President of the Virginia Secession Convention, Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia, Confederate Congress Representative.

Fleetwood Academy; law degree from College of William and Mary, 1842; acquired large plantation near Saluda, VA, and there built his home, named Inglewood. campaigned throughout Virginia for election of president Polk, 1844; in Virginia legislature (House of Delagates) as Democrat, 1850-1852; presidential elector, 1853 and 1857; commonwealth attorney of Middlesex county, 1852; Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia, 1860; President of Virginia Secession Convention, 1861;

On executive council organizing Virginia's Confederate troops and appointing officers; Virginia representative to Confederate Congress, 1863-1865;

Virginia state delegate for Middlesex county, 1873 (for the Conservative Party); judge of eighth Judicial District of Virginia, 1875-1880 (until his death).

His son, Andrew Jackson Montague, was Governor of Virginia 1902-1906.

When Lincoln was elected president he demanded immediate secession of Virginia. After the secession convention in 1861 (of which he was president), governor Letcher appointed him to the executive committee to prepare Virginia for war.

In 1863 (by which time the scope of the war had become clear) he won a decisive victory over incumbent Virginia Confederate Congress representative Garnett. As a key participant in the managment of the Confederate military, he must have understood the magnitude of the task at hand. Warner and Yearns describe his political platform thus:

`In sharp contrast to Garnett, Montague gave the central government his full support. He wished so strongly to enlarge the army that he tried to prevent men from legally testing their liability to conscription. He saw no reason to embarrass the Treasury by ordering immediate payment for property illegally impressed, and he even consented to the impressment of state-owned railroad equipment. Montague showed particular respect for executive privilege. In habeas corpus and army matters he tended to grant the president and the generals wide latitude in applying laws. He even consented to the Treasury Department's adding `certificates of indebtedness' to the already inflated currency. Montague limited most of his own suggestions to remedying minor injustices in financial legislation and seeing that prisoners of war and hospitalized soldiers received proper compensation for their confinement.' (Warner and Years)

Virginia had 16 Confederate Congress Representatives. Incidentally, the Arizona Territory, the Cherokee Nation, and the Creek and Seminole Nations each had a Confederate Congress representative. Nine tribes joined the Confederacy, and Cherokee confederate military units [1] seem to have been especially prominent. Indeed, it seems that the Cherokee were the last fighting Confederates. A civil war battle flag site notes:

'the last Confederate General to surrender his command was Stand Watie of the Cherokee Nation, and the last Confederate civil authorities to surrender was Governor Winchester Colbert and the Council of the Chickasaw Nation.'

The history of politics in the south after the Civil War does not seem to receive much popular emphasis. The political party in the North that conducted the Civil War (Lincoln's party) was the party that we know today as the Republicans. More 'traditionalist' politicians did not want to join the Democratic Party and would not join the Republican Party. They became members of the Conservative Party. The following extracts are from The Virginia Conservatives, 1867-1879, by Jack Maddox:

"During the 1870's, the Democratic statesmen who had dominated Virginia politics during the 1850's ceased - to their surprise - to wield appreciable power. R.M.T. Hunter, Henry A. Wise, "Extra Billy" Smith, Robert L. Montague, and John Letcher were, for the most part, lost and disoriented in the politics of the Conservative period. Into their place stepped a host of young Confederate officers... all of whom had been teen-agers in 1860. Other Conservatives considered the newcomers' lack of antebellum political experience an asset.

... The cleavage between generations was not simply a matter of age but of education. To the young Conservatives, the antebellum world was a distant memory, dimmed by the intervening clash of arms. The Confederate Army, not the antebellum society, had been the school of their early manhood. It had exposed them to technological and logistical problems, as well as to some exercises in political manipulation." (Maddox)

However:

"Admitting that the party was "in the throes of distraction", the (Conservative Party, ed.) Central Committee finally called the first state convention since 1869, the first indisputably regular one since 1868.

The convention that met in Richmond on August 30, 1871, attracted many antebellum politicians previously inactive in New Virginia's politics. Former Lieutenant Governor Robert L. Montague presided over the gathering... In fact the veneration of the Confederacy's trappings did not change the party's character. In the postbellum South, innovative groups often elevated Confederate officers and even antebellum statesmen to conspicuous positions, to invest innovation with the aegis of legitimacy." (Maddox)

The colleges and universities likewise changed, some faster than others:

"Still the more traditional, and more sterile, was the College of William and Mary. The end of the War found its buildings destroyed or damaged and its endowment funds unproductive. ... The classics continued to dominate its curriculum, and in 1870, Henry A. Wise and Robert L. Montague were the speakers at its first postwar commencement exercises. In its obstinate resistance to change, the institution did not prosper. In 1881, it again had to suspend its operations.

Lack of money - the Virginia Conservatives' constant nemesis - tormented the new education as well as the old. ... Virginia colleges found it harder than ever to compete with well-financed Northern ones. ..." (Maddox)

Sources:
[BDNA].
The Virginia Conservatives, Maddox.
Biographical Register of the Confederate Congress, Warner and Yearns.