defend him." Stevenson's attacks on McCreery and Jones were likely designed to discredit them both in advance of the expiration of McCreery's Senate term in 1870. McCreery vigorously denied Stevenson's charges and eventually challenged him to a duel. Stevenson declined the challenge, citing his Christian beliefs. The General Assembly met to choose McCreery's successor in December 1869 and, on the fifth ballot, chose Stevenson over McCreery for the six-year Senate term. Stevenson resigned the governorship on February 13, 1871, in advance of the March congressional session. In the Senate, Stevenson was a conservative stalwart, steadfastly opposing spending on internal improvements and maintaining a strict constructionist view of the constitution. He urged his fellow senators to oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1871, claiming that its provision that the president could suspend the right of habeas corpus in cases where he believed violence was imminent amounted to giving the chief executive the powers of a dictator. He also opposed the appropriation of federal money to fund the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, because he did not believe Congress was given the authority to make such an allocation under the Constitution. At the 1872 Democratic National Convention, Stevenson received the votes of Delaware's six delegates for the Democratic vice-presidential nomination, although Benjamin Gratz Brown was ultimately nominated. In February 1873, Vice-President Schuyler Colfax named Stevenson as one of five members of the Morrill Commission to investigate New Hampshire Senator James W. Patterson's involvement in the Crédit Mobilier of America scandal. Stevenson and fellow Senator John P. Stockton of New Jersey both asked to be removed from the commission, but the Senate refused to grant their request. On February 27, 1873, the commission recommended Patterson's expulsion from the Senate, but the chamber adjourned on March 4 without acting on the recommendation. Patterson's term ended with the end of the session, and he was not re-elected, rendering moot further consideration of the matter. From December 1873 until the expiration of his term in 1877, Stevenson was generally recognized as the chairman (later known as the floor leader) of the minority Democratic caucus in the Senate; he was the first person to have acted in the capacity. During the Forty-fourth Congress, he chaired the Committee on Revolutionary Claims. He did not seek reelection at the end of his term. In the disputed 1876 presidential election, he was one of the visiting statesmen who went to