Born in Washington, D.C. on February 16, 1840, to the former Tilithacumi Black of Spring Hill, Tennessee and her husband, Harvey Magee Watterson, a Shelbyville, Tennessee lawyer and U.S. Congressman. His father was close to President Andrew Jackson, also from Tennessee, and in 1843 would become the publisher of the Washington Union, the main newspaper of the Democratic party of that era. His uncle in Ohio would also become a newspaper editor, lawyer, Union soldier during the Civil War and ultimately Republican U.S. Supreme Court justiceStanley Matthews. Henry was an only child, with neither brothers nor sisters. He was sickly, with very poor eyesight and that only in one eye, so that his mother home-schooled him in Washington, D.C. and their home in Nashville, Tennessee. until he was twelve years old. She then sent him to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he received his only formal education, at an academy run by an Episcopal priest, and he also ran the school paper, the New Era, on a press his father donated. After the American Civil War as discussed below, in September 1865, Watterson returned to Nashville to marry Rebecca Ewing, with whom he would have six sons and two daughters. They were able to hire live-in Irish servants, and by 1880 his parents also lived with them. Their sons were Ewing, Henry Jr. and Harvey W. Watterson and their daughters were Lady and Ethel Watterson Gilmour.
Career
Watterson became a newspaper reporter early in his life. In 1856 he moved to New York to work on various publication, and in 1858 he moved to Washington to work on other publications. When his father returned to Tennessee in 1861 after the outbreak of the American Civil War, Henry Watterson did too. He volunteered for the Confederate States Army, and was attached at various times to the staffs of Generals Joseph E. Johnston, Leonidas Polk and Nathan B. Forrest. His main contribution to the Confederate war effort, however, was editorial, with the Chattanooga Rebel and the Nashville Banner. After the Confederacy lost, Watterson edited the Cincinnati Evening Post for six months. By September 1865 Watterson returned to Nashville, married, become editor and part owner of the Nashville Banner, where he began his “New Departure” campaign urging national reconciliation. Watterson ultimately settled down in Louisville, Kentucky, having met Walter Newman Haldeman during the war, and began editing the Louisville Journal. That paper merged with the Louisville Courier in 1868, forming the Courier-Journal. This paper soon gained national attention for its excellent reporting. Watterson was a leader of the Liberal Republican movement in 1872. By 1876 he was a Democrat; his proposal for hundreds of thousands of Democrats to march on Washington to force the election of Tilden angered President Ulysses S. Grant, who noted that nobody threatened Grant. Watterson was elected to fill the rest of Edward Y. Parsons' term in the U.S. House when Parsons died in office. Watterson was called "the last of the great personal journalists", writing colorful and controversial editorials on many topics under the pen name "Marse Henry". Hundreds of American papers republished them; they were an early exemplar of the syndicated column which played a significant role creating public support for U.S. intervention in the First World War. Watterson won the Pulitzer Prize in 1918 for two editorials supporting U.S. entry into World War I, and he remained the paper's editor until 1919, retiring after conflicts with Robert Worth Bingham, who purchased the paper in 1918. During his tenure as editor, Watterson was a Democratic representative in Congress from 1876 to 1877. He was also a five-time delegate to the National Democratic Convention, where, in 1892, Watterson received a smattering of votes for the vice presidential nomination. He became widely known as a lecturer and orator. His publications include History of the Spanish–American War and The Compromises of Life.
"Things have come to a hell of a pass, when a man can't whip his own jackass." "We are a great imperial Republic, destined to exercise a controlling influence upon the actions of mankind and to affect the future of the world as the world was never affected, even by the Roman Empire."
