Constitutional Design of the Senate, 1787
The framers of the Constitution created the United States
Senate to protect the rights of individual states and
safeguard minority opinion in a system of government
designed to give greater power to the national government.
They modeled the Senate on governors' councils of the
colonial era and on the state senates that had evolved since
independence. The framers intended the Senate to be an
independent body of responsible citizens who would share
power with the president and the House of Representatives.
James Madison, paraphrasing Edmund Randolph, explained in
his notes that the Senate's role was "first to
protect the people against their rulers [and] secondly to
protect the people against the transient impressions into
which they themselves might be led."
To balance power between the large and small states, the
Constitution's framers agreed that states would be
represented equally in the Senate and in proportion to their
populations in the House. Further preserving the authority
of individual states, they provided that state legislatures
would elect senators. To guarantee senators'
independence from short-term political pressures, the
framers designed a six-year Senate term, three times as long
as that of popularly elected members of the House of
Representatives. Madison reasoned that longer terms would
provide stability. "If it not be a firm body," he
concluded, "the other branch being more numerous, and
coming immediately from the people, will overwhelm it."
Responding to fears that a six-year Senate term would
produce an unreachable aristocracy in the Senate, the
framers specified that one-third of the members' terms
would expire every two years, leaving two-thirds of the
members in office. This combined the principles of
continuity and rotation in office.
In the early weeks of the Constitutional Convention, the
participants had tentatively decided to give the Senate sole
power to make treaties and to appoint federal judges and
ambassadors. As the convention drew to a close, however,
they moved to divide these powers between the Senate and the
president, following Gouverneur Morris' reasoning that
"As the president was to nominate, there would be
responsibility, and as the Senate was to concur, there would
be security." Due to the concern of individual states
that other states might combine against them, by a simple
majority vote, for commercial or economic gain, approval of
a treaty would require a two-thirds vote. In dealing with
nominations, the framers believed that senators—as
statewide officials—would be uniquely qualified to
identify suitable candidates for federal judicial posts and
would confirm them along with cabinet secretaries and other
key federal officials, by a simple majority vote.
Organizing the New Government, 1789–1794
The United States Senate convened for the first time on March
4, 1789, in an elegant second-floor chamber of New York
City's newly remodeled Federal Hall. Only eight of the 22
eligible members (from the 11 states that had already
ratified the Constitution) were present on that day. On
April 6, 12 members were present to establish a quorum and
the Senate got down to work. As its first item of business,
the Senate elected New Hampshire's John Langdon president
pro tempore and invited the House of Representatives to its
Chamber to count the electoral ballots for president and
vice president. On April 21 John Adams took his oath as vice
president, thereby assuming his responsibility under the
Constitution to serve as the Senate's president and
presiding officer. Nine days later, House members again
crowded into the Senate Chamber to witness George
Washington's inauguration.
In its early weeks, the Senate turned to various
organizational matters. Members appointed a six-member
staff, including a doorkeeper, a secretary, a chaplain, and
two clerks. Temporary committees were established to
formulate a code of rules that would guide the Senate's
proceedings, and to draft legislation to give shape to the
government's judicial branch. The Senate divided its members
into three equal and sectionally balanced classes, with the
terms to expire at two, four, and six-year intervals. As new
states entered the Union, their senators would be assigned
to two of the three classes.
In its first session the Senate cautiously engaged its
constitutional responsibilities, mindful of the
precedent-setting nature of its every interaction with the
House of Representatives and the president. Senators gave
serious attention to their duty to provide advice and
consent to the president's nominations and treaties. A
Georgia senator's objection to an appointment of a naval
officer in his state resulted in the first Senate rejection
of a presidential nominee, reflecting the understanding that
senators were the best judges of appointees from their
states to which other members would defer as a matter of
"senatorial courtesy." When President Washington visited the
Senate in August 1789 to consult about a recently negotiated
Indian treaty, he expected an immediate response. To his
great frustration, the Senate decided to refer the issue to
committee for further study. After Washington finally
received Senate approval of that treaty, he vowed he would
never again seek that body's advice and consent in person.
The Senate's workload increased greatly during the final
weeks of the first session in 1789. This reinforced the
framers' notion that the House of Representatives would
serve as the principal workshop for crafting legislation,
while the Senate would polish and rework that legislation in
consideration of what were presumably the nation's broader
and longer-term interests.
