James F. Wilson - U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. House of Representatives

In 1860, Wilson and three others, including incumbent Samuel R. Curtis, vied for the Republican nomination to represent Iowa's 1st congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. Curtis won the nomination, then the general election. After the outbreak of the Civil War, however, Curtis resigned to accept appointment as an officer of the Union Army. At the convention called to choose the Republican nominee to succeed Curtis, "it was a foregone conclusion that James F. Wilson would be the unanimous choice." In October 1861 Wilson was elected to fill the vacancy, easily defeating Democrat Jairus E. Neal.

After completing Curtis's term in the Thirty-seventh Congress, he was re-elected three times, serving in the Thirty-eighth, Thirty-ninth, and Fortieth Congresses. He was chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary during the tumultuous periods during the War and Reconstruction.

Wilson was aligned with the faction of his Party known at the time as the "Radical Republicans." He supported civil rights moves and objected to President Andrew Johnson's attempts to veto the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Reconstruction Acts. Despite his initial misgivings, he ultimately voted to impeach President Johnson and was a member of the prosecution in his impeachment trials in 1868. He supported the first bill in Congress to provide voting rights to black citizens of the District of Columbia. He was not a candidate for renomination in 1868, explaining prior to the district convention that with the election of an acceptable Republican president guaranteed and a change in administration inevitable, a change in representation of the First District was also timely. In all, Wilson served in the House from October 8, 1861, to March 4, 1869.

President Ulysses S. Grant offered Wilson the post of Secretary of State, but Wilson declined it, serving instead as government director of the Pacific Railroad for eight years.