The federal House and Senate developed in parallel but distinct ways. That was a function of their innate institutional differences and of the people who served in both chambers. Although still different, there was a marked convergence by the 1820s as both chambers became visible and responsive legislatures. After the Missouri Crisis of 18191821, the Senate took on a new and more prominent role as the protector of slave state interests during the antebellum period. The balance between slave and nonslave states in the Senate became slave states' prerequisite for union.
Except for the short-lived Albany Congress of 1754, the first Continental Congress (1774) was the initial assembly to bring together representatives of all the colonies and then the states. The Second Continental Congress (1775-1781) faced several daunting challenges. Many men would gain national reputations and valuable leadership experience through their service in the two Continental Congresses, including John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton. The Continental Congress became the Confederation Congress with the ratification of the Articles of Confederation in 1781.
The Continental Congress acted without a formal grant of power from the colonies. During the imperial crisis, its main role was to forge a consensus among the colonies for independence and then to manage the war. Delegates were representatives of their colonies and later their states. For instance, the New York delegates did not vote for independence on 2 July 1776 because they had yet to receive instructions allowing them to do so. As the war progressed, the Continental Congress assumed increasing responsibility for conducting and financing the war. Operating without a general grant of power from the states proved difficult for the delegates and demonstrated the need for a more permanent arrangement. Congress sent the states the nation's first national constitution, the Articles of Confederation, in 1777. The Articles were more a list of what Congress could not do than what it could. It could not tax or raise troops. For money, it could only request funds from states. Yet it had wide-ranging responsibilities. The states did not ratify the Articles until 1781, when conflicts between the states over claims to western lands were finally resolved. Congress governed within the proposed framework prior to ratification.
The Articles created a workable union during the war, but with peace in 1783, the new nation had to deal with difficult issues like repaying the debt. Because Congress could not raise revenue independently, repayment proved to be virtually impossible. Twice, in 1781 and 1783, Congress proposed giving itself the power to lay an impost, only to have it defeated by Rhode Island and Virginia, and New York respectively. Structurally, the Articles posed certain obstacles. Each state had one vote. Members could serve only three of every six years and were elected annually, which meant the Congress suffered from a great turnover and a dearth of institutional memory. State legislatures elected, paid, instructed, and recalled their delegates. The Articles required the assent of nine states on the final passage of legislation, the ratification of treaties, and a simple majority of all states (not just those present) on all preliminary questions. Thus, obstructionism through absenteeism was rampant. The Articles required unanimous approval of both Congress and the individual state legislatures for any amendment. This provision, among others, convinced many people that reform within the system was impossible. When states sent delegates to Philadelphia in May 1787 to amend the Articles, the Convention produced a new constitution.
The Constitutional Convention, except for a brief but paralyzing flirtation with a unicameral legislature—a Confederation Congress with more powers—committed itself to a bicameral legislature. The Convention's "great compromise" settled the issue of representation: the people would be represented in the House of Representatives and the states in the Senate. The new government had the power to raise taxes with the requirement that all revenue bills originate in the House. In contrast to the Articles, the Constitution set no term limits for representatives or senators, states had no power to recall their senators, members received their salaries from the federal government, and members voted individually. Bills could be passed by simple majorities of those present, treaties ratified by two-thirds of the senators present, and the Constitution amended without unanimous consent. During the ratification debates, there was much less controversy surrounding the House than the Senate, which possessed legislative, executive, and judicial powers. The House was clearly the people's chamber, whereas the Senate could have been the representative of the states, the president's council, and/or the check on the House. When the First Congress met in March 1789, there was much more uncertainty about the Senate's role than the House's.
Once Congress achieved a quorum, the House went to work on the impost, whereas the Senate spent weeks debating the president's title. The House rejected the Senate's monarchical title and the latter eventually conceded defeat. Thus, the House and Senate's relationship began contentiously, but members of each chamber came to respect the other's independence and equality. On salaries, the House reluctantly conceded superiority to the Senate. During the seventh year of the salary law of 1789, senators earned one dollar more per day than representatives, but when Congress considered a new law in 1796, House members rejected the differential. Senators did not challenge the House for fear of courting unpopularity. The House also refused to accept any distinctions in the way the chambers communicated with each other. When the Senate proposed that messages from the House to the Senate be carried by at least two members and its messages to the House be carried by the Senate secretary, the House rejected this ceremonial difference. The clerk of the House and secretary of the Senate ferried messages back and forth. Thus, any superiority was not lightly conceded.
