Early Years
The Senate originally met, virtually in secret, on the second floor of Federal Hall in New York City in a room that allowed no spectators. For five years, no notes were published on Senate proceedings.
A procedural issue of the early Senate was what role the vice president, the President of the Senate, should have. The first vice president was allowed to craft legislation and participate in debates, but those rights were taken away relatively quickly. John Adams seldom missed a session, but later vice presidents made Senate attendance a rarity. Interestingly, although the founders intended the Senate to be the slower legislative body, in the early years of the Republic, it was the House that took its time passing legislation. Alexander Hamilton’s Bank of the United States and Assumption Bill (he was then Treasury Secretary), both of which were controversial, easily passed the Senate, only to meet opposition from the House.
In 1797, Thomas Jefferson began the vice presidential tradition of only attending Senate sessions on special occasions. Despite his frequent absences, Jefferson did make his mark on the body with the Senate book of parliamentary procedure, one that is still used to this day.
Read more about this topic: History Of The United States Senate
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or years:
“The girl must early be impressed with the idea that she is to be “a hand, not a mouth”; a worker, and not a drone, in the great hive of human activity. Like the boy, she must be taught to look forward to a life of self-dependence, and early prepare herself for some trade or profession.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)