page_title: Henry M. Mathews
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Henry M. Mathews / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: Henry Mathews Guinea stamp
context_page_description: Henry Mason Mathews was an American military officer, lawyer, and politician in the U.S. State of West Virginia. Mathews served as 7th Attorney General of West Virginia and 5th Governor of West Virginia, being the first former Confederate elected to a governorship in the United States. Born into a Virginia political family, Mathews practiced law before the outbreak of the American Civil War. When Virginia seceded from the United States in 1861, he volunteered for the Confederate States Army, where he served in the western theater as a major of artillery. Following the war, Mathews was elected to the West Virginia Senate, but denied the seat due to state restrictions for former Confederates. He participated in the 1872 state constitutional convention that overturned these restrictions, and was thereafter elected attorney general of West Virginia. After one term, he was elected governor of West Virginia.
  Mathews was identified as a Redeemer, the southern wing of the conservative, pro-business Bourbon faction of the Democratic Party that sought to oust the Radical Republicans who had come to power across the postwar South.
context_section_description: In policy Mathews was a strict Bourbon Democrat. He established a state immigration bureau to attract new workers to the state, expanded the coal and oil industries, improved transportation, and funded a state geological survey. He was described by West Virginia historian James Callahan as "a patriotic, broad, and liberal minded ex-Confederate who had fully accepted the results of the Civil War and was well fitted to lead in meeting living issues." His administration at large has been characterized as "an era of good feeling," due to his appointing of Republicans to office during his Democratic tenure.
  Fellow West Virginia Governor William A. MacCorkle, in Recollections of Fifty Years of West Virginia (1928), said of him: "He was not a good come-and-take debater, but when he had prepared himself to make an oration on the issues of the day, he was splendid. His oratory was easy, smooth, perfectly balanced, his voice was splendidly modulated, his gestures were perfect, and he could make as fine an impression on a rather cultivated audience as any man in the state." Historian Mary L. Rickard, in the Calendar of the Henry Mason Mathews Letters and Papers in the State Department of Archives and History (1941),  offered a critical analysis of his administration: "At this time there was less wealth per capita in West Virginia than in 1865, the result of which had a pronounced effect upon State politics. Those highest up in the social scale held the highest political positions and the entire organization became dangerously corrupt." However, West Virginia historian Richard Fast notes that no committee to investigate any alleged scandal or mismanagement was appointed during Mathews' term.
caption: Henry M. Mathews on a 2010 Republic of Guinea stamp
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