House & Senate In 1790S: Petitioning, Lobbying, & Institutional Development (Perspective History Of Congres)

In the 1790s, the United States Congress solidified its role as the national legislature. The ten essays in this work show the mechanisms by which this bicameral legislature developed its institutional identity. The first essay sets the scene for the institutional development of Congress by examining its constitutional origins and efforts of the Founders to empower the new national legislature. The five following essays focus attention on two related mechanisms - petitioning and lobbying - by which citizens and private interests communicated with national lawmakers. Although scholars tend to see lobbying as a later 19th-century development, the papers presented here show the existence of lobbyists and lobbying in the 1790s. The final four papers examine other aspects of the institutional development of the House and the Senate, including the development of political parties and congressional leadership. The essays in this collection, the third volume in the series Perspectives on the History of Congress, 1789-1801, originated in a series of conferences held by the United States Capitol Historical Society from 1994 to 2001.