CX.
CX. HENRY H. WELLS.
CX. Provisional Governor.
CX. April 16, 1868, to April 21, 1869.
Henry H. Wells was born in Rochester, New York,
September 17, 1823. He was educated at the Romeo Academy
in Michigan, and adopting law as his profession he was
admitted to the bar in Detroit. Here, he was a successful
practitioner from 1846 to 1861, serving in the Michigan Legislature
from 1854 to 1856.
Upon the breaking out of the late civil war, Mr. Wells
entered the volunteer service of the United States Army, and
rose to the distinction of Brigadier-General. Having resigned
from the army, he located in 1865 in Richmond,
Virginia, and resumed the practice of law. Here he was appointed,
April 16, 1868, by General John M. Schofield, United
States Army, commanding the First Military District of Virginia,
Provisional Governor of Virginia. He held this station
until April 21, 1869, when he resigned, and Gilbert C. Walker,
Governor-elect of the state, by popular vote, was appointed in
his stead, by General E. R. S. Canby, United States Army,
then commanding the First Military District of Virginia.
General Wells was soon after appointed United States Attorney
for the Eastern District of Virginia, which position he
held until 1872, when he resigned and resumed the practice
of law. In 1875 he removed to Washington City, and in
September of that year was appointed and entered upon the
duties of United States Attorney for the District of Columbia.
He held this post until 1879.
The period when General Wells was Governor of Virginia
was an exceptional era in the chequered history of the state;
these were not days of order and administration under settled
and regular provisions of law enacted by chosen law-makers,
—but they were days of contest, struggle, and strife, of suspicion
and misunderstanding. Notwithstanding all these
untoward circumstances, the people were not defrauded of
their just rights or of their property with the knowledge or
consent of Governor Wells, and especially, were not disturbed
in any way by force or disorder. Their substance
was not wasted by improvident expenditures, and many
unrecorded kindnesses were extended to them by their military
Governor. Only those who have lived through such an
ordeal as Virginia then experienced, when
"Hope for a season bade the world farewell,"
can estimate the terrors of—what might have been.
But a common, noble past is a strong constituent in American
brotherhood; and in looking back we feel that the
memory of the surrender at Yorktown lessened the sting of
the surrender at Appomatox. The glorious sun of July 4th,
which for so long had warmed the great national heart, and
burned into it a love of unity and independence, now touched
the tear-drops of a Fallen Cause, and turned these emblems
of a weeping night into the prismatic spectrum of a better
morrow.
