Roger Quarles Mills (March 30, 1832September 2, 1911) was an American lawyer and politician. During the American Civil War, he served as an officer in the Confederate States Army. Later, he served in the US Congress, first as a representative and later as a senator. As the top Democrat on the powerful United States House Committee on Ways and Means during the first Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison administrations, Mills was the leading advocate in Congress for trade liberalization. He was ultimately unsuccessful in passing any major tariff reduction and, after Republicans won control of the House on a pro-tariff platform, was unsuccessful in blocking the McKinley Tariff of 1890. He ran for Speaker after Democrats regained the House in 1891 but lost to Charles F. Crisp. Early life Born in Todd County, Kentucky, Mills attended the common schools and moved to Texas in 1849. There, he studied law, passed the bar, and began practicing in Corsicana at the age of 20 after the Texas legislature made an exception to the usual age requirement. He was a member of the Texas House of Representatives from 1859 until 1860, when he enlisted in the Confederate States Army. He served throughout the Civil War and took part as a private in the Battle of Wilson's Creek, and as a colonel commanded the 10th Texas Infantry Regiment at Arkansas Post, Chickamauga (where he commanded the brigade of Gen. James Deshler during part of the battle), Missionary Ridge and the Atlanta Campaign. U.S. Representative He was then elected as a Democrat to the US House of Representatives and served from 1873 to 1892. In 1891, Mills was a candidate in the Democratic caucus for Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, but he was defeated by Charles F. Crisp (1845–1896) of Georgia. In the 1880s, when Prohibition sentiment was rising in Texas, Mills refused to make any political concessions. Reportedly, he declared in one speech, "If lightning were to strike all the drunkards, there would not be a live Prohibition party in Texas." (Mills claimed to have been misquoted and that he had said "there would not be many [members of the party] left.") Elsewhere, he was said to have vowed, "A good sluice of pine top whiskey would improve the morals of the Dallas [Prohibition] convention and the average Prohibitionist." (Mills again offered a correction and insisted that he had not used the