of Representatives from 1903 to 1907, controlling patronage in the state as well as representing Virginia's 9th congressional district until his unexpected death in October 1907. In 1905, Bascom Slemp became chairman of Virginia's Republican State Committee, where he served until 1918, at which point he was elected to the Republican National Committee. Bascom Slemp won the special election to fill his father's vacancy, and also won reelection six times, serving from 1907 until March 3, 1923, after he declined to be a candidate for re-election. As the leading Republican in the Old Dominion, he faced a difficult battle for re-election in 1910, after Democrats persuaded Henry C. Stuart to run against him, and used the slogan "Redeem the District." Theodore Roosevelt gave a speech for Slemp, who won by a margin of about 200 votes. Although Stuart initially refused to concede defeat, his contest failed, in part because all 265 precincts had a Democratic registrar, two Democratic clerks and at least two Democratic judges. On September 4, 1923, six months after Slemp completed his last term as Congressman, President Calvin Coolidge appointed him to serve as his secretary, a post similar to the later White House Chief of Staff. The appointment of Slemp to this prominent position stirred anger among African Americans within the Republican party. Black newspapers of the time decried Slemp's leadership of the "lily white movement" to oust black leaders from Virginia's Republican party. During his time in Congress, Slemp was one of only a small handful of Republicans who voted against the Dyer Anti-Lynching bill of 1922. An article in the nationally-syndicated Pittsburgh Courier reported that "The Associated Negro Press has been informed from a number of sources that Slemp is a member of the Ku Klux Klan and a strong sympathizer with that nefarious organization." Slemp served until March 4, 1925. He resigned early in Coolidge's second term as a result of unresolved friction with the President, and he was succeeded by Everett Sanders. Return to rural life After leaving the Coolidge administration, Slemp returned to his law practice in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. In 1930, President Herbert Hoover appointed Slemp as United States Commissioner General to the International Colonial and Overseas Exposition in Paris, and at its conclusion in 1931, France awarded Slemp the French Legion of Honor Medal. By the 1930 Census, Slemp lived in Big Stone Gap with