Senator James Faulkner Wilson View All Years

JAMES F. WILSON.

The election of James F. Wilson, Senator-elect of the U. S. Senate, was a perfect ovation. Here follows his early history: Born in Newark, Ohio, be was left an orphan at ten years of age, by the death of a good father. Left with other younger children, he did all he could to help a widowed mother and her family, working at everything a boy was able to do. At fourteen years of age, he went to the saddler’s trade, and, while faithful to his employer, he used nights to study, often not sleeping over three hours out of the twenty-four. Rev. Dr. Duncan taught him Latin, he reading Cicero and other authors in that tongue, with proficiency. A teacher of that place taught him mathematics. Distinguished lawyers lent him law books, and everybody favored the growing youth and young man.

He was admitted to the bar, and married his present estimable wife, and removed to Fairfield, Iowa, then a small village, where he practiced his profession with success. He was early elected to the House of Representatives of Iowa, where he rose to be chairman of the judiciary committee; he held the same position in the constitutional convention, under which we now live. Soon he was elected to Congress, the lower house, and early rose to be chairman of the judiciary committee, till he resigned his seat in Congress. It is credibly reported that he declined a seat in the cabinet, his ambition being to become a constitutional lawyer of the Websterian sort. How well he has succeeded, his compeers, very few of them his equals, may best judge.

His aspiration to the Senate for the long term was simply in furtherance of his main design–to become a statesman of a high order, and to help settle the questions of our government not yet established by law. And he will be well capable and highly qualified to do it.

His example is worthy of all praise, and may be quoted for every hard working young man. He stands forth a self-made man, having wrought out his own fortune to his present state and standing, at home and abroad. He is comparatively young, only fifty-three–just the number of acres in his farm in the suburbs of Fairfield. He has constructed a large fish-pond, eighteen feet deep, so that fish can live through the winter. A smaller pond he has made to water his select stock, so that by turning a faucet he can supply his herd. He makes his own gas of gasoline, cheaper than the city can furnish it, at the distance which he lives from town. But he pays all town taxes, and warms his house with steam from his own furnace. Thus independent, he still consents to serve his adopted State on the wide theatre of a United States Senator, a worthy successor of Grimes and Kirkwood. May he long live to serve his constituents in Congress.

It is amusing to see Mr. Wilson ride triumphantly into the United States Senate. One candidate after another dropped out of the list, till Wilson stood alone in “solitary grandeur.” This may seem the laudation of a friend of many years in Iowa; but it is merited praise. His late lectures on public occasions, partly literary and partly relating to bible subjects, discover a very nervous style, very precise diction, and every way an earnest and eloquent man, going “straight forward” to his aim. He well illustrates Webster’s definition of true eloquence: “It’s in the man, in the occasion, and in the subject.” His printed papers are worthy of study by young men. May God raise up more defenders not only of government, but of general truth.

It would be improper, in a periodical of this sort and space, to speak of his family, a precious wife and three children, dear to him as the apple of his eye. Nor can the writer forget, when leaving their hospitable mansion, how a can was offered him, and he has it now to use, when sickness and other cause will allow its contents to be opened to guests.

Mr. Wilson no longer practices in any but the higher courts of the State and of the United States. Of his merits as a special pleader, the writer cannot speak from observation, but his general repute is well known. Still comparatively young, he is destined to rise in the world of statesmen.