Edward Merwin Lee (23 August 1835 – 1 January 1913) was an attorney from Guilford, Connecticut, who went on to serve under General Custer during the American Civil War.
[4] After the war, Ulysses S. Grant appointed John Allen Campbell as the first governor of Wyoming and Edward M. Lee as the state's first secretary, the second-highest ranking territorial officer.
The bill, however, was approved, became a law, and the youngest territory placed in the van of progress... How strange that a movement destined to purify the muddy pool of politics... should have originated in a joke... All honor to them, say we, to Wyoming's first legislature!"
Susan B. Anthony proclaimed, "Wyoming is the first place on God's green earth which could consistently claim to be the land of the Free!
"[7] Edward M. Lee had championed this cause for years, arguing that it was unfair for his mother to be denied a privilege now granted to African-American males.