The second session of the first Congress convened in January
1790 and lasted seven months. During this period the Senate
turned to legislation that would place the nation on a firm
financial footing, and provided for a permanent seat of
government in a special federal district along the Potomac
River. While that site was being prepared, Congress agreed
to move the government to Philadelphia, where the final
session of the First Congress met between December 1790 and
March 1791.
During its 10-year residence in Philadelphia, the Senate
conducted its proceedings in the second-floor chamber of
that city's recently reconstructed "Congress Hall." During
the 10 years the Senate met in that chamber, political
parties became the principal determinant of legislative
debate and accomplishment.
Like the Continental Congress and the Constitutional
Convention, but in contrast to the House of Representatives,
the Senate in 1789 had decided to conduct its sessions
behind closed doors. A clash in 1794 between Federalists and
Anti-federalists over the seating of newly elected
Pennsylvania Senator Albert Gallatin brought a partial
abandonment of the Senate's closed-door policy. Members of
the Federalist majority feared that their planned rejection
of Gallatin, an Anti-federalist, would trigger charges of
improper behavior if done in secret. Calls for an open-door
policy were not new. Demands for open sessions came
principally from the state legislatures, whose members
argued that secret sessions did not allow them to
effectively assess the conduct of the senators they had
elected. Also, press coverage of open sessions in the House
of Representatives helped popularize its legislative role in
the new government, but the Senate's less visible action put
it in danger of becoming the forgotten chamber.
Consequently, the Senate took the opportunity of Gallatin's
contested election to open its doors for all legislative
business. (Doors generally remained closed, however, for
executive business related to presidential nominations and
treaties until 1929.)
The 19th Century
On November 21, 1800, the Senate took up residence in
basement quarters in the unfinished Capitol in Washington,
D.C. Ten years later, it moved to a grander chamber on the
Capitol's second floor (now known as the "Old Senate
Chamber") where it remained until 1859. This large,
semi-circular room, with its plain walls and low-vaulted
domed ceiling, provided an ideal setting, both acoustically
and dramatically, for the Senate as it moved into an era of great prominence. Although the Senate had operated in
the shadow of the larger and more boisterous House of
Representatives during its earliest years, by the 1820s it
dominated the House and the presidency, with the exception
of the Civil War years, for the remainder of the 19th
century. In its elegant second-floor chamber, the Senate
became the agent of compromise that helped avoid civil war
for four decades.
In 1833 the Senate's membership had risen to only 48,
compared with 242 in the House of Representatives. With
fewer numbers and an equal balance between slave and free
states, the Senate offered a forum better suited to lively
and discursive debate. In the face of growing national
tensions associated with federal authority versus
states' rights, and the extension of slavery into the
nation's territories, the Senate served as a workshop
for fashioning major compromise agreements. In this era
Daniel Webster of Massachusetts most dramatically
articulated northern interests, John C. Calhoun of South
Carolina those of the South, and Henry Clay of Kentucky,
Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, and Stephen Douglas of
Illinois spoke for the West. The sectional accords they
vigorously debated bought time for a maturing nation. By the
time the Civil War began in 1861, four decades of
compromises had allowed the national government time to gain
the experience, balance, and strength it needed to survive
the ordeal.
The nation's territorial expansion throughout the 1800s
resulted in new states that required additional quarters in
the Capitol to accommodate the arriving senators and
representatives from these states. Consequently, on January
4, 1859, just two years before the Civil War began, the
Senate's 64 members moved to a large chamber in
the Capitol's newly completed north wing. This room,
where the Senate continues to meet today, witnessed the
crisis of the Civil War. In 1868, amidst the turmoil of
postwar reconstruction, it provided the setting for
President Andrew Johnson's impeachment trial. It also
witnessed the evolution of the Senate from agent of
compromise to an elite club of powerful committee chairmen.
While most members viewed the Senate as a temporary way
station in a political or business career and served a
single term, a few long-serving senators capitalized on
their seniority to control the Senate's legislative
agenda. The 19th century ended with the Senate
effectively controlled by a handful of these powerful
leaders, such as Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island, William B.
Allison of Iowa, Orville Platt of Connecticut, and John
Spooner of Wisconsin—collectively known as "The
Senate Four."
The 20th Century
A major change in the Senate's institutional structure
occurred in 1913 with the ratification of the
Constitution's Seventeenth Amendment, providing for
direct popular election of senators. Selection of senators
by state legislatures had worked reasonably well for the
Senate's first half-century. Eventually, however,
deadlocks began to occur between the upper and lower houses
of those bodies. This problem delayed state legislative
business and deprived states of their full Senate
representation. By the start of the 20th century,
direct popular election of senators had become a major
objective for progressive reformers who sought to remove
control of government from the influence of special
interests and corrupt state legislators. Although this
amendment did not significantly affect the quality of
persons subsequently elected to the Senate, its passage
marked the only structural modification of the framers'
original design of the institution.
