A Capitol Tour, Part III - The Senate Chambers
Touring the "old" and current Senate chambers. These chambers teem with fascinating people, history and stories. Meet Senator Judah Benjamin (D-LA).
Miss parts one and two? Find them here and here.
The “old” Senate Chamber’s Franklin Stoves were undoubtedly running full tilt the morning of January 4, 1859, as about 62 US Senators began arriving for their traditional noon convening in what had become a crowded 40-year-old chamber. The number of states represented in the chamber more than doubled during that time.
I’ve seen no reports about any visitors in the gallery that morning. Being the best show in town during contentious pre-Civil War days, well-dressed visitors would line up at 9 a.m. for a session that didn’t usually begin until noon. It would fill quickly, leading some Senators to invite women to sit at their desks on the Senate’s floor. That would never happen today.
Except on this day, there were probably no desks in the chamber except that of the Senate President. They’d been moved to the “new” chamber. Senators solemnly gathered and marched single file to their new environs. The “old” chamber would soon become the new home of the US Supreme Court, which they occupied until 1935 before moving to their current home across the street from the Capitol’s east front. \
Over time, the old chamber almost fell into disrepair. After a 10-year stalemate with the House, funds were finally appropriated for a restoration that concluded in 1976.
The Senators who gathered late that morning for their march to the new chamber each have interesting stories. Perhaps none more so than Senators Jefferson Davis (D-MS), Judah Benjamin (D-LA), Stephen Douglas (D-IL), Hannibal Hamlin (R-ME, Lincoln’s first vice president), Charles Sumner (R-MA).
Benjamin’s history fascinates me. “Benjamin was the first Jew to hold a Cabinet position in North America and the first to be elected to the United States Senate who had not renounced his faith,” writes Wikipedia. And that Cabinet position was for the Confederacy. An accomplished plantation owner and attorney, he continued to practice law before the Supreme Court - downstairs from the Old Senate Chamber - while serving in the Senate. When their respective states seceded, President Davis named Benjamin the Confederacy’s first Attorney General, then Secretary of War, then Secretary of State, where he unsuccessfully tried to win international support for the Confederacy. When the war ended, he escaped to Great Britain to practice law. Other confederates, including Vice President Alexander Stephens, would remain and win election to Congress after the war.
It’s possible that Sumner didn’t make it to the Senate that day. He never fully recovered from the bludgeoning he received at the hands of US Rep. Preston Brooks (D-SC) on May 22, 1856, three days after Sumner delivered his legendary “Crime Against Kansas” speech. Sumner was upset over legislation and its conditions for admitting Kansas and Nebraska as States. Under Senator Stephen Douglas’s concept of “popular sovereignty,” coauthored with South Carolina’s Andrew Butler, both states would be allowed to decide for themselves whether to be “slave” or “free.” Sumner personally attacked Butler in his famous speech, accusing him of being under the spell of the “harlot,” slavery.
Sumner, Whig-turned-Republican, had a point. While Nebraska choosing to be a free state was expected, “bleeding Kansas” ensued as the state literally warred over the choice. It was a mini-Civil War that preceded the “real one.”
Brooks was Butler’s cousin and felt compelled to defend the family’s honor. House members - then and now - have full Senate floor privileges, which are not reciprocated. Brooks walked into the chamber and spotted Sumner at his desk on the back row to his right. He walked to his desk and bludgeoned him with a gold-tipped cane. Sumner pulled his desk from its moorings in a desperate attempt to evade the attack.
Sumner was permanently injured and infrequently returned to his desk for the remainder of his Senate service. Butler was never punished. But the lesson was clear - the issue of slavery would be decided violently. And it tragically was. Despite the beating, Sumner remained in Senate well past the Civil War.
The most amazing aspect of visiting the old Senate Chamber, now re-opened for public tours, is who sat where. Senators Jefferson Davis (MS), Andrew Johnson (TN), and Steven Douglas (IL) all sat in the same row. If you visit the old Chamber, you will see their desks marked with books, along with Sumner’s on the other side of the aisle. And they marched together with others to the new chamber. How life - and the Senate - would change in two short years following the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln.
The Old Senate Chamber, home to the Senate from 1819 to 1859, is my favorite room in the Capitol, mostly for its history. The design of the current chamber builds on it to reflect the country's growth. Not much is original, but the eagle and shield above the President’s desk are, as is Rembrandt Peale’s painting of George Washington.
