Edmund R. Cocke was a veteran of the American Civil War (1861–1865) who, after the war, became a Populist Party leader, running unsuccessful campaigns for Virginia governor (1893) and lieutenant governor (1897). After being wounded at Gettysburg (1863) and captured at Sailor’s Creek (1865), Cocke, a staunch Democrat and white-supremacist, chaired Cumberland County‘s electoral board beginning in 1884. He told a friend that Republicans “putrefy every thing they touch,” but he never was accused of being unfairly partisan in his position. Around the same time, Captain Cocke, as he was known, became involved in populist politics through the Farmers’ Assembly of the State of Virginia, which he cofounded, and his disagreement with Democrats over the gold standard led to his defection to the People’s Party in 1892. Although intellectually gifted, he was considered by his peers to be an uninspiring speaker, and he was soundly defeated in his run for governor in 1893 and, four years later, for lieutenant governor. This latter defeat effectively ended Populism in Virginia. In 1898, Cocke’s wife died, in 1900 his plantation burned, and in his last few years he experimented with making gold through alchemy and lashed out at Prohibition Democrats. He died of kidney failure in 1922.
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