Representative Edward Bishop Dudley

Edward Bishop Dudley (December 15, 1789 – October 30, 1855) was an American politician and businessman who served as the 28th governor of the U.S. state of North Carolina from 1836 to 1841 and as a Jacksonian member of the United States House of Representatives from 1829 to 1831. His career spanned the formative years of the Second Party System, and he became a leading figure in the early Whig Party and a principal advocate of internal improvements in North Carolina.

Dudley was born near Jacksonville in Onslow County, North Carolina, the son of Christopher Dudley, a wealthy farmer and businessman, and Margaret Snead Dudley. Raised in an environment of relative prosperity and local influence, he entered public life at an early age. During the War of 1812 he served between legislative sessions as second in command of a regiment from Onslow County. The regiment was stationed at Wilmington, North Carolina, a growing port city that Dudley came to favor; after the war he moved there permanently, a decision that would shape both his political base and his later business interests. In 1815 he married Elizabeth “Eliza” Henry Haywood, with whom he had six children. After Eliza’s death, he married the widow of General John Cowan, further consolidating his ties to prominent North Carolina families.

Dudley’s formal education is not extensively documented, but by his early twenties he had established himself sufficiently to win election to public office. In 1811, at age twenty-one, he was elected to the lower house of the North Carolina General Assembly from Onslow County and was reelected in 1812. In 1814 he advanced to the North Carolina State Senate. After relocating to Wilmington following the War of 1812, he continued his legislative career, winning election in 1816 to the lower house of the state legislature from the borough of Wilmington and securing reelection there in 1817. During this period he distanced himself from North Carolina’s dominant “Old Republican” faction and instead aligned with a group of political opportunists who organized a “People party” ticket. As a presidential elector in 1824, he supported this People party coalition, which cast its electoral vote for Andrew Jackson.

Dudley’s early national political activity was closely tied to the rise of Jacksonian democracy. In 1828, after the Old Republicans themselves had come to support Jackson, Dudley again served as a Jackson elector, and Jackson easily carried North Carolina. His support for Jackson, however, proved short-lived. When Representative Gabriel Holmes of North Carolina died, a special election was called, and in 1829 Dudley was elected as a Jacksonian to the United States House of Representatives to fill the vacancy. He served one term in Congress, from 1829 to 1831, as a member of the Jackson Party representing North Carolina. Although elected as a Jacksonian, he usually voted against Jackson’s party in the House, reflecting his growing estrangement from the administration. After this single term, he chose not to run for reelection, but his service in Congress occurred during a significant period in American history, and he participated in the democratic process by representing the interests of his constituents at the national level.

Following his departure from Congress, Dudley became increasingly active in the political realignments that preceded the formation of the Whig Party. In 1831 and 1832 he joined a group led by former Secretary of the Navy John Branch that denounced Vice President Martin Van Buren, whom Dudley opposed even more vehemently than President Jackson, while still professing support for Jackson himself. This group nominated Jackson for president and Philip P. Barbour for vice president, and Dudley again served as a presidential elector. The Jackson–Barbour ticket was badly defeated, but the coalition of Van Buren’s opponents, which initially drew some support from National Republicans, would soon reemerge in the 1830s as the Whig Party, of which Dudley became a prominent member in North Carolina.

Dudley’s most enduring legacy grew out of his leadership in the movement for internal improvements and railroad development. In 1833 a bipartisan statewide movement for internal improvements coalesced, and Dudley emerged as one of its most active leaders. At a statewide meeting in Raleigh, where he served as chairman, the assembly demanded a state-supported railroad system. By that time Dudley was already the leading investor in the proposed Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad. In January 1834 he secured the first charter for the railroad from the state, having personally invested $25,000 toward the enterprise and helped raise an additional $113,000. The stockholders held their first meeting in March 1836 and elected Dudley as the railroad’s first president with a salary of $2,000 a year. Construction of the line began in October 1836. Although the road ultimately did not reach Raleigh and later changed its name to the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad, at one time it was regarded as the longest railroad in the world, and Dudley’s role in its creation cemented his reputation as a leading railroad developer.

Constitutional change in North Carolina opened the way for Dudley’s rise to the governorship. In 1835 the state’s old constitution was replaced by a new one that, among other reforms, provided for the direct popular election of the governor. Dudley joined other eastern North Carolina political leaders from both parties in agreeing to limited concessions to the western part of the state to secure adoption of the new framework. When the first gubernatorial election under the new constitution approached, he was unanimously nominated as his party’s candidate at a state convention. Accepting the nomination, he attacked Van Buren as “a Northern man in soul, in principle and in action,” reflecting the strong sectional overtones of Whig opposition. Southern sectionalism and the Whig program of distributing proceeds from federal public land sales to the states—legislation that Jackson had vetoed—proved potent issues. In the ensuing election Dudley defeated the incumbent governor, Richard Dobbs Spaight Jr., by about 4,000 votes, becoming the first governor of North Carolina elected by popular vote.

Dudley’s tenure as governor, from 1836 to 1841, was marked by partisan competition and continuing debates over internal improvements and education. In his first term, Dudley and the Whigs were unable to secure firm control of state government. A Democratic victory in a special legislative election gave that party a majority in the General Assembly. Whig U.S. Senator Willie P. Mangum was replaced by a Democrat, and in November 1836 North Carolina voters endorsed Van Buren for president. The state received nearly $1.5 million as its share of federal funds under the “deposit” bill, and Dudley supported a Whig plan to devote most of this money to railroad construction and the state bank. Democrats substantially amended this proposal, and their version ultimately passed. Although this Democratic-backed measure marked the real beginning of a systematic state internal improvements program, Whigs claimed primary credit, and Dudley came to be known as the “father of internal improvements” in North Carolina. He was easily reelected governor in 1838. Wake County Democrats had nominated John Branch—ironically, one of the original architects of the Whig coalition—who by then called himself a Democrat, but many Democrats refused to recognize his nomination and stayed away from the polls. Dudley received approximately 64 percent of the vote, the largest margin ever won by an antebellum gubernatorial candidate in the state. During his second term he continued to urge increased support for internal improvements and public schools, but persistent sectional tensions between eastern and western North Carolina limited what he could accomplish.

Barred by the state constitution from seeking a third consecutive term, Dudley left the governorship in 1841, though he remained deeply involved in railroad affairs and Whig politics. He had resigned the presidency of the Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad in 1837 while serving as governor, but in 1841 he was reelected president of the line, by then a crucial link in the state’s transportation network. Under his leadership the company, later renamed the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad when the route was altered, continued to expand and operate as a major artery of commerce. Dudley retained the presidency until 1847, when he retired from active leadership in the railroad, having helped to establish one of the most important early rail systems in the South.

In his later years Dudley lived as a wealthy gentleman in Wilmington and remained an ardent Whig and influential figure in business and political circles. He continued to promote railroad development and maintained close ties with national Whig leaders, hosting such figures as Secretary of State Daniel Webster and Senator Henry Clay at his home. His career exemplified the close relationship between commercial interests and Whig politics in the antebellum South. Edward Bishop Dudley died at his home in Wilmington, North Carolina, on October 30, 1855, leaving a legacy as a pioneering advocate of internal improvements, a key organizer of early Whig politics in his state, and the first popularly elected governor in North Carolina’s history.