He graduated from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1913, was admitted to the bar the same year and commenced practice in Detroit.

In 1943, Ferguson was one of 12 senators who sponsored or co-sponsored the Rescue Resolution, which would have declared that Congress "recommends and urges the creation by the President of a commission of diplomatic, economic, and military experts to formulate and effectuate a plan of immediate action designed to save the surviving Jewish people of Europe from extinction at the hands of Nazi Germany.

"[3] In 1948, he served as chairman of the Investigations Subcommittee of the Committee on Expenditures in Executive Departments, which held hearings on such matters as export control violations, for which Soviet spy William Remington was called in to testify; the trial of Nazi war criminal Ilse Koch; and the Mississippi Democratic Party's sale of postal jobs, which Mississippians from rural areas attested to purchasing.

[4] Ferguson sponsored an anti-lynching bill, which was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee in June 1949.

[8] Ferguson's involvement behind the scenes in influencing the failed investigation, trial, and slander of Preston Tucker by the Securities and Exchange Commission has long been speculated.