Major Wiley Waller
Written by Justin Lamb
Wilia “Wiley” Waller was born on June 13, 1809 in North Carolina to Henry Waller, veteran of the War of 1812, and Nancy Moore. Waller married Miss Cassy Johnson in 1834 and they moved to Calloway County (now Marshall County) in 1837 settling in the Harvey community.
In 1842 an act was passed in the Kentucky General Assembly which created Marshall County and Wiley Waller soon became one of Marshall County’s leading citizens. For several years, Waller served on the Marshall County Fiscal Court as magistrate of the Harvey Precinct. During the 1840s and 1850s, Waller was a strong supporter of the Whig Party in direct opposition of the more conservative policies of the Democratic Party. While the majority of Marshall Countians were passionately following Andrew Jackson and his Democratic Party, Waller adulated Henry Clay and more liberal Whigs.
With the deaths of Whig Party leaders Clay and Daniel Webster, the party met its demise in the mid-1850s. Back in Marshall County, Waller joined a loosely organized group of anti-Democrats known as the “Opposition” Party which comprised of mostly southern ex- Whigs, Know-Nothings and anti-Jacksonians. The only platform issue the party had was to oppose the policies of the Jacksonian Democratic Party. Wiley Waller was elected State Representative of Marshall and Livingston Counties in 1855 when he narrowly defeated Democrat James Brien in a stunning upset. One of his earliest accomplishments was helping select the route for the state highway from Paducah to Hopkinsville which passed through Marshall County.
During his time as State Representative, tensions began to heat up over the question of states’ rights, slavery, and sectionalism. Representative Waller became a vocal opponent of states’ rights and his support of preserving the Union made him very unpopular back home in Marshall County. When the next election rolled around in 1858, Representative Waller was handily defeated in his re-election bid by Democratic nominee and southern sympathizer James K. Huey.
In the 1860 Presidential Election, Abraham Lincoln, former Whig and member of the newly created Republican Party received zero votes in Marshall County as the county was carried by Southern Democrat John Breckinridge who identified with the cause of southern rights. Wiley Waller and other ex-Whigs in Marshall County supported Constitutional Union Party nominee John Bell who took a moderate position in the sectional crisis calling for compromise to save the Union. Abraham Lincoln won the election nationwide which led to the secession of 11 southern states and sparked the beginning of the War Between the States. Waller’s support for the Union caused him to be a very unpopular figure in Marshall County where he lived in fear of constant assassination. Soon after the war began, Waller assisted in recruiting a company of men to serve with the 15th Kentucky Cavalry of the Union Army.
After State Representative Jesse C. Gilbert was expelled from office for his ties to the Confederacy, Union Military Governor of Kentucky Jeremiah Boyle appointed Wiley Waller as State Representative in 1862 much to the ire of the Confederate majority in Marshall County who resented being represented by a “Yankee sympathizer” in the General Assembly. Following Waller’s appointment, the pro-Confederate Hickman Courier commented, “The Federal Army is shoving a scalawag down the throats of Marshall and Livingston County with the nomination [of Waller]. But make no mistake the needle is no truer to the pole than are the Democracy of Jackson’s purchase to their principles and southern rights.”
Following the war, reconstruction was very minimal in the Jackson Purchase area and soon ex-Confederates took control of every county office. Waller returned to farming in the Harvey community and continued to be an active civic member of the community. He became a member and grand master of Hale Spring Masonic Lodge # 497 and became very active in Republican Party politics even serving as delegate to the 1872 Republican National Convention which nominated for re-election President Ulysses S. Grant with whom Waller served under during Grant’s occupation of Paducah during the war.
At age 76, Major Wiley Waller passed away on September 19, 1885 and was buried in Waller Cemetery in the Harvey community. Waller’s life was best summed up in the History of Kentucky biography sketch by J.H. Battle when he proclaimed, “It may be safely asserted that no man in western Kentucky has been truer to his convictions than has Maj. Wilia Waller.”