The Biographical Dictionary of America/Badger, George Edmund

BADGER, George Edmund, senator, was born at Newbern, N.C., April 17, 1795; son of Thomas and Lydia (Cogdell) Badger, grandson of Edmund and Lucretia Badger and of Col. Richard Cogdell He attended Yale, 1810-'11, and was made A.M. in 1825 and LL.D. in 1848. He was licensed to practise law at the age of nineteen. In 1816 he was elected to the North Carolina legislature, and in 1820 appointed a judge of the superior court, which office he resigned in 1825. and returned to the practice of Law. He supported William H. Harrison in the presidential campaign of 1840, and on his inauguration. March 4, 1841, President Harrison appointed him secretary of the navy, which position he resigned when Tyler came to the presidency. He was elected by the legislature of North Carolina in 1846 to the seat in the U. S. senate made vacant by the resignation of W. H. Haywood, and elected for the full senatorial term in 1848. President Fillmore named him associate justice of the U. S. supreme court in 1853, but the senate refused to confirm the nomination. In 1854, upon his retirement from the senate, he took up the practice of law at the state capital. In 1861 he was a member of the secession convention, but spoke in favor of remaining in the union. In a letter introducing him to Mr. Justice Story at the time of his appointment to the U. S. supreme bench, Daniel Webster wrote: "He is your equal and my superior." He died at Raleigh, N. C., May 11, 1866.