In 1855 Collamer was elected to the
Senate as a conservative, anti-slavery
Republican. In his first term, Collamer was Chairman of the Committee on Engrossed Bills (
Thirty-fourth Congress). In 1856, Collamer received several votes for
Vice President at the
Republican National Convention. In the Senate, he defended his positions vigorously even when he was in the minority. When the
Committee on Territories, chaired by
Stephen A. Douglas, recommended passage of the
Crittenden Amendment, which proposed resubmitting for popular vote the pro-slavery
Lecompton Constitution for
Kansas, Collamer and
James R. Doolittle of
Wisconsin refused to vote in favor but instead crafted a persuasive minority report explaining their opposition. Collamer also represented the minority view in June 1860, when the select committee chaired by
James Murray Mason issued its report on
John Brown's raid on
Harper's Ferry. Mason argued that Brown's raid was the work of an organized abolitionist movement, which needed to be curtailed with federal authority. Collamer and Doolittle countered that Brown and his followers had been caught and punished and that further government action was not necessary. His colleagues were known to pay close attention to his remarks on the Senate floor even though he spoke infrequently and even then too quietly to reach the entire chamber or the galleries.
Charles Sumner referred to Collamer as the "Green-Mountain
Socrates" and called him the wisest and best balanced statesman of his time.
Civil War At the
1860 Republican National Convention, Collamer received the
favorite son votes of Vermont's delegates and withdrew after the first ballot. Reelected to the Senate in 1861, he served until his death. In 1861, Collamer authored the bill to invest the President with new war powers and give Congressional approval to the war measures that
Abraham Lincoln had taken under his own authority at the start of his administration. Collamer was the lead senator of the nine Republicans who visited Lincoln in 1862 to argue for change in the composition of his cabinet by persuading him to replace his
Secretary of State,
William Henry Seward. Having been encouraged to confront Lincoln by claims of cabinet disharmony from Lincoln's
Secretary of the Treasury,
Salmon P. Chase, the senators changed their minds during the meeting after Chase was maneuvered by Lincoln into backtracking on his initial argument. Again a member of the majority once the
Democrats from the southern states left the Senate during the war, Collamer was Chairman of the Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads (
Thirty-seventh to
Thirty-ninth Congresses) and the Committee on the Library (
Thirty-eighth and Thirty-ninth Congresses). After the war, Collamer opposed the
Reconstruction of plans of Presidents Lincoln and
Andrew Johnson and was an advocate of Congressional control over the process of readmitting former
Confederate states to the Union. ==Death==