Actions in Congress and The Senate
- He was an enthusiastic supporter of the Lincoln administration and its conduct of the American Civil War.
- He defended a proposal ordering the construction of a transcontinental telegraph to the Pacific Ocean.
- He opposed the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Dred Scott v. Sanford.
- He opposed the generalship of George B. McClellan.
- He helped draft the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution.
- He was a Radical Republican favoring equal rights for ex-slaves and reduced rights for ex-Confederates. He was active in framing and pushing through Congress the Reconstruction legislation, and was instrumental in the passage of the second Civil Rights Act in 1875.
- In the Republican National Convention at Cincinnati in 1876, Conkling first appeared as a presidential candidate, initially receiving 93 votes. His votes would later be thrown behind Rutherford B. Hayes in order to prevent the ascension of James G. Blaine.
- He was one of the framers of the bill creating the Electoral Commission to decide the disputed election of 1876.
- He championed the broad interpretation of the ex post facto clause in the Constitution (See Stogner v. California)
- After resigning from the Senate in 1881, he became a lawyer. As one of the original drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment, he claimed in a case which reached the Supreme Court, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, 118 U.S. 394 (1886), that the phrase "nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws" meant the drafters wanted corporations to be included, because they used the word "person" and cited his personal diary from the period. Howard Jay Graham, a Stanford University historian considered the pre-eminent scholar on the Fourteenth Amendment, named this case the "conspiracy theory" and concluded that Conkling probably perjured himself for the benefit of his railroad friends.
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“Like Cato, give his little Senate laws,
And sit attentive to his own applause.”
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