Committee of Nine

Following the American Civil War and testimony before Congress that President Andrew Johnson's self-reconstruction was not allowing newly freed slaves many civil rights, Congress passed four Reconstruction Acts which set forth requirements for civilians to take control over the state governments in formerly Confederate states, instead of the military.

Many high-ranking former Confederates were not permitted and others chose not to vote for members of the Constitutional Convention of 1867–68, which included African-American delegates and abolitionist federal judge John Curtiss Underwood dominated.

Major areas of debate concerned state administration, voting regulations, restrictions on officeholding by former Confederates, and social policies.

The "Underwood Constitution" included "free schools for both races, equal rights provisions, and reforms of local government.

"[2] It also included controversial and very strict clauses concerning ex-Confederates, which were unpopular, so Virginia's military ruler during Congressional Reconstruction, General John Schofield, and later President-elect Ulysses S. Grant delayed the ratification vote for what turned out to be more than a year.

[4] Echols would never formally become a member of the Committee of Nine, although he worked closely with Stuart to publish the "Senex" letter described below and set up the compromise.

These Republicans, such as Edgar Allan and Franklin Stearns, worked with the committee in Washington in the fight for a separate vote on the anti-Confederate provisions.

Nonetheless, when the Congress reassembled in December 1868, the Virginia Republican executive committee requested a vote on the Underwood constitution.

In his work, "A narrative of the leading incidents of the organization of the first popular movement in Virginia in 1865 to re-establish peaceful relations between the northern and southern states, and the subsequent efforts of the "Committee of Nine," in 1869, to secure the restoration of Virginia to the Union", Alexander H. H. Stuart describes his motives behind writing and publishing the letter as following:"I have no doubt that hundreds—nay, thousands—of my fellow-citizens thought and felt as I did as to the necessity of taking action on the subject.

Under these circumstances, as the necessity for moving in the matter was urgent, and the time within which action likely to lead to a successful result was limited to two weeks, I determined to sound a note of alarm by calling the attention of the people of Virginia to the frightful dangers which threatened them, and urging those who thought as I did to unite in an organized attempt to avert them.

[8] The committee aimed to go to Washington to authorize separate votes on the proposed new state constitution, and the provision which continued to disenfranchise former Confederates (mostly white Virginians) under the Reconstruction Acts.

As the chairman, Stuart opened conferences when members appeared before federal legislators, as well as publicly set forth their objections to the Underwood Constitution.

CSA Colonel W. T. Sutherlin, of Danville, was among those who joined Alexander H. H. Stuart at the Exchange Hotel in Richmond, as was General Echols.