In his senior year, he led a rebellion against the faculty and was "rusticated" from the university, made to live in Kingston, New Jersey.

After attaining his law degree he went into practice in Red Bank, New Jersey in the office of Henry M. Nevius.

He was appointed for a full term in 1909 and continued to serve under Fort's Democratic successor, Woodrow Wilson (no relation to Edmund).

Dabney writes that Edward Sr., though a lifelong Republican, was "part of a genteel liberal tradition that was disappearing by the time his son was coming of age.

[2] In the spring of 1923, Wilson developed pneumonia in Talcottville, New York at an unheated stone house long owned by the Kimballs, his wife Helen's family.