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April 1996
First Federal Congress Project Completes Debates Series for the First House of Representatives
by Charlene Bangs BickfordDirector, First Federal Congress Project
Yesterday the doors of the House of Representatives were thrown open for the admission of the Citizens. New-York Daily Gazette, 9 April 1789
Behind the above statement and the historic event it heralded lay more than a century and a half of constitutional struggle in Great Britain, the colonies, and the states of the public's access to legislative debate and the freedom of the press to report it. But the institutions that had resulted from the drawing together of the colonies and states - the Continental Congresses, the Confederation Congress, and the Federal Convention - all had met in secret. Thus, the opening of the House doors represented a seemingly radical change. That change appears to have been a natural result of the fact that the Federal Convention conceived the House of Representatives as an innovation — a national body representative of the people. Members of that body held a personal responsibility to the people of their districts (Figure 1). Perhaps more than any other factor, this personal accountability made opening the House doors during debate inevitable.
Thus the public gained access to the debates of what was identified by contemporaries as a virtual second sitting of the Federal Convention, because of its fleshing out of the structure provided by the Constitution, passage of the Bill of Rights, and continual interpretation of the new Constitution's meaning. Newspaper publishers and other entrepreneurs, encouraged by the intense public interest that had been demonstrated during the ratification debates, seized the opportunity to inform the public about the House debates and hence a sizable record was created.
Figure 1. Detail of page one of John Fenno's Gazette of the United States, 9 September 1789. The article in the center column provides a "Sketch of Proceedings of Congress. In the House of Representatives of the United States, Monday, August 31." (Courtesy of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.)
With the publication of volume 14 of the Documentary History of the First Federal Congress, 1789-1791 (DHFFC) in January of this year, the editors of the series and the Johns Hopkins University Press achieved a long-term goal - publication of the complete documentary record of the debates of the first House of Representatives. The five volumes of debates replace Gales and Seaton's "Annals of Congress," which relied heavily upon only one source for each date and lacked a comprehensive index. The DHFFC volumes provide a compilation of all the variant accounts as recorded by the men who sought to report them to the American public in a timely fashion. Users now have the task of sifting through these accounts with their inconsistencies and potential biases to come to an understanding of what actually transpired on the floor of the House.
One source that researchers will find both intriguing and challenging to use is a "translation" of stenographer/entrepreneur Thomas Lloyd's shorthand notes on the debates (Fig. 2). This "translation" has a long history of its own, having resulted from the persistent and painstaking work of Marion Tinling, an expert in Lloyd's shorthand method, employed by the National Historical Publications Commission in the 1950s to decipher the notes on the House debates. Working with substantially enlarged copies of Lloyd's very small notebook pages, Tinling created a transcription that treads a middle ground between being absolutely literal and a fully expanded version. Lloyd's system had no vowels, so a literal transcription would have been made up simply of consonants and virtually useless as a source. Tinling chose to fill in the vowels, but preserved much of the character of the document by not expanding the notes into sentences, inserting articles, etc. The DHFFC editors refined Tinling's transcript, filling in some words that she was unable to decipher and occasionally changing a word or phrase. For example, Tinling originally interpreted the symbols for "cl hmltn" as "Col. Humiliation," which we changed to "Col. Hamilton." These notes, while difficult to use, reveal a substantial amount of previously unknown information about House debates, and for a portion of the second session they are either the only or the best available source. Those with an interest in the development of House rules and procedures will find them particularly revealing.
Figure 2. Thomas Lloyd's shorthand notes, 5-6 May, 1789. (Courtesy of the Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.)
Indexing for the series is done by session in volumes 11 (first session), 13 (second session), and 14 (third session) and in depth, with all subjects and concepts covered. While the editors had always been aware of the truth of James Madison's statement that "Among other difficulties the exposition of the Constitution is frequently a copious source, and must continue so until its meaning on all great points shall have been settled by precedents," the indexing process revealed how interpretation of the Constitution permeated even debates on seemingly non-controversial issues. The entry for "Constitution" in the second session index runs a full page!
Biographies of the 95 men who served in the First Federal Congress make up half of volume 14. These biographical sketches, which focus upon the individual's First Federal Congress career, will serve as an editorial aid for the entire 22-volume DHFFC. Background information about the member's family, social status, education, and military service is provided. Information on political activities stresses interests or events which likely affected their role in the First Federal Congress. Readers will find everything known about that member's personal and public life during the First Federal Congress, including living situation, social activities, debate attendance and participation, committee service, and the issues on which the member focused his attention. These sketches, researched and authored by assistant editor William Charles diGiacomantonio, substantially enhance the usability of the documentary record.
The completion of this over 4,500-page debate series marks a milestone for the First Federal Congress Project and the users of the DHFFC. For the first time the complete documentary records of floor debates in the most important and productive Congress in our history is totally accessible for research work and use in courtrooms and classrooms.