During the 19th century Senate leadership came mostly
from committee chairs and other senior members, but in the
early 20th century the position of party leaders—majority and minority leader—developed. Democrat John
Worth Kern of Indiana and Republican Henry Cabot Lodge of
Massachusetts unofficially assumed such leadership roles by
1915, and in 1921 the Democrats designated their first
official "floor leader"—Oscar W. Underwood of
Alabama. In 1925 the Republicans chose Charles Curtis of
Kansas as their first "majority leader." In the
years that followed, the positions of majority and minority
leader gained respect and power. Today, leaders are elected
by their fellow senators at the beginning of each Congress.
Senate precedent requires that the presiding officer recognize
the leaders before other senators present in the Chamber,
giving them first chance to propose legislation, offer
amendments, and control the legislative agenda of the day.
Senate Committees & Powers
Senate Committees
In its earliest years, the Senate relied on temporary
committees to draft specific legislative language after the
entire body had reached a consensus regarding a measure's
general objectives. The War of 1812 demonstrated the need
for consistently available expertise based in permanent, or
standing, committees. In 1816, the Senate established
permanent committees organized according to the broad
categories of the president's annual message. Throughout the
late 19th and early 20th centuries, Senate
committees proliferated. By the turn of the 20th
century, when the Senate awarded staff and office space only
to its committee chairmen, the number of committees nearly
equaled the number of members. In 1920 and again following
the Second World War, the Senate eliminated many committees
and reorganized others. Since the 1950s the Senate has
employed professional staff on committees and has
established reforms to minimize the autocratic control by
committee chairs that had existed earlier. Today, there are
16 standing committees, each with its own set of
subcommittees to address the vast array of legislation
considered by the Senate each year.
In the 20th century Senate committees have also taken on
a greater investigative role. Among the more notable special
investigations conducted by Senate committees have been oil
leasing in the 1920s, securities regulation in the 1930s,
war profiteering in the 1940s, organized crime in the 1950s,
the Vietnam war in the 1960s, Watergate in the 1970s, covert
intelligence operations in the 1980s, campaign finance in
the 1990s, and the energy industry in the early twenty-first
century.
Senate Powers
Although much has changed in the Senate in the past two
centuries, the Constitution's framers would likely recognize
several of the modern Senate's roles, particularly its
unique constitutional responsibility to provide advice and
consent to nominations and treaties. During the years the
Senate has rejected very few cabinet nominees, reflecting an
attitude that presidents were entitled to choose their own
advisers, unless those officials clearly demonstrated
unfitness to serve. The Senate gave greater scrutiny,
however, to judicial nominees with lifetime tenure.
Directing particular attention to the Supreme Court, the
Senate has rejected approximately twenty percent of those
nominated to the nation's highest tribunal. Of the thousands
of treaties submitted, the Senate has turned down fewer than
two dozen, but it routinely influenced treaty negotiations
with threats of modification through the addition of various
amendments, reservations, or understandings.
The framers would also find much in the Senate, as in modern
America, that would surprise them. They would surely be
amazed that the Senate has grown to 100 members, with 7,000
staff members housed in three large office buildings, and
that senators now view service in the body as a long-term
career. They would also be surprised at the importance the
Senate accords to its committee system.
Conclusion
Looking back on more than two centuries of Senate history,
the Constitution's framers would appreciate the Senate's
passion for deliberation, its untidiness, its aloofness from
the House of Representatives and its suspicion of the
presidency. Neither they nor most of the more than 1,800
persons who served as senators during that time would be
greatly surprised at the continuing calls for reform. Viewed
over the broad sweep of its history, the Senate has balanced
faithfulness to the Constitution's principles with
requirements for measured change in response to the complex
demands of a diverse society.
Further Reading: U.S. Congress. Senate. The Senate,
1789-1989, by Robert C. Byrd. S. Doc. 100-20, 100th
Congress, 1st session, Washington: GPO. Volumes I and II,
Addresses on the History of the United States Senate, 1989,
1991; Volume III, Classic Speeches, 1830-1993, 1994; Volume
IV, Historical Statistics, 1789-1992, 1993.