Thomas Salem Bocock was a Confederate politician and lawyer from Virginia. After serving as an antebellum United States Congressman, he was the speaker of the Confederate States House of Representatives during most of the American Civil War.
Official portrait, c. 1857
Confederate States Congress
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.
Confederate States Congress
The State Capitol at Montgomery, Alabama, where the Confederate States Congress met
Meeting of the Provisional Confederate Congress, 1861
The first Confederate Cabinet: President Jefferson Davis, Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, Attorney General Judah P. Benjamin, Secretary of the Navy Stephen M. Mallory, Secretary of the Treasury C. G. Memminger, Secretary of War Leroy Pope Walker, Postmaster John H. Reagan, and Secretary of State Robert Toombs