Benjamin Wade

Benjamin Wade was a U.S. senator from Ohio who served from 1851 to 1869. He was a member of the Radical Republicans who fervently supported abolition and who wanted to give blacks equal rights. In 1864 Wade joined Maryland representative Henry Davis to come up with the Wade-Davis Bill. It required 50% of white men in each seceded state to take an oath of allegiance to the U.S. before that state could be readmitted to the Union. It passed both chambers of Congress but President Abraham Lincoln refused to sign it, favoring more conciliatory deals with the recalcitrant South.

Following Lincoln's assassination, President Andrew Johnson continued his predecessor's policies toward the South, which Wade and the Radical Republicans openly criticized. In 1868 they got a big opportunity to put one of their own in the White House. Johnson was impeached for violating the Tenure of Office Act, and needed a two-thirds vote in the Senate to be removed. If kicked out, the president pro tempore, Wade, would become president. Johnson was eventually acquitted, but survived by only a single vote. Thus, Benjamin Wade was one of the closest people ever to become president of the U.S.