Waitman T. Willey

• 1. Introduction

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  Waitman Thomas Willey walked out of his home on Christmas Day 1827 with all his belongings wrapped in a single handkerchief. He was seventeen years old, and he was heading to college on foot. His family had only been able to spare him about two months of schooling his whole life. That morning, he set off from his home in what would later become West Virginia, walking toward Madison College in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. He would arrive, work hard enough to tutor other students, and graduate six months ahead of schedule. That same relentless drive would carry him into one of the most consequential political roles in American history. Who was the man who helped create a new state out of the chaos of civil war? How does a log-cabin boy from Buffalo Creek end up shaping the legal architecture of West Virginia, and casting a vote that came within one ballot of removing a president from office?

• 2. The Making of a Lawyer

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  Philip Doddridge, a prominent western Virginia sectional leader, took Willey under his wing when the young man returned from college. Willey moved to Wellsburg to read law under Doddridge's guidance, and by September 1832, he had been admitted to the Virginia bar. He then relocated to Morgantown, where he set up his private legal practice. The law gave him standing, but politics gave him reach. He threw himself into the Whig Party, and by 1840, he was serving as an elector for the William Henry Harrison and John Tyler presidential ticket. That same year he lost a bid for a seat as a delegate to the Virginia General Assembly. Voters still trusted him locally: in 1841, Monongalia County elected him Clerk of the County Court, a post they handed back to him several times until he stepped away in 1852. He became a reliable figure at temperance campaigns and the local literacy society. In 1834, he married Elizabeth Ray, and the two had six children together before her death. Those children included Mary E. Casselberry, Sarah B. Hagans, William P. Willey, Julia E. McGrew, Thomas R. Willey, Louisa A. Willey, and John B. Willey. Honorary degrees later arrived from Allegheny College, Augusta College, and West Virginia University, recognizing the self-taught boy who had built a career through sheer persistence.

• 3. A Voice Against Eastern Dominance

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  At the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1850, Willey was one of four delegates representing Marion, Preston, Monongalia, and Taylor Counties. He argued forcefully for universal suffrage for white men and made clear his conviction that eastern Virginia's elites had concentrated far too much political power. His speech, titled "Liberty and Union," spread his name beyond the counties that had sent him. That widening reputation pushed him toward higher office, but the results were mixed. In 1852, he ran as the Whig candidate for Congress and lost. In 1859, he stood as the Whig candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Virginia and lost again. The following year, he campaigned on behalf of Everett and Bell of the Constitutional Union Party in the presidential election, and they lost badly to Republican Abraham Lincoln. Three failed campaigns in eight years might have ended a lesser career. For Willey, they were preparation for what the secession crisis was about to demand of him.

• 4. Secession and the Statehood Fight

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  When Virginia called a Secession Convention in 1861, Monongalia County sent Willey alongside J.M. Heck and Marshall M. Dent. Willey stood before the delegates and warned them about the destruction that civil war would bring. He voted against secession multiple times. The ordinance passed anyway, and Virginia left the Union on the 17th of April, 1861. Rather than follow his state into the Confederacy, Willey joined the First Wheeling Convention that May. That gathering set in motion the process that would eventually produce a new state. Willey had his complications there too: he was among those who blocked John S. Carlile's proposal for immediate statehood, preferring a slower path. He chose not to seek a seat at the Second Wheeling Convention in June, which established the Restored Government of Virginia. Yet the men who built that government chose him, along with Carlile, as one of its first two U.S. Senators. On the 29th of May, 1862, Willey personally presented the petition to Congress for the creation of West Virginia. Passage was not simple. An abolitionist address by Reverend Gordon Battelle had already shaped the conversation in Congress, and Radical Republicans were not satisfied with the bill as written. Willey, who himself had owned domestic slaves and had previously argued for compensated emancipation, offered a compromise amendment. It provided for the emancipation of slaves under twenty-one years of age on the 4th of July, 1863, upon each of them reaching the age of twenty-one. That amendment won over the Radical Republicans and secured passage of the statehood bill.

• 5. Raids, Escapes, and a Senate Vote

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  In April 1863, Confederate forces under Jones launched the Jones-Imboden raid, aiming to destroy Baltimore and Ohio Railroad tracks and seize the Restored Government of Virginia at Wheeling. Willey was specifically named as one of their targets. When Jones's troops reached Kingwood and Morgantown, they tried to destroy a suspension bridge over the Monongahela River. They failed. Willey, for his part, escaped into Pennsylvania in a fast buggy. The raiders pressed on to Fairmont, where they destroyed the library of Governor Francis Pierpont. The Senate had seated Willey to fill the vacancy left by James M. Mason, who had abandoned his seat to join the Confederacy. By 1863, Willey was formally one of the first two U.S. Senators from the new state of West Virginia, serving alongside Peter G. Van Winkle, until 1871. He drew the short term of two years initially, which kept him largely on the sidelines of West Virginia's own Constitutional Convention at Wheeling. He was still present for one of the most dramatic moments in Senate history: the impeachment vote on President Andrew Johnson, which failed by exactly one vote. Willey voted to remove Johnson. His fellow senator Van Winkle voted the other way.

• 6. Later Years and Lasting Marks

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  After serving one full Senate term, Willey retired from Congress in 1871. He was not done with public life. The following year, he served as a delegate to the West Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1872, and was also elected to the General Conference of the Methodist Church, though he declined that appointment. He accepted a delegate-at-large post at the National Republican Convention in 1876. He attended the Methodist General Conference of 1880. When the incumbent Clerk of the County Court in Monongalia County died in 1882, officials asked Willey to take a temporary appointment, and he agreed. Voters then elected him to a full six-year term in 1884. His political influence faded as Democrats reclaimed power in West Virginia, but his professional mark endured through the men he had taught. He tutored many students who went on to become judges and leading members of the West Virginia bar. His son William became a professor at West Virginia University in Morgantown. Willey died on the 2nd of May, 1900, at the age of eighty-eight, and was buried at Oak Grove Cemetery in Morgantown. The house he built in 1839-1840 outlasted most of what he had known: it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, and renovated in 2012, the neighborhood around it long since transformed into the Chancery Hill Addition of an industrialized city.