Smalls’s congressional record shows a man who was working within these constraints while understanding what they meant. His 1875 amendment to bar racial distinctions in Army enlistment did not pass. His advocacy for federal troops remaining in the South was overridden by the Compromise of 1877. His efforts to secure a congressional inquiry into the Hamburg Massacre were unsuccessful in producing accountability.
What he could do was represent his district’s specific interests — the Port Royal Naval Station, federal infrastructure projects along the coast, the pension claims of his constituents — and use his platform to document and protest what was being done. He was a consistent and vocal presence on civil rights questions in the House. He was a member who kept voting, kept speaking, kept insisting that the Constitution meant what it said, in a chamber where fewer and fewer of his colleagues agreed.
The contested elections of 1878 and 1880 are important in understanding his career. He lost to George D. Tillman in 1878 in an election that was accompanied by the pattern of violent suppression that had been organized across South Carolina by rifle clubs and other paramilitary organizations aligned with the Democratic Party. The 1880 result was close enough that Smalls filed a contest — a formal process by which members of Congress could challenge election results they believed had been achieved through fraud or intimidation. The House, after investigation, awarded him the seat in 1882. This was the process working as it was supposed to work. It required Smalls to spend two years out of Congress pursuing the contest and then returned him to a chamber where the political wind was running against everything he had been sent to advocate for.