In 1891 E. E. Meredith and Robert R. Campbell were the court appointed attorneys for Joseph Dye and Lee R. Heflin, white farm workers, who were tried for the murder of a white Fauquier County, Virginia, family (a widow and her three young children) during a robbery. The killers attempted to cover up their crime by burning the house. After the two killers were convicted and sentenced to death they were taken from sheriff’s deputies transporting them to another jail and lynched in Prince William County, Virginia.[1]
Meredith was elected as a Democrat to the Fifty-second Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of William H.F. Lee.
He was reelected to the Fifty-third and Fifty-fourth Congresses and served from December 9, 1891, to March 3, 1897.
He resumed the practice of his profession.
He died in Manassas, Virginia, on July 29, 1900.
He was interred in Manassas Cemetery.