George Graham Vest (6 December 1830-9 August 1904) was a Democratic US Senator from Missouri from 4 March 1879 to 3 March 1903, succeeding James Shields and preceding William J. Stone.
Biography[]
George Graham Vest was born in Frankfort, Kentucky in 1830, and he became a lawyer. In 1853, he planned to move to California, but he stopped in Pettis County, Missouri to defend a young Black man accused of murder; while his client was acquitted, he was burned at the stake by an angry mob. Though his life was threatened, Vest decided to permanently settle in Georgetown, Missouri. He moved to Boonville in 1860 and served in the state house and as a Democratic presidential elector. He was a strong advocate of maintaining slavery during the state's secession crisis in 1860, and he served in the Confederate Congress from 1862 to 1865. After the war, he became a lawyer in Sedalia. In 1870, he famously popularized the phrase "A dog is a man's best friend" while representing a client whose hunting dog had been killed by a sheep farmer, promising to win the case or apologize to every dog in Missouri. His verbose "Eulogy of the Dog" won the case, earning him and the dog everlasting fame. He went on to move to Kansas City and serve in the US Senate from 1879 to 1903, protecting Yellowstone National Park. He retired in 1902 and died in 1904.