Born in Rutherford County, Tennessee, Edwards grew up on a farm near Murfreesboro, attending a country school in the winter season.
[2] At the age of 19, he was hired to teach in a new institution started in Williamson county, but his mind was on the West, and in the autumn of 1831 he resigned and moved to Jefferson City, Missouri.
In 1838 he tried his hand at journalism by starting the Jefferson Enquirer, in company with John McCulloch, a Democratic paper which expired for lack of support at the close of the 1840 United States presidential election.
While in the senate, he successfully introduced a bill prepared by Judge Robert William Wells materially changing the civil practice in courts of justice.
[2] In 1858 Edwards discontinued his legal business, farming in the Osage Valley, but remained intensely interested in politics, and in 1860 became the editor in chief of The Examiner, published at the capital, a strong democratic organ.