Sydney Emanuel Mudd I was a politician, elected as Speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates and a Republican United States House of Representatives, at a time of dominance by Democrats in much of Maryland.
Education
He attended Georgetown University and graduated from Saint John"s College of Annapolis, Maryland in 1878. He "read the law" as an apprentice with an established firm and also attended the law department of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville.
Career
He was first seated by Congress in 1890 after it found in his favor in relation to the contested 1888 election in Maryland"s 5th congressional district, which was marked by fraud and intimidation. Born into the planter class at the family plantation, Gallant Green, in Charles County, Maryland, Mudd was reared Catholic and first educated locally. He was admitted to the bar in 1880 and returned to Charles County to begin his practice.
As a Republican candidate, he challenged and successfully contested the 1888 election of Barnes Compton from the 5th district of Maryland to the Fifty-first Congress.
At a time when many Maryland elections were surrounded by violence and fraud as Democrats sought to re-establish white supremacy, Mudd filed charges of election fraud, claiming that election officials had turned away qualified voters and that, in Anne Arundel County, Democrats posing as United States Marshals intimidated blacks, forcing them from the polls. The House Committee on Elections investigated and decided in his favor.
Congress awarded the seat to Mudd in 1889, and he served in the next session, from March 20, 1890, to March 3, 1891. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1890 to the Fifty-second Congress, defeated by Compton.
In 1895 Mudd was elected again to the state House of Delegates, where he served as speaker.
He moved to Louisiana Plata, Maryland in 1896. He served as a delegate to the Republican National Convention the same year. Benefiting by the coattails of a winning Republican biracial coalition that gained the governorship in 1896, Mudd was elected again from the fifth district to the Fifty-fifth and to the six succeeding Congresses, serving from March 4, 1897 to March 3, 1911.
Mudd died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Membership
Mudd was elected a member of the Maryland House of Delegates in 1879 and 1881.