The “cloakroom” or coat room was openly located behind the president’s desk, with fireplaces at each end. Visitors today will also spot the “hopper,” home to the famous phrase, placing a bill “in the hopper.”
The hopper is an odd piece of furniture. You can spot it “stage right” from the President’s desk between the window and a fireplace. I wish I had a better photo of it, but it appears as a series of shelves that progressively shrink in proportion as they move up.
That’s by design. Bills, as introduced, would be placed on the lowest level, which has the most room. As the bill progressed “up” through committee and floor votes, the space between shelves shrunk - many bills died along the way. The top shelf was reserved for bills enacted by Congress and would soon be on their way to the President for signature or veto. The original hopper can still be found there.
Take a look at the photo above. As with the current chamber, the press gallery is atop the cloakroom and the president’s desk. Two Franklin Stoves - invented by Benjamin Franklin - aren’t seen here but can be found at the rear of the chamber.
The carpet was often a mess and was replaced frequently. Washington’s streets were muddy (and worse). Nearly every Senator sported a spittoon at his desk and used it. Woe to the page that bent over at the wrong place and time. Senator Sam Houston of Texas often whittled at his desk during debates and deliberations, leaving a messy pile of wood shavings.
Here’s my 1996 CSPAN video about the Old Senate Chamber.
The new chamber was built for a growing country; today, it is amply sized for our 50 states and more, especially the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. But at the time, it was considered drafty. Stained-glass ceilings and a unique ventilation system were featured that brought air through rafters along the floor. Acoustics weren’t very good. It wasn’t popular with Senators initially. The glass ceilings, designed to bring in natural light, were noisy when it rained. It has since been covered with a copper roof.
While the center aisle divides Democrats and Republicans, during the Great Depression, the Democratic majority grew so large - well over 70 seats - that they occupied the back row on the GOP side. It was called “The Cherokee Strip,” named after a section of the Cherokee Indian Nation in Oklahoma territory.
But as electricity, sound systems, and modern ventilation systems took hold, along with closing off the stained-glass ceilings, Senators became more accustomed to their new environs. Spittoons would slowly disappear, but two are kept symbolically for historical reasons near the desks of the Majority and Minority Leaders. As it was in the old Chamber, the President's desk remains the highest point of the chamber to signal its authority. The Secretary’s staff has more space below the President’s desk, including room, left to right, for the Journal Clerk, the Parliamentarian, the Bill Clerk, and the Assistant Secretary.
Speaking of spittoons, two recent GOP Senators brought their own during their service George Allen (VA) and the late Conrad Burns (MT). Both reportedly enjoyed their snuff and threatened to use them but never did (to the best of my knowledge). Two Senate snuff boxes can be found near the chamber’s rear entrances.
Each of the Senate’s five officers get chairs near the President’s desk. My former chair is to the President’s left; the Sergeant at Arms has a chair to the President’s right. Other chairs are reserved for Secretaries for the Majority and Minority, along the wall. The Chaplain also gets one. The desks in the corner are mostly for use by cloakroom staff, but a phone is there for Senators who can’t afford to leave the floor (for whatever reasons). There are benches in the rear for staff.
Visitors will note that some chairs have arms, while others do not. Chairs with arms for for Senators. Chairs without arms are for staff.
There is room for some 600 visitors in the gallery, which is rarely full. Senate cameras can be found in the gallery and just above the President’s desk that feed C-SPAN and the networks under the control of the US Senate. Floor proceedings began to be televised in 1986. The cameras and even closed-captioning are controlled by Senate staff. The chamber is organized much like its predecessor, including the press gallery above and behind the President’s desk and Senate desks organized in a semi-circular fashion.
One unique feature, seen above, is the marble busts of every President of the Senate (Vice President of the United States). During my tenure as Secretary, the Curator of Art rearranged the busts chronologically, starting with our first Vice President, John Adams, and his successor, Thomas Jefferson, behind the press gallery. The newest busts of recent vice presidents, including Richard Cheney and Al Gore, are found outside the chamber in the second-floor main hallway leading to the Capitol Rotunda.
Speaking of Senate desks, they look like ornate, old-fashioned school desks. The desks feature hinged writing boxes and drawers that expose not just storage spaces but the often hand-carved signatures of Senators who once occupied them. Inkwells are still present, as are salt-shaker-looking rosin containers used to dry the ink on correspondence written years ago by quill pens.
As noted previously, most desks predate the chamber. Some are unique, including Daniel Webster’s desk, which lacks a hinged desktop feature that was added to desks early in the 19th Century, not long after the British burned the Capitol. That desk is assigned by custom to the senior Senator from New Hampshire (now Jeanne Shaheen). Senators take great interest in which of their predecessors’ desks they now occupy.
