A Day in Congress When Philadelphia Was the Capital, 1790–1800

From 1790 to 1800, while Philadelphia was the capital, the United States Congress met in Congress Hall at Sixth and Chestnut Streets. Its members were testing out a brand-new Constitution — responding to crises at home and shifting alliances abroad — with the House of Representatives downstairs and the Senate in a chamber on the second floor. What did a day look like for one of them?

A committee room in Congress Hall, where members reviewed bills. Credit: National Park Service.

Before 11 a.m.

Both houses usually began their daily sessions at 11, which left the morning for other business:

• Committees. Nearly every bill in either house went to a committee to be reviewed and drafted, and committees commonly met in the morning.
• Visits. A member with no committee work might call on the new Governor of Pennsylvania, on other members to discuss pending bills, or on one of Philadelphia's leading citizens.
• Letters and news. Members wrote to state officials, friends and family, or read one of the three newspapers each received every day.

11 a.m. to 3 p.m.: the session

The two houses' duties and procedures differed, but both debated and voted. Senators on their way to the second floor often passed the side rooms just as committees were finishing and their members were heading for their own chambers.

1. Once there was a quorum, each house's chaplain opened the day with a prayer.
2. The previous day's minutes were read.
3. New bills and petitions were presented; after a first reading, each bill went to a committee.
4. Bills that came back from committee were read a second time and debated — often with the house sitting as a Committee of the Whole, which allowed informal debate.
5. Bills that reached a third reading were voted on. On a close vote in the House, members in favor stood and those against stayed seated; in the Senate, a show of hands or a voice vote was enough.
6. Each house told the other what it had done through its secretary. If the two versions of a bill differed, a conference committee worked out the differences. A bill that passed Congress went to the President.

If confidential material arrived from the President, the House cleared its gallery — and so did the Senate, once its proceedings were public after 1795. Both houses usually adjourned around 3 p.m.

After 3 p.m.

As the sessions went on and the work piled up, days often ran late, and Saturday sittings were common. Senator William Maclay noted in his journal that in the last days of a session the houses sometimes adjourned at 3 only to "meet at 6 O'Clock in the Evening by Candlelight."

Otherwise the afternoon and evening held:

• The President's levee. Every Tuesday the President held a formal reception. Members of Congress, Cabinet secretaries, foreign and state officials and others made up a "numerous, respectable and agreeable" company. Attendance was not required, but so many members came that it looked as if it were. It was an ideal place to talk with others in government, or with people who had business with it.
• Personal affairs. Shopping, settling accounts, drafting speeches. Senator Aaron Burr wrote many letters home to his young daughter Theodosia in New York, advising her on her education, health and social graces.
• Leisure. Riding, or long walks around the town and the countryside.
• Dinner. Members often dined together at local taverns or at the homes of Philadelphia friends, and were sometimes invited to private dinners with the President, where they could rub elbows with others in government. After dinner at 6, committees met.

The day closed with what Abigail Adams, in February 1792, called a "continued scene of parties upon parties. Balls and entertainment equal to any European city." At first these private gatherings, with their guest lists, crossed political lines. By the second half of the 1790s they were divided sharply by party.

Some members brought their families to Philadelphia, but most accepted a temporary bachelorhood in boarding houses and hotels. The long separations led some to see their political careers as a personal sacrifice for the public good.

When Congress met, and when it did not

The Constitution has Congress elected every second year and requires it to meet at least once a year — on the first Monday in December, or another day set by law. Most of the first six Congresses held two sessions: the first usually ended in March, the second ran into May or June. The First and Fifth Congresses added an extra session for pressing matters of state. Members only rarely had to endure the capital's notoriously hot, humid summers:

Between sessions, members went home. Many kept second careers as lawyers, merchants or landowners. In years when they could leave early in March, they set off before the spring rains turned the roads to mud. Those who were reelected could look forward to a long stretch at home — with family, with their constituents, and at their other work — before returning to Congress.

Sources

Based on "Serving in the Congress, 1790 to 1800," National Park Service (Independence National Historical Park), a work of the United States government in the public domain. For further reading it suggests Kenneth R. Bowling and Helen E. Veit, eds., Documentary History of the First Federal Congress, 1789–1791, vol. IX (1988); the Journal of William Maclay, U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania, 1789–1791; and Roy Swanstrom, The United States Senate, 1787–1801 (1985). The park's short film Testing a Constitution: A Tour of Congress Hall explores the building.