large vote but declined. A second vote was taken reaffirming his nomination by acclamation, whereupon he accepted. In the fall election, with a much-improved war effort and political environment for the Lincoln administration, Conkling defeated Kernan to reclaim his seat. In the time before Conkling returned to the House, President Lincoln was inaugurated, the Civil War came to a close, and Lincoln was assassinated on April 14. Conkling and Seymour accompanied the funeral procession from Albany to Utica. Third term Returning to Congress in December 1865, Conkling was appointed to the powerful Committee on Ways and Means, serving alongside future Presidents Rutherford B. Hayes and James A. Garfield. He also served on the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, which drafted the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. He was among the committee’s most active supporters of enfranchising freed slaves. Conkling’s long rivalry with James G. Blaine had its roots in his final term as Representative. In April 1866, a bill to reorganize the army was introduced which would have made the position of Provost-Marshal General permanent. Conkling objected to the bill on the grounds that it "create[d] an unnecessary office for an undeserving public servant. It fastens, as an incubus upon the country, a hateful instrument of war, which deserves no place in a free government in a time of peace." The current Provost-Marshal General, James B. Fry, replied via Blaine, taking issue with Conkling's statement and making specific charges of wrongdoing and graft in connection with Conkling's war-time service as an attorney. The charges were investigated and unanimously dismissed by an investigatory committee as having "no foundation in truth," but Conkling never forgave Blaine. Their continuing enmity spawned an oft-quoted speech in which Blaine derided what he portrayed as Conkling's "haughty disdain, his grandiloquent swell, his majestic, supereminent, overpowering, turkey-gobbler strut," prompting Conkling later to demand an apology that Blaine refused to give. Their personal animosities shaped Republican presidential politics for the next two decades, possibly costing Blaine the presidency in 1884 when Conkling, still a power in the closely-fought state of New York, not only refused to help Blaine, but worked for his defeat. Conkling was re-elected over Palmer V. Kellogg in November 1866. U.S. Senator 1867 election By December 1866, New York press were proposing Conkling as the successor to Senator Ira Harris, whose term expired in the coming March. Conkling was presented as a young, progressive