[1] During the Civil War, McMillin supported the Confederacy, and wanted to join the Confederate Army but was unable to obtain his father's permission.

[1] In 1878, McMillin was elected to the first of ten consecutive terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, defeating 4th District incumbent Haywood Y. Riddle.

Throughout his 20-year tenure, McMillin opposed excess government spending, tariffs, and most of the nation's global exploits, which he deemed imperialistic.

[2][3] By the time McMillin ran for reelection in 1900, the state's Republican Party had come under the control of Congressman Walter P. Brownlow.

Seeking to unseat McMillin, Brownlow and his faction nominated Representative John E. McCall as the party's candidate for governor.

While the party ran a strong campaign, McMillin was easily re-elected by winning 145,708 votes to 119,831 for McCall.

[2] In 1901, he signed legislation aimed at reducing child labor by increasing the state's minimum age for employment from 12 to 14.

McMillin represented the other faction, the "Regular Democrats," which believed the state's largest cities should be exempt from prohibition.

[2] One factor in the electoral loss may well have been the death of McMillin's only son in Bristol, Tennessee, who took ill at the end of October.

When the doctors lost hope, the candidate McMillin and his wife stayed at his son's bedside for nearly a week and canceled all engagements.

Shortly after arriving in the Peruvian capital, Lima, he helped negotiate an "Advancement of Peace" that formalized relations between the two countries.

One of his students was future Secretary of State Cordell Hull, who later recalled Benton McMillin as one of his political mentors.