Edwin Augustus Atlee

E. A. Atlee, of Laredo, Texas, is a lawyer of acknowledged ability and merit. He was born in the small town of Athens, McMinn county, Tennessee, where he received a classical education, and where he taught his favorite branches - Latin and Greek - until January, 1873, when he came to Texas, first locating at Corpus Christi, where he taught about three months, and began to prepare himself to practice law at the Texas bar. He had read some of the text books before he came to Texas, and it was only a few months before he was granted a license to practice law.

He was elected County Attorney of Nueces county, and held the office until he went to Laredo, in 1879.

He attributes much of the success of his life, professional and otherwise, to the influence of his devoted and accomplished wife, the daughter of Captain S. T. Foster, born and raised in Texas, whom he married at Corpus Christi, in 1877, and who is the happy companion of his life. She was educated at Nashville, Tennessee, and is a woman of very superior mind, and practical common sense, and it is not strange that her husband yields to the force that impels him to a brighter future.

Mr. Atlee has had a very lucrative practice at Laredo, and has especially been engaged in land litigation. In 1880 he became associated in the practice of law with the Hon. Albert L. McLane, and the firm have represented many cases involving the old Spanish grants, and have been quite successful in establishing such grants, among which is the grant of the town tract of the city of Laredo. He has been connected with the city government of Laredo nearly ever since he has resided there, and as Mayor of the city he brought the city out of debt and put its affairs on a safe financial basis. In such affairs he is thought to be a wise and prudent counselor.

Mr. Atlee has been honored with a wider range of duties than those embraced in the city government of Laredo. He was nominated by the Democratic party, embracing six counties and that of his home, and elected to the House of Representatives in the Nineteenth Legislature, where he served with honor and distinction.

In 1888, the Democratic Convention of the Twenty-seventh Senatorial district nominated Mr. Atlee for the Senate to represent that district in the Twenty-first and Twenty-second Legislatures of Texas. He was elected and represented in the Senate the sixteen counties embracing all the territory bordering on the Rio Grande from its mouth to where the Pecos river enters, and on the Gulf coast from the Rio Grande to the Nueces.

He was on the committee composed of three members of the Senate and five from the House to meet in convention in the city of St. Louis with like committees of the Western States to consider such measures and legislation as would effectually break up certain combinations in Chicago, Kansas City and other places whereby the cattle and pork industries of such States, it was alleged, were made to suffer.

To the efforts of Senator Atlee are largely due the passage of a resolution in that convention on the 13th of March, 1889, looking to the establishment of a deep water port on the coast of Texas.

In an eloquent and stirring speech, favoring its adoption, he argued that if such a combination existed, having power to control and centralize the market for cattle and hogs at the large cities named, the securing a deep water port on the Texas coast would tend, in a great measure, to break it up. That to give the surplus of the interested States another outlet, and to diversify their markets, would counteract the effect of such a combination.

He urged the States (nine were represented) to press the matter upon Congress as a subject which pertained to their material development, and which affected not one section more than another. It was to benefit not Texas alone, but Kansas, Colorado and the great Northwest. The convention caught the enthusiasm of the speaker, and the resolution was adopted without a dissenting voice. It was placed in the hands of a special committee from the nine States, to be presented to the President of the United States with the request that he lay the matter before the next Congress.

In the Senate Mr. Atlee took part in the prolonged debate on the railroad commission bill, which was considered, from the time given it, the most important measure before the Twenty-first Legislature. The bill passed the House, but was defeated in the Senate.

Senator Atlee made a strong argument against its passage, holding the provisions of the bill to be unwarranted legislation respecting property rights, none the less sacredly guarded merely because, forsooth, they pertained to a railroad corporation. The individual property rights of persons and the property rights of corporations were under the same protection of the fundamental law of the land. He held that the friends of the measure sought to place the entire management and control of the railways of the State in the hands of State officials, amounting to a possible confiscation of property. That the effect of such a measure would be to cripple existing roads, to check further extension, and drive capital from the State. That the West and Southwest needed more railroads, and legislation should encourage rather than retard their building. He had faith in the great conservative body of the people of Texas, and believed that the best judgment of the people demanded the defeat of the commission bill.

He is one of the talented men of a very talented body—the Senate of Texas. He has a slender form, five feet eight and one-half inches high, with brown hair and blue eyes, erect in carriage and graceful in delivery. As an orator he is always earnest and often eloquent, possessing many of the natural gifts—voice, manner and action. He seems to thoroughly understand all the bearings of any question which he attempts to discuss. Senator Atlee took a high stand in the Senate and sustained it. His public career has just opened.

 

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