October 11, 2023: Vice President Studying: Henry Wilson’s Book

[50 yearsago this week, VicePresident Spiro Agnew resigned. That striking political moment was not onlypart of the deepeningWatergate scandal, but one of the few times when an American Vice Presidenthas made major news. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Agnew and other noteworthyVeeps, leading up a weekend post on our current VP!]

How a vicepresidential publication helps us rethink an administration.

In a 2019New Year’s series on historical anniversaries, Idedicated a post to the thorny question of how we rememberUlysses S. Grant’s presidency, and more exactly how we acknowledge hisadministration’s significant failures while still highlighting some of itsgenuinely impressive and inspiring elements. Rather than repeat myself here,I’ll ask you to check out that post and then come on back here.

Welcomeback! Grant’s first Vice President, former Indiana Congressman and Speaker ofthe House Schuyler Colfax, declined to seek the office for a second time (atleast in part due to significantconflicts between him and Grant related to those ongoing scandals),and so Grant selected a new running mate for his 1872reelection campaign (and thus a new Vice President once Grant defeatedDemocratic nominee Horace Greeley and earned that second term): HenryWilson, a longtime Massachusetts Senator and leading member of the abolitionistRadical Republicans since before the Civil War. Wilson hadactively sought the Vice Presidential nomination in 1868, and so was poised tomake a real contribution to Grant’s second term and the period’s ongoingbattles over Reconstruction, among other issues. Unfortunately hesuffered a serious stroke in May 1873, just a few months after Grant’s secondinauguration, and although he stayed in office his health declined thereafteruntil he passed away after a second stroke in 1875.

Whilethose health issues likely led Wilson to be a less active contributor toGrant’s second term than he would have liked, another 1872 moment bothexemplifies his impressive voice and illustrates the stakes for thatadministration’s ongoing efforts. In the same year he won the Vice Presidency,Wilson published (with the prominent Boston publisher J.R. Osgood and Company) volumes1 and 2 of his magisterial The History of the Rise and Fall of the SlavePower in America, an important early scholarly effort to tracethe lead up to and events of the Civil War (volume 3 would be published afterhis death, in 1877). In an era when thepropagandistic efforts to reframe the Civil War (and related historiesof slavery and race) around whitesupremacist narratives were well underway, Wilson’s book offeredinstead an abolitionist account of slavery’s centrality to the war, theConfederacy, and (at least implicitly) Reconstruction’s ongoing debates andconflicts. That the soon-to-be Vice President of the U.S. wrote and publishedsuch a book reminds us that whatever its faults, Grant’s administration was fightingfor that abolitionist vision on a number of levels that we can and mustremember (and be inspired by) today.

NextVeepStudying tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Vice Presidents you’d highlight?