Charles Fremont Amidon was an American jurist and lawyer. He worked as a principal at the high school in Fargo, North Dakota. Later he practiced law and became a United States federal judge.
Background
Charles Fremont Amidon was born on August 17, 1856 near Clymer, New York, United States. He was the fourth son and fifth of eight children of the Reverend John Smith and Charlotte Ann (Curtis) Amidon. His first American ancestor was Roger Amidon, a Huguenot refugee from La Rochelle who came to Salem, Massachusetts, in 1633. A son moved to Connecticut; later descendants went to New York State--to Onondaga County in 1790 and to Chautauqua County in 1820. Amidon's mother, whose forebears had come from England to Massachusetts in the mid-eighteenth century, was a woman of great intelligence and an avid reader. His father was a Methodist circuit-rider who aided fugitive slaves and was the only abolitionist in his community. Amidon inherited his mother's eager mind and his father's humanitarian zeal.
Education
Amidon attended country school, helped to clear the land, and hungered for books. He did well in high school at Corry, Pennsylvania, where Professor Virgil Curtis took an interest in the big country boy and encouraged him to go to college. After teaching for two years, he entered Hamilton College at Clinton, New York. Although he had only one well-worn suit, no overcoat, and sometimes no money for texts, he made rich use of his opportunities, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in June 1882, with medals in Greek, Latin, and oratory and a Phi Beta Kappa key. That summer he went to Fargo, Dakota Territory, to organize a high school. Settling there permanently, he began to read law a year later. He was admitted to the bar in 1886.
Career
About 1886 Amidon established himself as an able lawyer in Fargo, North Dakota. In 1893 the Populist governor of the state of North Dakota, Eli C. D. Shortridge, appointed him to a commission to revise the state codes and statutes. Three years later, on August 31, 1896, President Grover Cleveland appointed Amidon United States District Judge for North Dakota in 1928, a post he held until his death, in Tucson, Arizona.
Achievements
Amidon wrote nearly 150 opinions for the federal circuit court of appeals between September 1904 and April 1921, many of them were influential as precedents. Though in a remote district, he became one of the leading progressive judges of his generation, a friend of such national figures as Theodore Roosevelt, Robert M. La Follette, Louis D. Brandeis, and Felix Frankfurter. Amidon also became famous for his longest-serving judicial appointment.
Religion
Amidon was active in the Unitarian Church in Fargo, and when it disbanded he affiliated with the Congregational Church.
Politics
During and after the first World War Amidon sought to quiet war hysteria when trying cases under the Espionage Act. A sympathizer with the farmers of North Dakota and their Nonpartisan League, he opposed the use of the Act against the League and aroused great resentment when he directed a verdict of not guilty in the trial of Thomas Walter Mills, a socialist and campaign speaker for the League.
He also favored restricting the use of federal court injunctions against labor unions. In the railway shopmen's strike of 1922 he enjoined not only the union but also the Great Northern Railway, thus becoming a pioneer in defining restraints upon the injunction seeker. In 1931 he headed a committee named by the American Civil Liberties Union which, by enlisting popular support, helped to bring about passage of the Norris-La Guardia Anti-Injunction Act of 1932.
Personality
Amidon was slender, just over six feet, with a dark complexion and almost black hair that turned white in his thirties. Courageous and devoted to justice, he had an inquiring mind always open to new ideas.
Connections
In 1892 Amidon married Beulah Richardson McHenry of Harwood Township, North Dakota, a college graduate and a witty conversationalist who was active in civic improvement and the woman suffrage movement. They had five children: Beulah Elizabeth, Charles Curtis, John McHenry, Oak McHenry, and Eleanor Frances. Their eldest daughter became a writer and editor, serving for many years as associate editor of the Survey.
