George D. Wise


George Douglas Wise was a U.S. Representative from Virginia, cousin of John Sergeant Wise and Richard Alsop Wise and nephew of Henry Alexander Wise.

Biography

The son of Tully Robinson and Margaret Douglas Pettitt Wise, he was born at "Deep Creek," the Wise estate in Accomack County, near Onancock, Virginia, Wise was graduated from Indiana University at Bloomington.
He studied law in the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia.
He was admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Richmond, Virginia.
He served as captain in the Confederate States Army during the Civil War.
He was Commonwealth's attorney of the city of Richmond from 1870 to 1889, when he resigned.
Wise was elected as a Democrat to the Forty-seventh and to the three succeeding Congresses.
He served as chairman of the Committee on Manufactures.
Presented credentials as a Member-elect to the Fifty-first Congress and served from March 4, 1889, to April 10, 1890, when he was succeeded by Edmund Waddill, Jr., who contested his election.
Wise embraced ideas of a master race, once telling the House of Representatives that "if I could I would not have the mingling of Caucasian blood with that of any inferior race." He referred to Chinese immigrants as "this indigestible mass... inferior in mental and moral qualities... a continual menace to the existence of republican institutions.”
Wise was elected to the Fifty-second and Fifty-third Congresses.
He served as chairman of the committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. Wise was a delegate to the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1901-1902.
He died in Richmond, Virginia, February 4, 1908.
He was interred in Hollywood Cemetery.

Electoral History