Josiah Thomas Walls was a United States Congressman who served three separate terms in Congress between 1871 and 1876.

Early life

Josiah Walls was born a slave near Winchester, Virginia

Winchester, Virginia

Winchester is an independent city located in the northwestern portion of the Commonwealth of Virginia in the USA. The city's population was 26,203 according to the 2010 Census...

. He was forced to join the Confederate Army and was captured by the Union Army

Union Army

The Union Army was the land force that fought for the Union during the American Civil War. It was also known as the Federal Army, the U.S. Army, the Northern Army and the National Army...

 in 1862 at Yorktown

Battle of Yorktown (1862)

The Battle of Yorktown or Siege of Yorktown was fought from April 5 to May 4, 1862, as part of the Peninsula Campaign of the American Civil War. Marching from Fort Monroe, Union Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac encountered Maj. Gen. John B. Magruder's small Confederate force...

. He voluntarily joined the United States Colored Troops

United States Colored Troops

The United States Colored Troops were regiments of the United States Army during the American Civil War that were composed of African American soldiers. First recruited in 1863, by the end of the Civil War, the men of the 175 regiments of the USCT constituted approximately one-tenth of the Union...

 in 1863 and rose to the rank of corporal

Corporal

Corporal is a rank in use in some form by most militaries and by some police forces or other uniformed organizations. It is usually equivalent to NATO Rank Code OR-4....

. He was discharged in Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

 and settled in Alachua County.

Political career

Walls was elected as the sole representative from Florida to the Forty-second United States Congress in 1871, but the vote was contested by Silas L. Niblack

Silas L. Niblack

Silas Leslie Niblack was a Democratic US Representative from Florida. He was the cousin of William Ellis Niblack, US Representative from Indiana....

. The U.S. Committee on Elections

United States House Committee on Elections

The United States House Committee on Elections is a former standing committee of the United States House of Representatives.Article 1, section 5, of the Constitution of the United States specifies: "Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns, and Qualifications of its own Members." The...

 eventually unseated Walls. Walls ran and was elected again in 1873. In office, Walls introduced bills to establish a national education fund and aid pensioners and Seminole War Veterans.

After serving one term in the house he ran for re-election in 1874. He apparently won the election but Jesse Finley contested this and was eventually declared the winner by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives. This unseating was the end of Walls' political career.

He ran a successful plantation in Alachua County until the disastrous freeze of 1894-95, which destroyed his farm.
He took a teaching position, as Farm Director of Florida A&M University

Florida A&M University

Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, commonly known as Florida A&M or FAMU, is a historically black university located in Tallahassee, Florida, United States, the state capital, and is one of eleven member institutions of the State University System of Florida...

, in Tallahassee, where he died on May 15, 1905.