 Crammer).Russell was an elector in the 1860 presidential election supporting Democratic candidate John C. Breckinridge.After Virginia's secession in mid-1861, West Virginia voters who refused to remain loyal to the Union (generally volunteers in Confederate camps) elected Russell to the Provisional Confederate Congress where he served from July 1861 until February 1862), and then to the First Confederate Congress and the Second Confederate Congress, where he served from February 1862 until March 1865.