Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter was an American lawyer, politician and planter. He was a U.S. representative, speaker of the House (1839–1841), and U.S. senator (1847–1861). During the American Civil War, Hunter became the Confederate States Secretary of State (1861–1862) and then a Confederate senator (1862–1865) and critic of President Jefferson Davis. After the war, Hunter failed to win re-election to the U.S. Senate, but did serve as the treasurer of Virginia (1874–1880) before retiring to his farm. After fellow Democrat Grover Cleveland was elected President of the United States in 1884, Hunter became the customs collector for the port of Tappahannock until his death.

The Confederate States Congress was both the provisional and permanent legislative assembly of the Confederate States of America that existed from 1861 to 1865. Its actions were, for the most part, concerned with measures to establish a new national government for the Southern proto-state, and to prosecute a war that had to be sustained throughout the existence of the Confederacy. At first, it met as a provisional congress both in Montgomery, Alabama, and Richmond, Virginia. As was the case for the provisional Congress after it moved to Richmond, the permanent Congress met in the existing Virginia State Capitol, a building which it shared with the secessionist Virginia General Assembly.