sentences:  In this latter role, his committee handled the Homestead Act of 1862.In 1861, Potter was one of the participants in the Peace Conference of 1861, which failed to avert the American Civil War.He was defeated in his race for reelection in 1862 by fellow Maine-born lawyer James S. Brown, a Democrat who had been Milwaukee prosecutor and mayor, and who would defeated the following year by a Republican general.