Antebellum
The decades before the American Civil War are thought of as the "Golden Age" of the Senate. Backed by public opinion and President Jefferson, in 1804, the House voted to impeach Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase 73–32. The Senate voted against conviction 18–16.
The Senate seemed to bring out the best in Aaron Burr, who as vice president presided over the impeachment trial. At the conclusion of the trial Burr said:
- This House is a sanctuary; a citadel of law, of order, and of liberty; and it is here–in this exalted refuge; here if anywhere, will resistance be made to the storms of political phrensy and the silent arts of corruption. (Master of the Senate, 14)
Even Burr's many critics conceded that he handled himself with great dignity, and the trial with fairness.
Over the next few decades the Senate rose in reputation in the United States and the world. John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, Thomas Hart Benton, Stephen A. Douglas, and Henry Clay overshadowed several presidents. Sir Henry Maine called the Senate "the only thoroughly successful institution which has been established since the tide of modern democracy began to run." William Ewart Gladstone said the Senate was "the most remarkable of all the inventions of modern politics." (Ibid, 23)
Among the greatest of debates in Senate history was the Webster-Hayne debate of January 1830, pitting the sectional interests of Daniel Webster's New England against Robert Y. Hayne's South.
During the pre-Civil War decades, the nation had two contentious arguments over the North-South balance in the Senate. Since the banning of slavery north of the Mason-Dixon line there had always been equal numbers of slave and free states. In the Missouri Compromise of 1820, brokered by Henry Clay, Maine was admitted to the Union as a free state to counterbalance Missouri. The Compromise of 1850, brokered by Henry Clay and Stephen Douglas, helped postpone the Civil War.
Read more about this topic: History Of The United States Senate
Famous quotes containing the word antebellum:
“He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.”
—Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)