his long period of legislative activity, Dawes served in the House on the committees on elections, ways and means, and appropriations. He took a prominent part in passage of the anti-slavery and Reconstruction measures during and after the Civil War, in tariff legislation, and in the establishment of a fish commission. He also initiated the production of daily weather reports to be provided by the federal government. In the Senate, Dawes was chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs. He concentrated on enactment of laws that he believed were for the benefit of the Indians. In the late 19th century, after the Indian Wars, there were widespread fears that the Indians were disappearing and that their tribes would cease to exist. In the West, Indians had been forced onto reservations and were struggling with poor lands and too little area, as well as encroachment by white settlers. In the East, most Indians were landless and were largely believed to have entered or been marginal to majority culture. Well-meaning people such as Dawes believed that the Indians had to assimilate to majority culture to survive, and should take up subsistence farming, still dominant in agriculture. In 1869, Dawes became a founding member of the Monday Evening Club, a men's literary society in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Strategist for "Half-Breed" Republicans During the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes (spanning 1877–81), the main beneficiary of the Compromise of 1877 who abandoned military protection of Southern blacks and paved for the rise of Jim Crow, Dawes was a prominent member of congressional "Half-Breeds" within the Republican Party allied with Hayes' support for civil service reform. Along with fellow Massachusetts senatorial Half-Breed George F. Hoar and Rep. John Davis Long, he became one of the faction's leading strategists. During the 1880 United States presidential election, the agreed strategy planned was to prevent either former president Ulysses S. Grant, the leader of "Stalwarts," nor Blaine faction leader James G. Blaine of Maine, from obtaining the nomination at the Republican National Convention. Instead, the Half-Breeds would push to nominate faction member George F. Edmunds, a senator from Vermont. However, Sen. Hoar admonished Half-Breed supporters that Republican delegates should not make their preferences clearly visible to others. Although the Massachusetts delegation did support Edmunds, the Vermont Half-Breed failed to garner enough support, and the faction ultimately formed an alliance with Blaine supporters in successfully nominating James A. Garfield of Ohio.