Edmund G. Ross
Politician. Republican. Born: December 7, 1826, Ashland Ohio. Married: Fannie M. Lathrop, 1848. Died May 8, 1907, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Served in U.S. Senate: July 25, 1866, to March 3, 1871.
Born in Ashland, Ohio, on December 7, 1826, E. G. Ross apprenticed as a printer in Sandusky. He married Fannie M. Lathrop in 1848, and then moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1849, where he was connected with the Milwaukee Sentinel. Moving to Kansas from Wisconsin as leader of a free-state colony in 1856, Ross involved himself in territorial politics and the newspaper business (editor, State Record) in Topeka. At the convention Ross served on the apportionment, amendments and miscellaneous, and phraseology and arrangement committees. The partisan Leavenworth newspaper praised Ross "as one of the former Editors of that sterling sheet-The Kansas Tribune. He worthily represents the craft, though from subduing the Border Ruffians by aid of type and pen, (and sometimes with a shooting stick,) he has taken to subduing the soil and making that responsive to the Freeman's industry." Ross helped raise and then served in the Eleventh Kansas during the Civil War. After James H. Lane's death by suicide in 1866, Ross was appointed and subsequently elected to the Lane seat in the U.S. Senate. While serving as senator from Kansas in 1868, Ross won fame as the senator who cast the deciding vote for acquittal in the impeachment trial of President Johnson. This ruined Ross politically in Kansas, and he failed in his bid for a full term in 1871. Ross returned to his former journalistic pursuits, and in 1885 he was appointed governor of New Mexico Territory. He died in Albuquerque on May 8, 1907.
Entry: Ross, Edmund G.
Author: Kansas Historical Society
Author information: The Kansas Historical Society is a state agency charged with actively safeguarding and sharing the state's history.
Date Created: June 2011
Date Modified: January 2013
The author of this article is solely responsible for its content.
