1895–1901
Alabama earned an additional seat after the census of 1890, and Underwood became chairman of the new 9th District's Democratic Committee in 1892. Two years later, voters elected him as a Democrat to the
United States House of Representatives. However,
Truman H. Aldrich successfully challenged that election result, forcing Underwood to resign in the middle of the term, on June 9, 1896. However, Underwood persisted, and campaigned for tariff reform. He won the seat again in the election at year's end, then re-election numerous times, serving nine terms (from 1897 to 1915). Underwood became as the first Democratic
House Minority Whip, serving from about 1900 to 1901. He then became
House Majority Leader from 1911 to 1915. 1910s He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in
1912 and had some strength at the national convention among southern delegates but could not compete with
Champ Clark and
Woodrow Wilson. At the convention that year in
Baltimore, Wilson's managers offered Underwood the vice-presidential nomination, which he declined. Following the election, Underwood supported the progressive reforms of Wilson's first term, using his position as Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee to manage legislation and maintain party discipline. In return, Wilson granted him considerable control over patronage and appointed
Albert S. Burleson Postmaster-General upon Underwood's recommendation. The
Revenue Act of 1913 is also known as the Underwood Tariff Act or Underwood-Simmons Act in recognition of Underwood's role in writing and managing the bill as Chairman of the
House Ways and Means Committee. He stood with a small minority of House members in opposition to the President when he voted to maintain an exemption from
Panama Canal tolls for American ships traveling between American ports, despite British protests that the policy violated the
Hay–Pauncefote Treaty. Underwood twice won election to the
United States Senate, in 1914 and 1920, and served there from March 4, 1915, to March 3, 1927. He was
Senate minority leader from 1920 to 1923. Underwood was part of the four-person American delegation at the
1921-22 Washington Naval Conference. There, he helped negotiate the
Five-Power Treaty limiting American, British, Japanese, French, and Italian naval armament. He opposed federal
Prohibition as "an attempt to rob the states of their jurisdiction over police matters" and advocated local control of liquor regulation because "the improved conditions which we may naturally expect to find in the lives of the men and women who practice
Temperance are not found to predominate in the state where Prohibition laws have been on the statute books for years as compared to those states where liquor is sold under a license system or where Temperance laws are controlled by the sentiment of the local communities." Underwood led the anti-
Ku Klux Klan forces at the
1924 Democratic National Convention. He was a longtime opponent of the Klan. In 1924, when the Klan organized a parade in Birmingham during that year's
Democratic National Convention, Underwood called it an effort "to intimidate me, the Alabama delegation and the Democratic Party....It will not succeed....I maintain that the organization is a national menace....It is either the Ku Klux Klan or the
United States of America. Both cannot survive. Between the two, I choose my country." By 1924 Underwood was one of very few anti-Klan officeholders left in the South. In 1927, Underwood was appointed to an international peace commission. In 1928, Underwood supported New York Governor
Al Smith for president. ==Later life==