Chesnut was a senator from South Carolina and was a Democrat. He served from 1858 to 1860.
Misconduct
Chesnut faced an allegation of disloyalty to the Union. On Jul. 11, 1861, the Senate expelled him, 32-10.
| Jul. 11, 1861 | Senate expelled, 32-10 |
![Photo of Sen. James Chesnut [D-SC, 1858-1860]](/static/legislator-photos/402487-200px.jpeg)
Voting Record
Missed Votes
From Jan 1858 to Jun 1860, Chesnut missed 158 of 622 roll call votes, which is 25.4%. This is on par with the median of 21.9% among the lifetime records of senators serving in Jun 1860. The chart below reports missed votes over time.
We don’t track why legislators miss votes, but it’s often due to medical absenses, major life events, and running for higher office.
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
