He was born in what would later be Reidsville, North Carolina, an unincorporated town named for his father, Reuben Reid.

He sought but was denied a full term in the Senate when he lost a three-way internal party fight with Thomas Bragg and William W. Holden in 1858.

He returned to the practice of law and was a delegate to the ill-fated 1861 Washington Peace Conference to try to prevent the American Civil War.

In the early 1870s Reid moved from his farm on the Dan River to the nearby seat of Rockingham County Wentworth where he continued to practice law and was respected as an elder statesman of the Democratic Party.

In May 1881 Reid suffered a serious stroke at Wentworth and was soon moved to his elder son's Reidsville home where he died in June 1891 and was buried in nearby Greenview Cemetery.