William Wheeler

William Almon Wheeler (June 30, 1819 – June 4, 1887) was an American politician and attorney.

In 1845, he married Mary King (1828–1876).

He studied law with Asa Hascall, a Malone attorney and politician who served as town supervisor, justice of the peace, district attorney, and member of the New York State Assembly.

Wheeler was admitted to the bar in 1845, and practiced in Malone.

He was District Attorney of Franklin County from 1846 to 1849.

He was a member of the Assembly (Franklin County) in 1850 and 1851; and of the New York State Senate (17th D.) in 1858 and 1859.

He served as a United States representative from New York from 1861 to 1863 and 1869 to 1877, and the 19th vice president of the United States from 1877 to 1881.

Born in Malone, New York, Wheeler pursued a legal career after attending the University of Vermont.

After serving in various local positions, he won election to the New York State Legislature.

He served in Congress from 1861 to 1863 and from 1869 to 1877.

He was elected as a Republican to the 37th United States Congress, holding office from March 4, 1861, to March 3, 1863.

Wheeler received the honorary degrees of Master of Arts from Dartmouth College in 1865 and LL.D. from the University of Vermont (1867) and Union College (1877).

He was also president of the New York State Constitutional Convention which met from June 1867 to February 1868.

In his speech accepting the position, he made a strong case for racial equality:

"'[W]e owe it to the cause of universal civil liberty, we owe it to the struggling liberalism of the old world,...that every man within [New York], of whatever race or color, or however poor, helpless, or lowly he may be, in virtue of his manhood, is entitled to the full employment of every right appertaining to the most exalted citizenship.'"

He was elected to the 41st, 42nd, 43rd and 44th United States Congresses, holding office from March 4, 1869, to March 3, 1877.

He was widely respected for his integrity and refused a salary increase after Congress passed an 1873 pay raise that he opposed.

When Congress voted for a pay raise in 1873 and made it retroactive for five years (the Salary Grab Act), Wheeler not only voted against the raise but also returned his salary increase to the Treasury Department.

Wheeler was responsible for the so-called Wheeler Compromise of 1875, which settled a volatile political situation in Louisiana but eventually led to the withdrawal of federal troops and the end of Reconstruction.

After the 1876 Republican National Convention settled on Rutherford B. Hayes as the party's presidential nominee after seven ballots, the delegates nominated Wheeler for vice president.

Nominated by Congressman Luke P. Poland, Wheeler surged into an early lead over Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, Marshall Jewell, and Stewart L. Woodford to clinch the nomination on the first ballot.

Wheeler was nominated because he was popular among his colleagues and had worked to avoid making enemies in Congress.

In addition, as a resident of the populous Eastern state of New York, he provided geographical balance to the ticket, since Hayes was from the populous Midwest state of Ohio.

The Republican ticket prevailed in the contentious 1876 presidential election, though they lost the popular vote.

Though they had not known each other before the convention, Wheeler and Hayes got along amicably while in office.

They chose not to seek second terms, and Wheeler returned to Malone, New York, after the end of his term.

In 1876, he received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Vermont "as in course", making him a graduate of the class of 1842.

Wheeler was a delegate to the 1876 Republican National Convention, which had nominated Rutherford B. Hayes for president on the seventh ballot.

Wheeler was considered a "safe" choice for the vice presidential nomination, as he had not made many enemies over the course of his political career, though Roscoe Conkling himself supported the former congressman from New York, Stewart L. Woodford.

When the time came for the convention to nominate a vice presidential candidate, congressman Luke P. Poland of Vermont nominated Wheeler, who immediately surged to the lead over Woodford and several other candidates.

By the time the roll call reached New York, the result was apparent, and Woodford withdrew, enabling New York to cast all its votes for Wheeler.

He died in 1887 and was buried at Morningside Cemetery in Malone.

During Wheeler's vice presidency, the Hayes administration abandoned post-Civil War Reconstruction and pursued an alliance between Northern Republicans and Old Southern Whigs.

Hayes hoped former Whigs who made up the South's business and merchant classes would supplant the Democratic plantation owners who dominated politics and government.

This scenario did not materialize, and the end of Republican efforts to ensure civil rights and social equality for former slaves doomed Southern blacks to oppression by white supremacists, who enacted Jim Crow laws that lasted for decades.

William Almon Wheeler was born in Malone, New York, and attended Franklin Academy and the University of Vermont, although monetary concerns forced him to drop out without graduating.

During his House tenure, Wheeler served as chairman of the Committee on Pacific Railroads (42nd Congress) and the Committee on Commerce (43rd Congress).

Wheeler's reputation for honesty was celebrated by Allan Nevins in his introduction to John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage. Roscoe Conkling, a Senator and New York State political boss, once offered, "Wheeler, if you will act with us, there is nothing in the gift of the State of New York to which you may not reasonably aspire."

Wheeler declined with "Mr. Conkling, there is nothing in the gift of the State of New York which will compensate me for the forfeiture of my self-respect."

Wheeler served as president of New York's Northern Railroad.