History
In one of its first resolutions, the U.S. House of Representatives of the 1st Federal Congress (April 14, 1789) established the Office of the Sergeant at Arms. The first Speaker of the House, Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania, approved the ceremonial mace as the proper symbol of the Sergeant at Arms in carrying out the duties of this office.
The current mace has been in use since December 1, 1842. It was created by New York silversmith William Adams, at a cost of $400, to replace the first one that was destroyed when the Capitol Building was burned on August 24, 1814 during the War of 1812. A simple wooden mace was used in the interim.
Read more about this topic: Mace Of The United States House Of Representatives
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“History ... is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
But what experience and history teach is this—that peoples and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“All things are moral. That soul, which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)