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Origins & Development of the United States Senate
The framers of the United States Constitution deliberated at length over the Senate's role in the new federal government. Since that time, the Senate has evolved into a complex legislative body, while remaining true to its constitutional origins.
Original Ledger Found
"Probably the oldest book of consecutive accounts kept by government officers," noted an 1885 newspaper article, "is a time-worn volume kept in the office of General Anson G. McCook, secretary of the senate." Marked S-1, this financial ledger records nearly a century of salary and mileage payments to senators, from 1790 to 1881. McCook, recognizing the ledger's importance, had it restored and rebound in 1884. Future employees were not so careful. In the early 1960s, S-1 and nearly sixty other financial ledgers were stored in the basement of the Capitol, and then forgotten. Rediscovered in late 2002, this collection is a unique treasure of Senate history. S-1 has been digitized by the Library of Congress and is now available online.
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This Week in Senate History
July 5, 1884
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Maltby Bldg.
A quarter century before the opening of the first permanent Senate office building, the Senate directed its Sergeant at Arms and the Architect of the Capitol to rent suitable rooms outside the Capitol for committees that lacked permanent office space. One location for alternative Senate offices was the Maltby Building in Washington, D.C.
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July 6, 1789
In a gesture designed to highlight the nation's new Constitution, the Senate agreed to a House of Representatives proposal that it be "prefixed to the publication of the acts of the present session of Congress."
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July 8, 1841
Responding to requests from newspaper correspondents for greater access to the Senate chamber, the Senate directed the Secretary of the Senate to prepare suitable accommodations for them in the chamber's eastern gallery, thus establishing the first congressional press gallery.
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July 10, 1919
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Woodrow Wilson
Recently returned from the negotiations that had produced the Treaty of Versailles ending World War I, President Woodrow Wilson hand-carried the American copy of that document into the Senate chamber. Hoping for prompt approval of the treaty, with its provision for a League of Nations, the president in his address suggested that the Senate had little choice. "The stage is set, the destiny disclosed. It has come about by no plan of our conceiving, but by the hand of God who led us into this way. We cannot turn back. The light streams on the path ahead, and nowhere else." By year's end, however, the Senate had rejected the treaty as a consequence of the president's unwillingness to accept the body's reservations on issues related to the League.
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