Henry A. Wise - Postbellum Activities

Postbellum Activities

After the war Wise resumed his law practice in Richmond, and settled there for the rest of his life. In 1865 he was unable to reclaim Rolleston, his plantation outside Norfolk, before he received pardon from the president. He had abandoned the residence when he moved his family to another residence at Rocky Mount, Virginia.

As recounted in an exchange of letters published in the New York Times, Maj. Gen. Terry of the U.S. command in the Norfolk area did not permit Wise to reclaim the Rolleston property. Terry stated that under post-war conditions of parole for Confederate officers, Wise had claim only to the Rocky Mount property, where he and his family were living when he went to war. The Freedman's Bureau adapted Rolleston Hall and other plantations in the Norfolk area as schools for the newly emancipated slaves and their children. Two hundred freedmen were said to be taking classes at Rolleston.

Along with working at his law career, Wise wrote a book based on his public service, entitled Seven Decades of the Union (1872). His two surviving sons were both active in state and Federal politics.

His younger son John Sergeant Wise wrote a memoir entitled The End of an Era, (1899), reprinted in numerous editions since its first publication. John Wise was fourteen in the summer of 1860 and served in the Confederate Army late in the war. He wrote about his own memories of Rolleston, a childhood slave companion and friend, and the war years, as well as about his father's role and their family members. In addition, Henry A. Wise's grandson Barton Haxall Wise wrote a biography of the former governor entitled The Life of Henry A. Wise of Virginia (New York, 1899).

The older son, Richard A. Wise, was a student at the College of William and Mary when the war began in 1861. During the war, he served with J. E. B. Stuart and later as aide-de-camp to his father during the Battle of Roanoke Island. After the war, he earned his MD degree at the Medical College of Virginia in 1869. He served as a professor of chemistry at William and Mary (1869–1878). In 1871 he helped reorganize a volunteer militia for the city of Williamsburg and James City County, Virginia, which he commanded. Known as the Wise Light Infantry, the unit continued at least through 1885, when it appeared during the inaugural festivities of President Grover Cleveland in Washington.

Richard A. Wise later served in politics like his father: he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates (1885–1887); served as clerk of the court of Williamsburg and James City County, 1888–1894; and was elected as a member of the U. S. House of Representatives, serving April 26, 1898 to March 3, 1899 and again March 12, 1900 until his death on December 21, 1900.