Born near Alexandria, Louisiana, on January 7, 1808, Wells' father was Samuel Levi Wells II, a member of Louisiana's constitutional convention in 1811. His mother was the former Dorcas Huie. A brother, Thomas Jefferson Wells, was involved in Louisiana politics. Samuel Wells died when James was 8 years old, leaving eight children.
In 1833, Wells married 15-year-old Mary Ann Scott; together they had 14 children. Wells inherited a substantial estate; he controlled a large cottonplantation called New Hope near Alexandria, a sugar plantation on Bayou Huffpower in Avoyelles Parish called Wellswood, and a large summer home Jessamine Hill near Lecompte, Louisiana. Wells was appointed Sheriff of Rapides Parish in 1840 by Governor Andre B. Roman. Wells was an active Whig and a large slave holder. Eventually, as the Whig Party collapsed in the 1850s, Wells became a Democrat. His brother, Thomas Jefferson Wells, was the Whig nominee for governor in 1859, against eventual winner Thomas Overton Moore.
In 1860, he supported Stephen A. Douglas, the Northern Democratic candidate for president and was an ardent supporter of the Union. For that, he was criticized by his neighbors and by his brother. During the Civil War, Wells was arrested by Confederate officials for his Union sympathies.[citation needed]
Wells remained on his plantation outside Alexandria until the spring of 1863 when he remarked that the recently deceased Gen. "Stonewall" Jackson should be buried "in a gum coffin, and that the bottom plank might be very thin, so that he might eat his way down to where it was intended that he should go." Soon thereafter, he fled into the woods and briefly organized a band of unionist partisans, or Jayhawkers, to attack rebel supply trains. In November, he left the woods and moved to Union-occupied New Orleans.[2]
On March 4, 1864, Wells became lieutenant governor under Governor Michael Hahn. He supported compensated emancipation for former slaves at the Louisiana Constitutional Convention of 1864. One year later, on March 4, 1865, Wells was inaugurated as governor when Michael Hahn resigned to become a United States Senator. In November 1865, a special election was held under the Reconstruction government, and Governor Wells running as a Democrat defeated former Governor Henry W. Allen (who was in Mexico), with 22,312 votes to Allen's 5,497. As governor, Wells removed radicals from office.[citation needed]
Wells came into conflict with the federal military authority under General Nathaniel P. Banks. He supported Hugh Kennedy as New Orleans mayor and appointed numerous former Confederateofficers to state and local offices. He recommended dismantling public education and using only taxes from blacks to pay for freedmen's schools. Wells also wanted to build new levees, a new capitol building, and a state penitentiary, but the Louisiana State Legislature balked at his proposals.
His advocacy of blacksuffrage caused political unrest and riots which led to his unseating. On July 30, 1866, riots erupted over actions taken under the Constitutional Convention of 1864.[citation needed] Governor Wells did little to prevent violence, and General Philip Sheridan held him responsible. Sheridan removed him from office on June 3, 1867, for the riots and for failing to implement reforms regarding freedmen.
Later years
After being removed as governor, Wells went home to Rapides Parish. In 1872 he supported Republican President Ulysses S. Grant's re-election. During the 1870s Wells returned to politics as a "scalawag" and was known by opponents as "Mad Wells." In 1873, he was appointed chairman of the State Returning Board, which was responsible for determining the legality of ballots and for discarding fraudulent votes. In this, Wells helped Republicans regain some of the votes it lost to white Democrats' anti-Black violence and terror. He was consequently appointed Surveyor of the Port of New Orleans (Customs) from 1874 to 1880.
He died on February 28, 1899, at his residence in Rapides Parish, at the age of 91.
Sources
^Ted Tunnell, Crucible of Reconstruction: War, Radicalism, and Race in Louisiana, 1862-1877 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984), 22.
Walter M. Lowrey, "The Political Career of James Madison Wells," Louisiana Historical Quarterly, 31 (October, 1948), pp. 995–1,123, Louisiana Historical Society.
Accompanying Document No. 8 to “Report of Carl Schurz on the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana,” 1865. Correspondence with General E. R. S. Canby.
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