Richard Mitchell Edwards (December 31, 1822 – January 19, 1907) was an American attorney, politician and soldier who served one term in the Tennessee House of Representatives (1861–1862).

[1] The younger Edwards would later recall spending much of his childhood "fishing, hunting and playing with the Indian boys of the Ocoee district," and remembered the departure of his Cherokee friends on the Trail of Tears as one of the "saddest" days of his life.

In February, he took part in skirmishes in the Orizaba area, and helped escort General William G. Belknap from Veracruz to the National Bridge (en route to Mexico City).

In April 1848, he was appointed hospital steward at Veracruz by Dr. Barclay McGhee, a prominent Monroe County physician who was serving as a military surgeon.

[8][9] As the secession crisis intensified in 1861, he remained committed to the Union, and endorsed his district's Unionist congressional candidate, George W. Bridges, in March of that year.

[11] While in Greeneville, Edwards made a pact with several other Convention delegates, including Joseph A. Cooper and Robert K. Byrd, to return to their respective homes and raise and drill companies for military service.

[1] Since the state had seceded and joined the Confederacy, Edwards and several other Unionist members of the legislature—including John M. Fleming, Robert H. Hodsden, and Dewitt Clinton Senter—were required to take the Confederate oath of allegiance in order to take their seats.

By July he had recruited over 400 men, including future congressman Jacob Montgomery Thornburgh (who was appointed lieutenant-colonel of the regiment) and Sevier County sheriff and bridge burner William C. Pickens.

In September, Edwards and his burgeoning regiment marched with General George W. Morgan from the Cumberland Gap area to Greenup, Kentucky, on the Ohio River.

Furthermore, several Union Army commanders had grown skeptical of Edwards after he endorsed a speech by New York congressman Sunset Cox that criticized President Abraham Lincoln's war policy.

[13] During the years following the Civil War, Edwards supported the allies of President Andrew Johnson—commonly called "Conservatives"—who sought more lenient measures toward former Confederates.

At a Conservative rally in Athens, Tennessee, in March 1867, Edwards called for armed resistance to the franchise laws, and was arrested for making "insurrectionary and treasonable speech.

[23] A Knoxville Chronicle reporter who interviewed Edwards during this period noted, "he chews the stump of his cigar as if he had a bondholder between his teeth, or a railroad magnate, and wished to crush every bit of life out of them.