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History and Government—Congressional Biographies—VirginiaWISE, Henry Alexander
(1806—1876)
WISE, Henry Alexander, (father of John Sergeant Wise and Richard Alsop Wise and uncle of George Douglas Wise), a Representative from Virginia; born in Drummondtown, Accomack County, Va., December 3, 1806; was privately tutored until his twelfth year and then entered Margaret Academy, near Pungoteague, Accomack County; was graduated from Washington College, Pennsylvania, in 1825; studied law in Winchester, Va.; was admitted to the bar in 1828 and commenced practice in Nashville, Davidson County, Tenn.; returned to Virginia in 1830; held several local offices; elected as a Jacksonian to the Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth Congresses, as a Whig to the Twenty-fifth through Twenty-seventh Congresses, and as a Democrat to the Twenty-eighth Congress and served from March 4, 1833, until his resignation on February 12, 1844; chairman, Committee on Naval Affairs (Twenty-seventh and Twenty-eighth Congresses); was appointed Minister to France in 1843, but was not confirmed; Minister to Brazil 1844-1847; delegate to the State constitutional convention in 1850; Governor of Virginia 1856-1860; delegate to the Virginia Convention, 1861; served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War; resumed the practice of law in Richmond, Henrico County, Va.; served on the commission to fix the boundary line between Virginia and Maryland; died in Richmond, Va., September 12, 1876; interment in Hollywood Cemetery.
Bibliography
Simpson, Craig M. A Good Southerner: The Life of Henry A. Wise of Virginia.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985; Wise, Henry Alexander. Seven Decades of the Union
. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1872.
Adkins, Edwin P. “Henry A. Wise in Sectional Politics, 1833-1860.” Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, 1949.
Bear, James A., Jr., ed. “Henry A. Wise and the Campaign of 1873: Some Letters from the Papers of James Lawson Kemper.” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography
62 (July 1954): 320-42.
Child, Lydia Maria Francis. Correspondence between Lydia Maria Child and Gov. Wise and Mrs. Mason, of Virginia
. Boston: The American Anti-slavery Society, 1860.
Goldfield, David R. “Marketing a Candidate: Henry A. Wise and the Art of Mass Politics.” Virginia Cavalcade
26 (Summer 1976): 30-37.
Hambleton, James Pinkney. A biographical sketch of Henry A. Wise, with a history of the political campaign in Virginia in 1855
. Richmond, Va.: J. W. Randolph, 1856.
Simpson, Craig M. A Good Southerner: The Life of Henry A.
Wise of Virginia.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985.
Wise, Barton Haxall. The Life of Henry A. Wise of Virginia, 1806-1876
. New York: Macmillan, 1899.
Wise, Henry Alexander. Address of Gen. Henry A. Wise, before the literary societies of Roanoke College, Salem, Virginia, June 17, 1873
. Baltimore: J. D. Ehlers & Co., engravers and steam book and job printers, [1873].
———. The Lecompton question. Governor Wise’s Tammany
. [Richmond? 1858]
———. Opinions of Hon. Henry A. Wise, upon the conduct and character of James K. Polk, as Speaker of the House of Representatives, with other ”Democratic” illustrations
. [Washington: N.p., 1840].
———. [Remarks, on the bill to invorporate the subscribers to the fiscal bank of the United States
. Washington: National Intelligencer
Office, 1841]
———. Seven decades of the Union
. The humanities and materialism, illustrated by a memoir of John Tyler, with reminiscences of some of his great cotemporaries. The transition state of this nation—its dangers and their remedy. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1876.
———. Speech of Mr. Wise, of Virginia, on his resolutions, on the subject of the President’s protest to the Senate; the proper custody of the public money; the right of Congress to control the same, c.
Washington: Printed by Gales and Seaton, 1834.
———. Speech of Mr. Wise, (of Virginia,) on the causes of the loss of the Fortification bill of the last session
. [N.p., 1836?]
Woodward, Isaiah A. “Delegates Faulkner, Brown and Wise and the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1850 and 1851.” West Virginia History
25 (January 1964): 130-37.
Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present
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