The first high school principal in Fargo later became a highly respected federal judge and the personal confidant of a U.S. president.

In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt read and admired the contents of a speech given by Charles Amidon, and a lasting friendship began. Soon, the president began incorporating Amidon's ideas into his speeches and urging Congress to enact them into law.

Charles Fremont Amidon was born Aug. 17, 1856, in southwestern New York to Rev. John S. and Charlotte (Curtis) Amidon.

In 1878, Amidon enrolled at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y. He took odd jobs to earn college money and graduated in June 1882.

Meanwhile, the first high school, Fargo High, was being constructed in south Fargo. Amidon applied for the position of principal and teacher and was hired. One of the students that caught the attention of Amidon was a bright, young freshman named Beulah McHenry.

Amidon became friends with Alfred D. Thomas, a prominent lawyer in Fargo. Thomas convinced him to study law at the office he shared with John D. Benton. After four years of study and apprenticeship, Amidon was admitted to the bar and became a partner with Benton in the law firm.

Before becoming an attorney, Amidon saw that many people in the area were being exploited by Alexander McKenzie and his machine. He actively spoke out against McKenzie. According to historian Elwyn Robinson, Amidon was able to take political control in Fargo away from Alanson Edwards and McKenzie.

In 1886 Amidon was appointed city attorney of Fargo, and Beulah McHenry returned to Fargo after four years of college at the University of Minnesota and the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia. A romance began, and, in 1892, she married Amidon.

After North Dakota became a state in November 1889, a federal statute was enacted creating a district court for the state, and Alfred Thomas was appointed judge. Thomas died on Aug. 8, 1896, and President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, needed to appoint his successor.

As luck would have it, Amidon's partner, Benton, was not only an active Democrat, but had been a boyhood friend of Cleveland. When the president appointed Amidon as federal district judge, McKenzie's machine went into action to try to block the nominee.

Henry Hansbrough, a U.S. senator from North Dakota and one of McKenzie's men, led the fight in the Senate to deny Amidon's appointment, but the efforts were unsuccessful. Amidon was confirmed by the Senate on Feb. 18, 1897, and he received his commission the same day. Amidon remained active on the bench until 1928.

In going through many of the decisions and writings of Amidon, I discovered he could not be pigeonholed into any particular ideology.

He believed that judges should be free to make their decisions based on personal life experiences, but advocated that they should be recalled if their decisions violated traditional values.

Amidon was a strong adherent in the belief that, because of a changing society, judges needed to be flexible when looking at past case law and the Constitution.

One issue that he strongly detested was the ability of defendants to be automatically granted an appeal if a technical error occurred in a criminal case. This was the topic of his presentation at the Minnesota Bar Association in Minneapolis in April 1906.

As the printed text of the speech was being prepared for several publications, President Roosevelt received word of it and wrote to Amidon requesting a copy. Soon the two men were corresponding on a regular basis.

In the fall of 1910, the judge convinced Roosevelt, now out of office, to come to Fargo and lay the cornerstone for a new library at Fargo College.

As the former president became more disenchanted with the decisions of his hand-picked successor, William Howard Talf, Amidon encouraged him to run against Taft at the 1912 Republican convention. Roosevelt tossed his hat in the ring but lost the nomination.

Roosevelt decided to run as a third-party Progressive candidate and chose the name "Bull-Moose Party." Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, won the election.

Amidon and Roosevelt remained friends until the U.S. entered World War I and the Espionage Act of 1917 and 1918 became a big issue. Roosevelt became intolerant against any type of opposition to the war. Amidon, however, saw people dragged into court mainly because of their German heritage or belief that this was the wrong war for U.S. involvement.

His rational and brave decisions of tolerance were denounced by many people who had supported him in the past.

In 1905, Amidon became the first president of the North Dakota State Historical Society. In 1910, the town of Amidon was founded in western North Dakota.

During World War II, a liberty ship was built and named the S.S. Charles F. Amidon.

Amidon died Dec. 26, 1937.

(This column is written by Curt Eriksmoen and edited by Jan Eriksmoen. You can reach the Eriksmoens by e-mail at cjeriksmoen@;cableone.net.)