The clerk and secretary were each responsible for maintaining the records of their respective chambers. Although a Federalist, Samuel A. Otis served as secretary of the Senate from 1789 until his death in 1814. Two former senators succeeded him. Otis weathered the Republican takeover in 1801 by granting the Senate printing contract to Republican printer William Duane. In contrast, John Beckley, the House's first clerk, became a Democratic Republican operative as the parties formed. He lost his job to a Federalist in 1797, but regained it in 1801 when the Democratic Republicans gained control of the House. These two men established important precedents for congressional recordkeeping.
As the "people's house," the House immediately opened its doors and proceedings to the public, but both houses relied on local newspaper editors to record debates and publish revised remarks submitted by members. In the late 1840s, both houses contracted with stenographers, but did not take responsibility for recording and publishing their own debates until after the Civil War. The Senate met behind closed doors until 1794, only opening them after much agitation by both states and senators—mostly southern. When it opened its deliberations, the public and reporters attended only sporadically. It was not until the Missouri Crisis that the Senate attracted more spectators than the House. Previously, senators had often adjourned their chamber so they could attend House debates. In the 1820s that trend reversed.
At first, the House garnered more attention and did more visible work than the Senate. The House initiated far more legislation and received more petitions than the Senate until the mid-1810s. Initially, the Senate was a revisory body and generally followed the House's lead in legislation. This changed during the 1810s when the Senate willingly undertook more investigations of individuals' claims and initiated more bills. In this way the House and Senate converged.
Both chambers adopted a standing committee system after the War of 1812 (1812-1815). At first, they used extensive systems of ad hoc select committees that were appointed for specific purposes. The Senate adopted a standing committee system in December 1816 when it created eleven standing committees. The House created three standing committees in the 1790s but did not formally adopt a standing committee system until after the Senate had. The House designated Claims (1794) and Commerce and Manufactures (1795) as standing committees. These two committees allowed the House to reclaim responsibility for petitions and control of individual claims from the executive branch. In 1795 Albert Gallatin of Pennsylvania moved to create a committee of ways and means for the explicit purpose of curbing Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton's influence over Congress and financial policy. Congress officially made the Ways and Means Committee a standing committee in 1802. Ironically, when Virginian John Randolph of Roanoke chaired this committee, he used his powerful position as a platform to oppose his onetime ally, President Jefferson. In the aftermath of the War of 1812, both houses moved to create more stable committee systems. The House created six new standing committees to audit spending by the executive departments. In 1822 the House reformed its rules and created three additional standing committees: Foreign Affairs, Military Affairs, and Naval Affairs. Significantly, the House adopted rules that curbed the previously routine violations of committees' jurisdictions by other members and gave committees the right to report bills to the floor at their own discretion.
Initially, both the House and Senate elected committee members, except that the House from the beginning allowed the Speaker to appoint committees with three or fewer members. Soon, the Speaker was allowed to appoint all committee members to avoid the time-consuming practice of election. The Senate experimented with appointment by the presiding officer of the Senate just briefly from 1823 to 1826. Because senators objected to Vice President John C. Calhoun's use of the appointment power, they returned to the less efficient election method. The senators instituted separate ballots for chairmen in 1826.
In neither chamber was the workload divided evenly. From the very first day, certain members did more work than others. In the House, Madison quickly emerged as a legislative leader and along with five other members held more than one-fifth of the committee memberships in the First Congress. However, once Madison split with the administration over Hamilton's financial program, he received fewer committee assignments. Thus, partisanship was always an underlying factor in committee assignments. The Speaker of the House was the only official leadership office. During the Third Congress, the election of Speaker was a party contest for the first time. The first men to occupy the office established certain precedents for using it, especially the power to appoint committees, for partisan ends. Henry Clay of Kentucky, who held the speakership from 1811 to 1814, 1815 to 1820, and 1823 to 1825, followed and expanded upon these precedents. He is justifiably credited with creating the modern speakership. The number of ballots required to elect a Speaker was often a good indication of the course to be followed in the congressional session and of the strength of the political parties. During the so-called Era of Good Feelings, when partisanship was weak, fights over the speakership could be particularly fierce. When Clay resigned as Speaker in 1820, it took twenty-two ballots to elect his successor, John W. Taylor of New York. Taylor favored restrictions on slavery's expansion and thus proved to be unacceptable to southern members. After several days of balloting in the next Congress, he was replaced by Virginian Philip P. Barbour.
