James F. Wilson

James Falconer "Jefferson Jim" Wilson (October 19, 1828 – April 22, 1895) was an American lawyer and politician. He served as a Republican U.S. Congressman from Iowa's 1st congressional district during the American Civil War, and later as a two-term U.S. Senator from Iowa. He was a pioneer in the advancement of federal protection for civil rights.

While in the United States House of Representatives, he had prominently opposed the 1867 effort to impeach President Andrew Johnson. However, he voted for the subsequent 1868 impeachment of Johnson, and served as a manager (prosecutor) during Johnson's impeachment trial.

In the last half of the nineteenth century, two unrelated Iowans named James Wilson achieved high office, necessitating an early form of disambiguation. Representative and Senator James F. Wilson (of Jefferson County, Iowa) became known as "Jefferson Jim" Wilson, while Representative and Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson (of Tama County, Iowa) became known as "Tama Jim" Wilson.

Wilson was born in Newark, Ohio. After his father died when James was eleven, James needed to work from an early age, and attended school when work permitted. After serving as a harnessmaker's apprentice, he studied law in Newark alongside future U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Burnham Woods. He was admitted to the bar in 1851 and practiced in Newark until 1853.

In 1853, he moved to Fairfield, Iowa, where he resumed the practice of law. Three years later in 1856 amidst the 1856 United States presidential election, Wilson ran for and was elected to serve as a delegate to the Convention for the Revision of the Constitution of Iowa. The following year he was elected to the Iowa House of Representatives, where he served in the Ways and Means Committee.

During his early career, Wilson's opposition towards slavery led him to join the Free Soil Party.

Wilson played an important role in the formation of the Iowa Republican Party, and antebellum Iowa government. In 1857, he was a delegate to Iowa's constitutional convention, and served as a Republican in the Iowa House of Representatives that year and in 1859, when he was elected to the Iowa Senate. He served on the Committee of the Judiciary, and later served as a delegate to the 1860 Republican National Convention which nominated Abraham Lincoln of Illinois and Hannibal Hamlin of Maine to head the party ticket for the presidential election.

In 1860, Wilson and three others, including incumbent Samuel R. Curtis, vied for the Republican nomination to represent Iowa's 1st congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. Curtis won the nomination, then the general election. After the outbreak of the Civil War, however, Curtis resigned to accept appointment as an officer of the Union Army. At the convention called to choose the Republican nominee to succeed Curtis, "it was a foregone conclusion that James F. Wilson would be the unanimous choice." In October 1861 Wilson was elected to fill the vacancy, easily defeating Democrat Jairus Edward Neal.