Richard M. Edwards

Richard Mitchell Edwards (December 31, 1822 – January 19, 1907) was an American attorney, politician and soldier who served one term in the Tennessee House of Representatives (1861–1862). A Southern Unionist, he represented Bradley County at the East Tennessee Convention in 1861, and served as colonel of the 4th Tennessee Cavalry of the Union Army during the Civil War. He ran unsuccessfully for governor on the Greenback Party ticket in 1878 and 1880.

Early life Edwards was born near Philadelphia, Tennessee, in what was then Roane County, but is now part of Loudon County. He may have been orphaned at a young age, and was raised by his uncle, Dr. Pleasant James Riley Edwards. In 1836, he moved with his uncle to Cleveland, Tennessee, where his uncle became a prominent physician, and would eventually be elected mayor. The younger Edwards would later recall spending much of his childhood "fishing, hunting and playing with the Indian boys of the Ocoee district," and remembered the departure of his Cherokee friends on the Trail of Tears as one of the "saddest" days of his life. In the early 1840s, Edwards attended Cleveland's Oak Grove Academy.

After the war, Edwards studied law under Samuel A. Smith, and was admitted to the bar. He married Mary Lucinda Craigmiles in 1851, and commenced the practice of law in Cleveland, initially specializing in "legal affairs for soldiers." A Democrat, he supported Andrew Johnson for governor in 1853, and was appointed vice president of the state's Democratic Party convention in April of that year. After Johnson won the election, he appointed Edwards to the Board of Directors of the East Tennessee and Georgia Railroad.

Civil War During the contentious 1860 presidential election, Edwards campaigned for the Northern Democratic candidate, Stephen Douglas, and openly opposed the Southern Democratic candidate, John C. Breckinridge. As the secession crisis intensified in 1861, he remained committed to the Union, and endorsed his district's Unionist congressional candidate, George W. Bridges, in March of that year. Edwards was a delegate to the Knoxville and Greeneville sessions of the pro-Union East Tennessee Convention in May and June 1861, and represented Bradley County on the Convention's powerful business committee at both sessions. While in Greeneville, Edwards made a pact with several other Convention delegates, including Joseph A. Cooper and Robert K. Byrd, to return to their respective homes and raise and drill companies for military service.

In August 1861, Edwards was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives seat for Bradley County.

Commissioned by Tennessee's military governor Andrew Johnson to raise a cavalry regiment, Edwards spent the Spring of 1862 recruiting soldiers and acquiring horses and other supplies for what would initially be known as the First East Tennessee Cavalry. By July he had recruited over 400 men, including future congressman Jacob Montgomery Thornburgh (who was appointed lieutenant-colonel of the regiment) and Sevier County sheriff and bridge burner William C. Pickens. In September, Edwards and his burgeoning regiment marched with General George W. Morgan from the Cumberland Gap area to Greenup, Kentucky, on the Ohio River. After he and Pickens quarreled over who should command the regiment, Pickens and several of the recruits split off in hopes of forming their own regiment. He spoke out against the policies of Tennessee's Radical Republican postwar governor, William G. Brownlow, specifically Brownlow's "franchise" laws aimed at preventing former Confederates from voting. At a Conservative rally in Athens, Tennessee, in March 1867, Edwards called for armed resistance to the franchise laws, and was arrested for making "insurrectionary and treasonable speech." He was convicted of using seditious language and barred from holding public office for three years, though the conviction was overturned on appeal in April 1868. Following the enaction of the new state constitution in 1870, Edwards ran for district attorney general, but was defeated by A.J. Trewhitt.

In 1878, Edwards ran for governor on the populist Greenback ticket. During this period, the dominant issue in state politics was over how to manage the state's out-of-control debt, much of which had been accrued due to railroad construction. Edwards blamed railroad bondholders for the debt, going so far as to accuse them of plundering the state treasury, and calling for the state to invalidate railroad bonds. A Knoxville Chronicle reporter who interviewed Edwards during this period noted, "he chews the stump of his cigar as if he had a bondholder between his teeth, or a railroad magnate, and wished to crush every bit of life out of them." In the election, he placed a distant third, winning just 15,155 votes to 89,958 for the victorious Democratic candidate, Albert S. Marks, and 42,284 for the Republican, Eli M. Wight.

Edwards once again ran for governor on the Greenback ticket in 1880. He expressed disappointment over how Marks had managed the debt issue, and accused Marks of allowing the state's workers to be "plundered by soulless corporations." He managed to win just 3,459 votes, however, well behind the Republican candidate, Alvin Hawkins (103,964 votes), the "state credit" Democrat, John V. Wright (73,783), and the "low tax" Democrat, S.F. Wilson (57,080).

Later life

Edwards spent his later years writing stories and memoirs for newspapers and other publications. These included a multipart series on his Mexican–American War experiences, which appeared in the Knoxville Tribune in the mid-1890s, and has since been edited and republished as a book, Down the Tennessee: The Mexican War Reminisciences of an East Tennessee Volunteer, by historian Stewart Lillard. Edwards also wrote the chapter, "Bradley County and the Town of Cleveland, Tennessee," for the 1893 book, East Tennessee: Historical and Biographical.

Edwards died at the Soldiers' Home in Johnson City, Tennessee, on January 19, 1907. He was interred in Fort Hill Cemetery in Cleveland.