The Power Of One Vote

On May 8th 1907 Edmund Gibson Ross, whose vote kept Andrew Johnson from being impeachment, died in New Mexico.

Edmund Gibson Ross was born December 7th 1826 in Ashland Ohio. He went to work in the newspaper business first in Sandusky Ohio, Milwaukee Wisconsin and Topeka Kansas. While in Kansas he was the editor of the “Tribune” which was the only Free-State paper in the territory. He enlisted in the United Sstates Army as a private in 1862, and was made a major by 1865. After Senator James H Lane committed suicide in 1866, Ross was appointed to fill his term and than was elected to the position as a member of the Republican Party. Ross became the seventh of the seven Republicans to break with the party, and he cast the vote which acquitted President Andrew Johnson in 1868. Ross loss his re-election bid in 1870.

After leaving the Senate, Ross returned to the newspaper business, starting a publication in Coffeyville Kansas. Unfortunately on April 23rd 1872 a tornado that went through Coffeyville destroyed the newspaper office. He was appointed by President Grover Cleveland in 1885 to the position of Governor of the New Mexico Territory, a position he held until 1889. He died May 8th 1907.

President John F Kennedy [at this time a senator] included Edmund Gibson Ross in his 1956 book “Profiles in Courage”.