Benjamin Franklin Wade (1800-1878), a U.S. senator, was a leading Radical Republican in the Civil War era. He supported a vigorous military effort against the South, emancipation, civil rights for African Americans, and a severe Reconstruction.

Benjamin Franklin Wade was born on Oct. 27, 1800, on a farm in Feeding Hills, Mass. He had some scattered schooling before his family moved to Ohio's Western Reserve in 1821. He worked as a farmer, drover, laborer, and schoolteacher, finally establishing a successful law practice in Jefferson, Ohio. He was elected to the Ohio Senate as a Whig in 1837 and 1841. His career there marked him as a product of the reform spirit so prevalent in the Western Reserve in the first half of the 19th century.

Wade opposed imprisonment for debt and special privileges for corporations, and, most of all, he established himself as a convinced opponent of slavery. He vigorously challenged Ohio's...