Taussig was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of a wool broker, Charles and his wife, Anna (Abeles), who had emigrated from Austria in 1840.
Graduating in June 1867 he served on the steam frigate Minnesota from July to December 1867 and thereafter variously on the Wateree, Powhatan, Onward and Resaca from January 1868 to April 1870.
His early sea service was perhaps most remarkable for his time as a passed midshipman on the gunboat Wateree when a tsunami washed her far inland at Arica (then part of Peru), on August 13, 1868.
Promoted to master on March 21, 1870, and to lieutenant on January 1, 1872, during the 1870s and 1880s, Taussig was stationed at a number of shore stations and ships: Narragansett, Pacific Squadron (October 1870 – September 1873); Newport Torpedo Station, (June–October 1874); Hydrographic Office, Washington, D.C. (October – December 1874); Panama Survey Expedition (January- April 1875); special duty, Bureau of Navigation, Washington, D.C. (May–October 1875); commander, receiving ship Relief, Washington, D.C. (September 1875); Temporary duty assignment Washington Navy Yard (October 1875 – April 1876); Juniata, Baltimore and Norfolk Navy Yard (April – September 1876); training ship Monongahela (September 1876 – February 1877); Trenton, flagship of the European Squadron, and Constellation, special service European Station (February 1877 – January 1880); U.S.
Bennington arrived in Hawaii on September 27, 1898, and spent the next three months operating in local waters and conducting surveys, including Pearl Harbor.
The island previously had been captured on June 21, 1898, by Captain Henry Glass of the Charleston who had left Francisco Portusach Martínez, an American civilian, in charge of the territory.
Martínez had been deposed in favor of non-American leadership under José Sisto, the highest ranking Spanish civil official in the island, and then Venancio Roberto, each laying competing claims to governance.
Departing Guam in mid-February 1899, Commander Taussig and Bennington continued on to Manila, where the ship arrived on February 22, 1899, with the mission of supporting the Army's campaigns during the Philippine–American War primarily with patrol and escort duty.
Watson returned home on his flagship Baltimore in April 1900, the same month that Commander Taussig's duty as lighthouse inspector ended.
In the spring of 1900, Chinese xenophobia, including disdain for the presence of Christian missionaries, fueled by decades of Western economic exploitation, culminated in the Boxer Rebellion.
The Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, whose members were referred to in the West as "Boxers", besieged the foreign legations at Peking and at Tientsin.
As part of the United States Navy's force assigned to the campaign, the gunboat Yorktown, sister-ship of the Bennington, was withdrawn from her patrol duties in the northern Philippines to provide assistance to operations off the North China coast.
In August, with Yorktown stationed off Chefoo, China, Taussig cabled dispatches of the decisive Battle of Beicang from which the Chinese military never recovered.
On July 24, 1905, along with Rear admirals Charles D. Sigsbee, James H. Sands, Charles H. Davis Jr., Captains Benjamin F. Tilley, William H. Reeder, and Gervais of the French naval cruiser, Jurien de la Graviere, Taussig had the honor of being an honorary pall bearer when Admiral John Paul Jones body was returned from France on the Brooklyn to be interred at the U.S.
During World War I, Taussig was recalled to active duty as commandant of the Naval Unit at Columbia University (September – December 1918).
Edward D. Taussig died at Newport, Rhode Island, on January 29, 1921, and is buried at the United States Naval Academy Cemetery along with his wife and son, Paul.