Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,158

This is the grave of George Edmunds.

Born in 1828 in Richmond, Vermont, Edmunds grew up in pretty good circumstances, went to the local schools, read for the law, and passed the bar in 1849. He started practicing in Burlington. He was interested in politics from the time he was young, became a Republican as soon as the party established itself in 1854, and was elected to the state legislature that year. Being a 26 year old state legislator wasn’t so uncommon then. See, back in the 1850s, old people didn’t think they should remain in politics forever. A real difference from today. In fact, Edmunds became Speaker of the House in Vermont at the age of 29, in 1857. He did that for three years before deciding to move to the state senate. He won an election for a seat there in 1860.

Edmunds served a couple of years in the state senate, but did not return after the election of 1862. I’m not sure why. Probably just went back to his law practice. Anyway, he remained an important figure in state politics. In 1866, Solomon Foot died, a now forgotten but pretty respected senator of the time. Now, you wouldn’t think Vermont would be big enough to have the kind of regional divides that would require tricky political maneuvering. But in fact, the state Republican Party had something it called the Mountain Rule. This meant that one senator would have to come from the eastern half of the state and one from the western half. Foot was a western guy. So it was going to be a westerner who replaced him. The first choice was J. Gregory Smith, a former governor. But he didn’t want to go to Washington. So the party then turned to Edmunds and he did accept.

Edmunds immediately became an active and pretty prominent Republican. The first order of business was Reconstruction. Edmunds was disgusted by Andrew Johnson’s attempt to allow the South to win the war after the peace and was a leader in the fight to impeach and convict him. He was involved in the Tenure of Office Act, the openly unconstitutional attempt to strip presidents of the power to fire appointees approved by Congress. I mean, given how Congress has completely given up most of its power to the imperial presidency today, I don’t really have a problem with this law in principle, but it really did seek to destroy the separation of powers and keep most political authority in the hands of Congress, which would have turned the presidency into a pretty weak position. This became the way that Republicans tried to get rid of Johnson, since the president then fired Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War. Almost worked, but didn’t quite.

Edmunds had a nasty tongue and most Democrats loathed him deeply. He would call them out and bait them. He wanted them to state their racism and he would try to get them to do so. Since he genuinely felt that Congress should ensure the right of black men to vote, southerners loathed him with the heat a thousand suns. He would lambaste the South on the Senate floor, to the point that few Republicans bothered with anymore by the 1880s.

Edmunds was as strong as a Republican as one could get. But…differences were developing within the party. This was over corruption. A lot of Republicans, now that they had power, intended on keeping it by rigging the nation through appointees and the patronage system. But this led to such bad governance and seemed oppositional to the party’s foundational principles to a lot of people. Edmunds was very much in the latter camp. He became committed to civil service reform. This made him the top enemy of the leaders of the corruption, especially New York senator Roscoe Conkling, a vainglorious man who had absolutely no scruples at all.

Edmunds also found the Mormons revolting. Joseph Smith was from Vermont and I don’t know if it was state embarrassment that moved Edmunds so strongly here. But he authored the Edumnds Act of 1882, which banned polygamy in the U.S. or American territories and basically stripped citizenship rights from those who engaged in the practice. Then in 1887, he authored the Edmunds-Tucker Act, which also stripped the right to vote from women in Utah (where suffrage existed) and required voters to take an anti-polygamy oath to the Constitution. Edmunds found few who objected to enforcing these laws pretty strictly. The Supreme Court backed them up and this all drove polygamy underground, with the Mormon Church eventually banning the practice, though it still exists in small communities in southern Utah and northern Arizona.

Edmunds was generally a cranky guy. One friend tried to get him to run for president by telling him, “But, Edmunds, think how much fun you would have vetoing bills.” In fact, there were efforts to get him to run. He got a few votes in both the 1880 and 1884 conventions by those who really admired his positions on civil service. It was a fairly serious run in 1884, to the point that it threatened James Blaine’s coronation as nominee. Blaine hated Edmunds and wouldn’t even shake his hand for the rest of his life. During the campaign, Edmunds said that Blaine was in the pocket of Jay Gould, already hated by many Americans, a symbol of the corruption at the heart of American life. Of course, everything Edmunds said was true, which is why Blaine hated him so much. In fact, this nearly cost Edmunds a return to the Senate in 1886, since Blaine was from nearby Maine and had a lot of allies in the Green Mountain State.

All of this talk of good governance and political principle of course led Conkling to loathe Edmunds too. Showing a total lack of political principle, in 1882, when Ward Hunt retired from the Supreme Court, Chester Arthur first offered it to Conkling, who turned it down. Then he offered it to Edmunds, who also turned it down. What kind of Republican do you want there Chester? In any case, it went to the legendary Samuel Blatchford, and who doesn’t remember that legal legend?!?!

Edmunds resigned from the Senate in 1891, deciding to make money I think before he got too old to do so. He wasn’t taking bribes like his colleagues. He was also disgusted by the failure of the Lodge Federal Elections Bill that year, a sign to him of just how uninterested in black rights the Senate had become. He went to his law practice and moved to California. He died in 1919, at the age of 91.

George Edmunds is buried in Green Mount Cemetery, Burlington, Vermont.

If you would like this series to visit other senators who won elections in 1868, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. William Stewart is in Colma, California (despite being a senator from Nevada) and Allen Thurman is in Columbus, Ohio. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.