Sen. William Fessenden
Former Senator for Maine
Fessenden was a senator from Maine and was a Republican. He served from 1865 to 1869.
He was previously a senator from Maine as a Republican from 1859 to 1865; a senator from Maine as a Republican from 1854 to 1859; and the representative for Maine’s 2nd congressional district as a Whig from 1841 to 1843.
![Photo of Sen. William Fessenden [R-ME, 1865-1869]](/static/legislator-photos/404056-200px.jpeg)
Voting Record
Missed Votes
From Mar 1854 to Apr 1869, Fessenden missed 986 of 4,763 roll call votes, which is 20.7%. This is better than the median of 27.9% among the lifetime records of senators serving in Apr 1869. 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
