American statesman, born in Jefferson County, VA, on the 3rd of May 1843; educated at Charlestown Academy, at Columbian College, District of Columbia, and at the University of Virginia; served in the Confederate army; was professor in Columbian College for a time; practiced law at Charlestown, WV; was a delegate in 1880 to the National Democratic Convention at Cincinnati; was president of West Virginia University, in 1882–83, and was elected to Congress as a Democrat from the Second District of West Virginia in November 1882. In 1883 he received the degree of LL.D. from the Columbian University and Hampden-Sidney College, VA, and was appointed a regent of the Smithsonian Institution in 1884 and reappointed in 1886. In Congress he became prominent as an orator and as an advocate of the Democratic doctrine of free trade, and was successively re-elected, serving six terms. In 1892 he was permanent president of the National Democratic Convention at Chicago, which nominated Grover Cleveland for President, and in the Fifty-third Congress he was chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, the leader of the Democratic majority on the floor, and drafted the bill for the revision and reduction of tariff duties, known as the “Wilson Tariff Bill.” He was defeated for re-election in 1894 by A. G. Dayton, Republican, by a vote of 23,343 to 21,392, but on February 28, 1895, before his term of service had expired, he was appointed by President Cleveland Postmaster-General of the United States, to succeed Wilson S. Bissell, resigned.
