new Vagrant Act as Gov. Pierpont had urged, and also failed to ratify the 14th Amendment. Congress responded by passing a drastic Reconstruction Act, which President Johnson also vetoed. However, that veto was overridden, and Congressional Reconstruction began. General John Schofield was named the administrator of Military District Number One, i.e. Virginia. Meanwhile, Virginians did not accept the 1864 Constitution that Hawxhurst had helped draft, in part because it had never been submitted for voter approval as he suggested. The prewar 1850 Constitution had expressly permitted slavery, which was abolished as the war ended. Reconstruction required a new Constitution before Virginia could be readmitted to the Union. In July 1866, John Hawxhurst was among the Union Republicans calling for a constitutional convention. On August 1, 1867, Virginia Republicans held a convention at a Baptist church in Richmond which was controlled by Radicals, who excluded Hawxhurst and other near moderates; Hawxhurst addressed the crowd outside. The following month, Fairfax County voters (black and white) chose Hawxhurst to represent them at the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1868. He was considered a candidate for President of the convention, but Radicals selected Judge John Curtiss Underwood instead. Hawxhurst was the only Quaker delegate, John Crenshaw having been defeated by African-American Burwell Toler to represent Hanover County, Virginia. During the convention, Hawxhurst promoted a fairly radical agenda including universal suffrage and education, and income rather than poll taxes. He also accused Underwood of misusing campaign funds to support Republican candidates, including Salmon P. Chase. Around 1867, Hawxhurst moved his family from Alexandria to Falls Church, Virginia. He was also appointed a federal tax commissioner. After Governor Pierpont was deposed by the federal administration early in Reconstruction, Hawxhurst lobbied to become his successor, but General Henry H. Wells was chosen instead. General John Schofield, who had been Virginia's military administrator (and who after the Constitutional Convention ended became Secretary of War under new President Ulysses S. Grant), did not think highly of John Hawkshurst. In 1869, after Fairfax County (and other Virginia) voters overwhelmingly approved the new state Constitution that John Hawxhurst had helped draft (but not two controversial anti-Confederate clauses), they elected his brother Job as a Conservative or True Republican to represent them as their (part-time) delegate in the Virginia General Assembly. Other Quakers elected to that General Assembly session were Senator Thomas E. Taylor (1832–1892) of Goose Creek Meetinghouse (representing Loudoun, Prince William