Representative Edwin Godwin Reade

Edwin Godwin Reade (November 13, 1812 – October 18, 1894) was an American lawyer, jurist, and legislator who served as a U.S. Representative from North Carolina, a member of the Confederate Senate during the American Civil War, and later as a justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina. He was born on November 13, 1812, in Person County, North Carolina. In his early life he worked in a variety of trades, including on a farm, in a carriage shop, for a blacksmith, and in a tanyard, experiences that grounded him in the rural and artisan life of his native state.

Reade pursued his education at the academy of George Morrow in Orange County, North Carolina, and subsequently served as an assistant teacher in the school of the Reverend Alexander Wilson. While engaged in teaching, he began the study of law at home in 1833. After two years of legal study, he was admitted to the bar in 1835. That same year he ran, unsuccessfully, as a Whig candidate for the North Carolina House of Commons. Also in 1835 he commenced the practice of law in Roxboro, Person County, where he established himself as an attorney and later became a member of the law firm Reade, Busbee & Busbee. He continued in active legal practice until 1855, building the professional reputation that would support his subsequent political career.

Reade entered national politics in the turbulent decade preceding the Civil War. As a member of the American Party, often known as the Know-Nothing Party, he was elected to the 34th United States Congress and served a single term as a U.S. Representative from North Carolina from March 4, 1855, to March 3, 1857. During this period he contributed to the legislative process at a time of intensifying sectional conflict, participating in the democratic process and representing the interests of his North Carolina constituents. He declined to run for re-election in 1856 and returned to his home state at the conclusion of his term.

After leaving Congress, Reade resumed his legal and judicial work in North Carolina. He became presiding justice of the county court, a position he held for several years, and in 1860 he was elected judge of the superior court of North Carolina. On the eve of the Civil War, his legal and political standing was such that during the conflict John A. Gilmer, acting on behalf of U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward, wrote to Reade to invite him to consider a cabinet position under President Abraham Lincoln. Reade declined the overture. In 1863, North Carolina Governor Zebulon B. Vance appointed him to the Confederate Senate to fill the vacancy created when George Davis resigned to become Attorney General of the Confederate States. Reade thus served in the legislative body of the Confederacy during the latter part of the war.

With the collapse of the Confederacy, Reade returned to judicial service in a reconstructed state government. Following the Civil War he was reappointed as a judge of the North Carolina superior court and served in that capacity until 1866. In 1865 he played a prominent role in the state’s political reorganization by presiding over the Reconstruction convention in Raleigh, which addressed North Carolina’s reintegration into the Union and the reestablishment of civil government. In 1868 he was appointed an associate justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina, where he served for more than a decade, remaining on the bench until 1879. His tenure on the state’s highest court marked the culmination of his long judicial career.

After retiring from public office, Reade turned to banking and commercial pursuits in Raleigh. He became president of the Raleigh National Bank and resided in the same building that housed the bank, reflecting his close association with the institution in his later years. In his personal life, Reade married Emily A. L. Moore, and after her death he married Mary E. (née Shaw) Parmalee, the widow of Benjamin J. Parmalee, in either 1871 or 1873. He was a member of the Presbyterian Church, consistent with the religious affiliations of many professional and political leaders in nineteenth-century North Carolina.

Edwin Godwin Reade died in Raleigh on October 18, 1894, while living in the building of the Raleigh National Bank. He was interred in Oakwood Cemetery in Raleigh. His career spanned antebellum politics, Confederate service, and Reconstruction-era jurisprudence, and included service in the U.S. Congress, the Confederate Senate, and on the Supreme Court of North Carolina.