Jacksonian Democratic Party and was active in politics. A delegate to the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1850, Wise opposed any reforms, insisting that the protection of slavery came first. In the statewide election of 1855, Wise was elected Governor of Virginia as a Democrat, defeating Know-Nothing candidate Thomas S. Flournoy. He was the 33rd Governor of Virginia, serving from 1856 to 1860, and the last Eastern Shore Governor until Ralph Northam was elected in 2017. Wise County, Virginia, was named after him when it was established in 1856. Although he was visibly and unapologetically a defender of slavery, he opposed the imposition of the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution on Kansas Territory, as residents of Kansas had not approved it: "And why impose this Constitution of a minority on a majority? Cui bono? ["Who would that benefit?"] Does any Southern man imagine that this is a practicable or sufferable way of making a slave State?" Under the Virginia Constitution, governors cannot serve successive terms, so he was not a candidate for reelection in 1860. John Brown Wise was intensely interested in the case of John Brown, who briefly took over the town of Harpers Ferry. Wise refers several times to the need to "avenge the insulted honor of the state". He said he found it humiliating that Brown's ragtag group could take Harpers Ferry, Virginia, and hold it for even one hour. He traveled from Richmond to Harpers Ferry immediately and interviewed him at length. After returning to Richmond, in a widely reported speech, he praised Brown, but he also called Brown and his men "murderers, traitors, robbers, insurrectionists," and "wanton, malicious, unprovoked felons." However, Governor Wise did many things to augment rather than reduce tensions: by insisting he was tried in Virginia and turning Charles Town into an armed camp full of state militia units. "At every juncture he chose to escalate rather than pacify sectional animosity." Some sources say that Wise signed John Brown's death warrant, but this is incorrect; under Virginia law, the governor did not need to sign such a document, as Wise pointed out. After Brown was sentenced to death, Wise could have commutated his sentence to life imprisonment, as was recommended to him by many people. The efforts to pressure Wise became so intense that, according to the Richmond Enquirer, he was offered the presidency in exchange for a pardon. An unsigned letter from "a Green