Capt. Obidiah Jennings Wise

Taken from the book Col. John Wise of England and Virginin by
Jennings Cropper Wise

Gentleness and chivalary, and lofty honour, to those who knew him
truly; of fancied arrogance and haughty pride, and bloody instincts, to those who accepted
common rumour for their estimate of him.  For there were many rumours of this
description afloat--and it must be acknowledged that there was some excuse for the
misconception.  He had little of the spirit of conciliation if he believed a man to
be his foe; managed early to arouse bitter enmities; and continued to defy his opponents
without deigning to explain his character or his motives.  Before he was better
understood--when the mists were only beginning to clear away, and show his virtues of
devotion, and patriotism, and kindness--death called him.

Born in Virginia, and going in his early manhood to Europe as
Secretary of Legation, he there perfected himself in riding, fencing, and all many
exercises; studying political science, and training himself, consciously or unconsciously,
for the arena upon which he was to enter soon after his return.  He came to Virginia
at a time when the atmosphere was stifling with the heat of contending factions in
politics, and becoming the chief editor of the Richmond Enquirer, plunged into the
struggle with all the ardour of a young and ambitious soldier who essays to test the use
of those arms he has been long burnishing for battle.  He did not lack for opponents,
for a great contest was raging, and the minds of men were red-hot with the mighty issues
of the time.  He had scarce thron down the glove when many hands were extended to
take it up.  Then commenced a strife on the political arena, in which the opponents
fought each other with bitter and passionate vehemence.  What the pen wrote, the
pistol, unhappily, was too often called upon to support; and the young politician was ere
long engaged in more than one duel, which achieved for him a widely-extended notoriety and
a duel, which achieved for him a widely-extended notoriety and a venomous party hatred.
  Of these quarrels I do not design to speak.  It is no part of my purpose to
inquire who was to blame or who was faultless; and I would not move the ashes resting now
upon the details of those unhappy affairs, under which the five perhaps still smolders,
full of old enmities.  That he was carried away by passion, often, is unfortunately
too true; but he had no love for conflict, and publicly declared his aversion to
"private war."  Unhappily the minds of his political opponents were too
profoundly swayed by the passions of the epoch to give him credit for these declarations.
  They were not listened to, and the young politician became the mark of extreme
political hatred.  The sins of passion and the heated arena were regarded as the
coolly planned and deliberately designed crimes of a moral monster, who had never felt the
emotion of pity or love for his brother man.  Intelligent and honorable persons
believed that all the young man's instincts were cruel; that his hatreds were capricious
and implacable'; that his nature was that of the tiger, thirsting for blood; his
conscience paralyzed or warped by a terrible moral disease.  His splendid oratory,
his trenchant pen, the dash and courage of his nature, were allowed; but these were his
only "good gifts"; he was, they said, the Ishmael of the modern world.

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