He was elected captain and commander of a Bennington militia company, which was activated for service several times in Vermont and upstate New York.

[7] After Vermont's admission to the Union in 1791, Tichenor ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the United States House of Representatives against Matthew Lyon and Israel Smith, receiving 29% of the vote in the first round.

[10][11][12] In 1796 he was elected to fill the unexpired term of Moses Robinson in the United States Senate beginning on October 18, 1796.

He was re-elected to a full six-year term to begin on March 4, 1797, but he resigned on October 17, 1797, when he was elected Governor of Vermont.

Despite dominating the Governor's office for a decade, Tichenor's elections reflected the decline of the Federalist Party as a whole, as he won by increasingly narrow margins.