Senate History

Senate History in the United States

Senate: History of the Senate: Civil War and Reconstruction

Introduction to Senate History

By the 1850s debates over slavery carved deep rifts between the Senate’s dominant parties, the Democrats and the Republicans. Southern Democrats bitterly fought an alliance of Republicans and antislavery Democrats. The issue destroyed the chamber’s civil tone. In the 1850s and early 1860s floor discussions often degenerated into shouting matches, and many members brought guns to the chamber. During a tense debate in 1850, Senator Henry Foote of Mississippi drew a pistol on Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri. An even more violent episode erupted in 1856 when Representative Preston Smith Brooks of South Carolina became enraged over a speech by abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. Two days later Brooks entered the Senate chamber, cornered Sumner, and repeatedly beat him over the head with a cane.

In 1860 and 1861 long-standing disputes over economic policy, slavery, and states’ rights led 11 Southern states to secede from the United States. The secessionist Southern states formed the Confederate States of America, sparking the Civil War (1861-1865). The Confederate states withdrew their representatives from Washington, D.C., leaving the House and the Senate in the hands of antislavery forces. Although Congress agreed with President Abraham Lincoln that the Southern secession should be met with force, lawmakers resented the president’s broad seizure of power. Lincoln asserted sweeping authority, including the right to draft soldiers, suspend civil liberties, and raise funds for the war. The Senate and the House created the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War to act as a check on Lincoln, but the committee failed to rein in the president. The Senate and the House cooperated with the White House on many wartime measures, but Lincoln took the lead in most matters.

The conclusion of the war in 1865 left many issues related to slavery unresolved. Reconstruction-the process of incorporating the rebel states back into the United States-sparked bitter congressional disputes. Lincoln and Congress proposed different plans for Reconstruction. The struggle between Congress and the White House intensified after John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln in 1865. Vice President Andrew Johnson, a Tennessean who favored moderate Reconstruction policies, assumed the presidency.

Johnson fought with Congress over the terms of reincorporating the Southern states. Congress passed a law restricting the president’s power to remove appointed officials, overriding Johnson’s veto of the measure. In one of the most dramatic episodes in Senate history, Johnson faced impeachment in 1868 under charges that he had ignored the new limit on his power to remove appointees. Johnson prevailed in the Senate by a single vote. The proceedings established an important principle that a president could not be removed from office simply over disagreements with Congress.

Eventually Congress passed many Reconstruction laws, including legislation to implement the voting rights for African Americans granted by the 15th Amendment. The extension of the vote led to the 1870 election of Hiram Revels, a Republican clergyman and teacher from Mississippi, who became the first African American to win a Senate seat. But after the collapse of Reconstruction in 1876 many Southern states instituted poll taxes (taxes levied on people who vote), literacy tests, and other rules that effectively prevented African Americans from voting. The restrictions rolled back the gains that African Americans had made in Congress, preventing African American candidates from winning election to the Senate until 1966, when Edward Brooke won election from Massachusetts.

The end of Reconstruction in 1877 ushered in a system of strong party control of the Senate. Party leaders such as Republican Roscoe Conkling of New York used party meetings known as caucuses to rally party support before important votes on legislation. Party power weakened in the 1880s, but in the 1890s Republicans led by William Allison of Iowa reestablished party control of Senate committee appointments and the chamber’s legislative agenda. Under the renewed system of party leadership, most important debates occurred behind closed doors in party caucuses rather than in Senate committees or on the floor of the chamber. The strong hand of the parties, combined with the increasingly common use of filibusters, led to widespread public criticism of the Senate.” (1)

Resources

Notes and References

Guide to Senate History

Senate: History of the Senate: Recent Years

Introduction to Senate History

Republicans took control of the Senate in 1981, the first time they had led the chamber since 1954. Senate Republicans backed the agenda of President Ronald Reagan, who had wide popular support. The so-called Reagan Revolution sailed through Congress once the Republicans persuaded a few House Democrats to join them in backing the plan. Key elements included major tax cuts and increases in military spending. Although the program was popular with most Americans, Congress failed to balance the spending increases and tax cuts with offsetting reductions in government spending, causing the national debt to soar.

By 1982 the national debt reached $1 trillion, and it soared to $2 trillion in 1986. Annual interest payments on the debt, combined with spending for politically popular programs such as Social Security and Medicare, left little discretionary spending in the government budget. The fiscal strain prevented Congress from creating new programs. In the late 1980s the Senate and the House became increasingly preoccupied with finding ways to cut government spending. The Democrats regained control of the Senate in 1987 and held it until 1994.

In 1992 Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois broke one of the last symbolic barriers to Senate membership when she became the first African American woman to be elected to the chamber. Moseley Braun was only the second African American elected to the Senate since the end of Reconstruction.

In 1993 the Senate began a probe into the involvement of President Bill Clinton in an Arkansas real estate deal in the 1970s. The scandal, known as the Whitewater Affair, led to an extensive Senate investigation that raised troublesome issues for the White House but by the end of 1997 had failed to implicate Clinton in any wrongdoing. The Republican Party won control of the House in the 1994 elections, the first time in more than 40 years that the party controlled both chambers of Congress. The aggressive leadership style of Speaker Newt Gingrich helped the House eclipse the Senate in shaping the country’s political agenda for much of the mid- and late 1990s.

The Senate played a critical role in the 1998 scandal surrounding President Clinton’s affair with a young White House intern. The highly partisan House passed two articles of impeachment against Clinton in December 1998, making the issue the Senate’s first order of business in 1999. Senate leaders, seeking to avoid the rancorous partisanship of the House, unanimously agreed on rules for the impeachment trial. After a monthlong trial in which it heard arguments from House prosecutors and the president’s lawyers, the Senate rejected both articles of impeachment, an action that met with public approval. Both votes fell far short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict the president.

After the 2000 elections, the Senate comprised 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats, the first time since 1881 that the Senate was equally split between the two major parties. Partisan control of the Senate hinged on the vice president’s tie-breaking vote. From January 4, 2001, until the inauguration of Vice
President Dick Cheney on January 20, the Democrats technically controlled the Senate because Al Gore was still vice president. After the inauguration, Republicans assumed all committee and subcommittee chairmanships. Under a unique power-sharing pact, the two parties shared staff and office space equally. However, in May 2001 Senator James Jeffords of Vermont announced he would leave the Republican Party and become an independent. Jeffords’s defection gave Democrats control of the Senate until the November 2002 midterm elections, when Republicans recaptured their majority. In the November 2004 elections, Republicans expanded their majority in the Senate.

The Democrats regained control of the Senate in the 2006 midterm elections. The Senate was split evenly between 49 Democrats and 49 Republicans, but two independents announced that they would meet, or caucus, with the Democrats, indicating that they would likely vote with the Democrats. The two independents were Bernard Sanders, a self-described socialist from Vermont, and Joseph Lieberman, the Democratic Party’s former vice-presidential candidate who lost the Democratic Party primary in Connecticut but then ran as an independent and won.” (1)

Resources

Notes and References

Guide to Senate History


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