. In 1872, Wilson was chosen as Ulysses S. Grant's running mate, marketed as the "Natick Shoemaker" to complement Grant's "Galena Tanner"—a ticket designed to appeal to working-class Americans. Though he won the vice presidency, Wilson's tenure was tragically brief.

Article regarding the Death
of Henry Wilson

Suffering from poor health and grief following the deaths of his wife and son, Wilson spent much of his vice presidency writing his three-volume work, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America. On November 22, 1875, he died of a stroke at age sixty-three while working in the Capitol.

Henry Wilson's legacy endures as a champion of human dignity who understood that true freedom requires not just emancipation, but equality, opportunity, and unwavering moral courage.

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