In the Senate there was no equivalent to the office of Speaker. The vice president presides in the Senate and senators were reluctant to give him any formal power or influence. The vice president essentially ruled on parliamentary questions. Jefferson spent his vice presidency compiling a manual of parliamentary practice that remains in use in the twenty-first century. Various senators served as leaders on particular issues, but it was not until the Missouri Crisis and then the arrival of Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Daniel Webster in the late 1820s and early 1830s that the Senate truly gained its reputation as the premier deliberative body.
While the House, because of its size, quickly adopted rules that limited debate, the Senate's smaller size precluded any real need to impose such limits. In 1806, when the Senate revised its rules, it purged the previous question, which allowed debate to end by majority vote; this was done at the suggestion of Vice President Aaron Burr because the provision was rarely used. Thus, the Senate opened the door to the filibuster; however, the first filibuster did not occur until 1841, and it was seldom used before the 1890s.
In addition to its legislative duties, the Senate also possesses executive and judicial powers. With regard to its executive powers, the Senate did not become a council to the president, but it remained closer to its identity as a deliberative body. President George Washington personally consulted with the Senate about treaty negotiations only once. The exercise proved to be frustrating for senators, who felt they could not freely debate the issues in Washington's presence, and for Washington, who wanted immediate answers to his queries. Thereafter, presidents and the Senate relied on written communications for treaty matters as well as for appointments. Presidents did not always consult senators before they forwarded nominations to the Senate, but senators did retain the power to reject nominees without stating a reason. Senators usually deferred to the opinions of the nominees' home-state senators.
The Senate only exercised its judicial powers twice during this period—both in impeachment trials for federal judges. The trials of Federal District Court judge John Pickering in 1804 and U.S. Supreme Court justice Samuel Chase in 1805 were part of the Jeffersonians' project to purge the judiciary of Federalists. The Republican-controlled Senate, in convicting Pickering but acquitting Chase, established the precedent that the Senate would adhere to principles of law rather than pure politics when trying impeachments.
A few key events proved to be transformative in the history of Congress: Jay's Treaty of 1794, the War of 1812, the Compensation Act of 1816, and the Missouri Crisis. Jay's Treaty defined the limits of the treaty-making power to exclude the House of Representatives. The War of 1812 was a watershed moment in terms of congressional development. Perceived financial mismanagement by the executive departments, the growing complexity of issues, and longer congressional careers led the House and Senate to reorganize their committee structure and become more assertive. Representatives, in particular, had to adjust to a more active electorate, a matter in which the Compensation Act of 1816 proved to be especially instructive. In 1816, before an election, Congress gave itself a raise. Nearly 70 percent of the members of that Congress—much higher than the usual rate of turnover—did not return to the next one. One of the first acts of the new Congress was to repeal the law and reinstitute a per diem pay system. The Missouri Crisis of 1819-1821 was extremely important. The debates surrounding it raised the Senate's profile, both for the quality of debate and its contribution to the resolution of the crisis. The Missouri Compromise originated in the Senate and passed as a package. With the resolution of the crisis, the equality of slave and nonslave states in the Senate became the sine qua non of union in the antebellum period. For the House, the Missouri Crisis demonstrated the chaos that one issue could create in the absence of both strong leadership and political parties. With northern numerical dominance in the chamber, a Speaker who either was from the South or who was sympathetic to it became essential.
During the early national period, the House and the Senate became more equal partners in legislative matters and in responding to individuals' concerns as expressed through petitions. Congress asserted its independence from the executive branch by enhancing its oversight powers. Yet the Senate and House remained distinct. Whereas at first the House overshadowed the Senate, by the 1820s the Senate eclipsed the House. The Senate's structure and rules provided added protection to minority rights and interests put the Senate at the center of the slavery debates of antebellum America.