was a featured speaker at the Loyal Southern Convention in Philadelphia in September 1866. State legislature At a statewide convention of Tennessee Unionists in January 1865, Mullins was nominated for the seat representing Bedford and Rutherford counties in the Tennessee House of Representatives. He was elected to the seat on March 4 of that year. The legislature convened in April, and quickly ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlawed slavery. While the state legislature was dominated during this period by Southern Unionists (ex-Confederates were barred from voting), a rift quickly developed between the "conservatives," who were aligned nationally with President Andrew Johnson, and the "radicals," who supported Governor William G. Brownlow, and were aligned nationally with the Radical Republicans. Conservatives, led by Speaker of the House William Heiskell, generally sought a return to pre-Civil War conditions (though with slavery outlawed), while Radicals wanted to extend voting rights to African-Americans and punish former Confederates. Mullins voted with the Radical block, and became one of Brownlow's staunchest allies in the state house. In February 1866, a franchise bill was introduced in the legislature that would give Governor Brownlow the power to throw out the votes of any county in any election in which ex-Confederates were suspected of casting ballots. Conservative legislators opposed the bill, but having little chance of stopping its passage, fled the capital in an attempt to prevent a quorum. Mullins loudly accused the Speaker of the House, William Heiskell, of organizing the quorum bust. Enraged, Heiskell called Mullins a "God damned old liar and a damned thief," and threw his gavel at Mullins. Reports differ as to Mullins' response, with at least one stating he had to be restrained from attacking Heiskell, and another stating he merely placed the gavel in his pocket and called Heiskell a "darned old fool." The franchise bill passed a few weeks later. Mullins was praised by radicals and derided by conservatives for his actions in the legislature. Brownlow's newspaper, the Knoxville Whig, stated that Mullins was a "terror to the copperheads" in the legislature, and described him as an "old patriot" who "stands like the pillars of the Alleghenies, unheeding the storms of copperheadism and treason, which beat in unrelenting fury above his head." The Cleveland Banner, on the other hand, stated that Mullins was "making an ass of himself." In July 1866, Brownlow called a special session of the General Assembly to consider