[5] Although both his parents died when he was still a child, C. J. Faulkner graduated from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. in 1822, studied law and was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1829.

Senator Henry Clay (who would visit the district many times), Faulkner advocated internal improvements (including the National Road and Chesapeake and Ohio Canal which passed through Martinsburg).

[11] In 1838, voters in Berkeley, Morgan and Hampshire Counties elected Faulkner to the Virginia State Senate and he won re-election in 1841.

He entered Congress as a Whig, but with the demise of that party, he was re-elected as a Democrat, which he remained for the rest of his Congressional career.

He served until the onset of the American Civil War, newly elected President Abraham Lincoln having replaced him with William L. Dayton.

When Faulkner returned across the Atlantic Ocean to settle matters in Washington D.C., he was arrested in August 1861 on charges of negotiating sales of arms for the Confederacy while in Paris, France.

An exchange was then contemplated for Alfred Ely, a New York congressman who captured at the First Battle of Bull Run, but Confederate President Jefferson Davis wanted to make Faulkner's arrest an example before the civilized world.

[23] Faulkner returned but refused to take an oath of allegiance to the United States after the war, and only regained his law license after considerable difficulty.

However, other litigation (concerning allocating the cost and lost subsidies of canal, bridge and railroad improvements in western Virginia devastated by the war) would extend decades after Faulkner's death.

Berkeley County voters elected Faulkner as a member of the West Virginia Constitutional Convention in 1872, and he served as the temporary chairman.

Berkeley County voters would reject the final result, but the constitution was adopted by West Virginia as a whole; one matter of particular concern was organization within counties—under an elected Sheriff, Circuit Judges or Commissioners (the Ohio system)--which some condemned as a hodgepodge.

[25] In 1877, Faulkner commanded the state militia in an attempt to quell a rail worker protest over pay cuts in Martinsburg, West Virginia, under the direction of Governor Henry M. Mathews.