Vinton was re-elected to the Nineteenth, Twentieth, Twenty-first, Twenty-second, Twenty Third and Twenty-fourth Congresses.

He was noted for his service on the Public Lands Committee, helping to create the United States Department of the Interior, and, as Thomas Ewing put it, had "more influence in the House of Representatives, much more, than any other man in it."

He was an authority on parliamentary procedure and in the Thirtieth Congress, he declined the Speakership but took the chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee instead.

President Millard Fillmore offered him the post of Secretary of the Interior, but he declined.

In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln appointed him to appraise the value of slaves freed in the District of Columbia.