Tillman was a senator from South Carolina and was a Democrat. He served from 1907 to 1919.
He was previously a senator from South Carolina as a Democrat from 1901 to 1907; and a senator from South Carolina as a Democrat from 1895 to 1901.
Misconduct
Tillman had an altercation on February 22, 1902 in which he accused Sen. McLaurin of treachery, then McLaurin accused Tillman of lying. Tillman then attacked McLaurin physically. After a fight almost broke out again, the Senate censured them both 54-12.
| Feb. 22, 1902 | Senate referred to Committee on Privileges and Elections and both senators were declared in contempt of the Senate and would not be allowed to speak on the floor except at the request of another senator. Another senator did so and both apologized although in such an unpleasant manner the fight almost broke out again |
| Feb. 28, 1902 | Committee on Privileges and Elections recommended that both should receive the same punishment even though Tillman started it. The punishment was censure and the suspension of duties they'd already been experiencing |
| Feb. 28, 1902 | Senate censured 54-12, with 22 senators not voting |
![Photo of Sen. Benjamin Tillman [D-SC, 1907-1919]](/static/legislator-photos/410847-200px.jpeg)
Voting Record
Missed Votes
From Dec 1895 to Jul 1918, Tillman missed 1,603 of 3,094 roll call votes, which is 51.8%. This is much worse than the median of 29.3% among the lifetime records of senators serving in Jul 1918. The chart below reports missed votes over time.
We don’t track why legislators miss votes, but it’s often due to medical absenses and major life events.
Primary Sources
The information on this page is originally sourced from a variety of materials, including:
- unitedstates/congress-legislators, a community project gathering congressional information
- United States Congressional Roll Call Voting Records, 1789-1990 by Howard L. Rosenthal and Keith T. Poole.
- Martis’s “The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress”, via Keith Poole’s roll call votes data set, for political party affiliation for Members of Congress from 1789 through about year 2000
- Biographical Directory of the United States Congress for the photo
