views. John Hawxhurst helped Union forces as a guide and by identifying loyalists for General Winfield Hancock in Washington D.C. Asked to help the Restored Government of Virginia, Hawxhurst spent considerable time in Wheeling in what became West Virginia by the end of 1861, which prompted retaliation against his Fairfax County property. Hawxhurst was one of Fairfax County's two delegates at the Wheeling Convention of 1861 (alongside his neighbor, Maine-born Ebenezer E. Mason(1829–1910)). Hawxhurst was Fairfax County's sole delegate at the sessions of the General Assembly at Wheeling from July 1 to 26, 1861 and December 2, 1861 to February 13, 1862 (no-one represented Fairfax County at the Wheeling session of December 4, 1862 – February 5, 1863). By mid-spring 1862, John Hawxhurst, his brother Job and fellow Fairfax County Quaker Jonathan Roberts all returned to eastern Virginia when Union forces occupied Alexandria and Fairfax City. Governor Pierpont moved the Restored Government of Virginia to Alexandria in 1863. John Hawxhurst then represented Fairfax County at the sessions of Virginia General Assembly at Alexandria on December 7, 1863 – February 8, 1864, and at the Convention of 1864 (which met under Governor Pierpont from February 13 to April 11, 1864). At that convention, John Hawxhurst proposed immediate and uncompensated emancipation for slaves (with the approval of all but one of his fellow Loyalist delegates) as well as a system of free public schools as was common in New England and New York. However, fellow delegates at that convention refused to endorse (as too radical) his proposals to permit black men to vote, for free education for black as well as white children, and to submit that constitution to voters for approval. Hawxhurst also represented Fairfax County at the General Assembly at Alexandria December 5, 1864 – March 7, 1865, and from June 19–23, 1865 in Richmond after the Confederate surrender. Reconstruction In January 1866, Hawxhurst and Roberts (who had been elected Sheriff of Fairfax County) testified before a Reconstruction Committee led by U.S. Representative Thaddeus Stevens. Their testimony (along with many other witnesses, including Robert E. Lee) led Congress to consider the Southern States unfit to rejoin the Union. President Andrew Johnson (from Tennessee) disagreed with that assessment, and soon vetoed a bill to extend the life of the Freedmen's Bureau and later a Civil Rights Act. Virginia's General Assembly (in which Hawxhurst did not serve) then failed to soften a