One fun desk near the entrance from the elevators is the “candy desk.” The GOP occupant customarily keeps candy manufactured from their home state in the drawer for Senators seeking to satisfy their sweet tooth (accepting such products from home state manufacturers is allowed under ethics rules). Senators from Pennsylvania, one of the nation’s largest candy-producing states (Hershey, Nestle, Mars, and Godiva all have factories there, among others), often angle for the desk. Recent occupants include Rick Santorum and retiring Pat Toomey from the Keystone State. Since the desk is located on the Republican side of the aisle, The Senate GOP cloakroom and pages keep the drawer full. With Toomey’s retirement, it will fall to a new Senator.
Another notable desk belongs to the senior Senator from Mississippi, now Roger Wicker. His desk once belonged to Jefferson Davis, who, with four southern colleagues, dramatically resigned on January 21, 1861, as their states seceded from the Union. Davis later assumed the presidency of the Confederate States of America; it’s one and only. As war broke out at Fort Sumter in South Carolina, Union troops were soon quartered in the new Senate Chamber. Confederate forces weeks later won the first major battle of the war, the Battle of First Manassas (or the First Battle of Bull Run), barely a day’s ride west from the Capitol (45 minutes by auto today, without traffic). Sixty percent of the Civil War would be fought in Virginia, ending at Appomattox four years later.
Upon learning of the whereabouts of Davis’s desk, which was still on the floor of the Senate, a Union soldier began to bayonet the desk. A Senate doorkeeper, Isaac Bassett, heard the commotion and ran to the chamber. You are here to protect property, not destroy it, Bassett angrily admonished the soldier. The desk’s repair is visible.
Soldiers were not long quartered at the Capitol as more than a dozen defensive fortifications and batteries were hastily constructed around the nation’s Capitol, including Fort Reynolds and Battery Garesche, which protected it, very close to where I now live.
Union troops made a mess of the Capitol. The Senate’s estimable website tells the story.
On April 15, 1861, the day after Fort Sumter fell, President Abraham Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 troops. Within three days, Washington swarmed with arriving volunteers to await a feared Confederate onslaught.
On April 19, 1861, the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment took up residence in the Senate Chamber following a bloody encounter in Baltimore with secessionist sympathizers. With the Senate in adjournment, a doorkeeper witnessed the soldiers' arrival. "They were a tired, dusty, and bedraggled lot of men, showing every evidence of the struggle which they had so recently passed through . . . Immediately upon entering the Capitol, they rushed into the Senate chamber, the galleries, committee robulloms, marble room, and wherever they could find accommodations." The doorkeeper continued, "Everything that was possible was done to make them comfortable as the circumstances permitted. But it almost broke my heart to see the soldiers bring armfuls of bacon and hams and throw them down upon the floor of the marble room. Almost with tears in my eyes, I begged them not to grease up the walls and the furniture."
Upwards of 4,000 troops eventually occupied the building. This overwhelming human influx proved costly. The Senate Chamber—in use for just two years—was described as filthy and "alive with lice." A marauding soldier took his bayonet to the desk that Confederate president Jefferson Davis had occupied as a senator just three months earlier. Other soldiers wrote letters home on Senate stationery and conducted raucous mock sessions.
In the basement, bread ovens belched sooty smoke that damaged books in the Library of Congress' adjacent quarters. Without adequate sanitation facilities, the Capitol had quickly become "like one grand water closet (with a) stench so terrible" that only the most strongly motivated would enter the building. Ten weeks later, as members returned for an emergency session in hastily cleansed chambers, the sounds and smells of nearby troops reminded all of the extraordinary challenges that lay ahead.
Worth noting about the new chamber was its unusual ventilation system. Without any exterior windows, air was pumped in from outside through vents in the floor and the feet of desks.
It surprises some to learn that the Senate occasionally still convenes in the Old Senate Chamber, usually for ceremonies (reenacting the swearing-in of new Senators), confidential sessions, and classified briefings. No electronic devices, such as microphones or speakers, are found in the chamber that might facilitate wiretapping or eavesdropping. During my final days as Secretary, the Senate convened there for a classified briefing on the Chemical Weapons Treaty. It was ratified in April 1997.
By the way, the Old Senate Chamber is not the original one at the Capitol. That is found in a small room on the first floor, which we will visit later.
Part IV will take us past the Robert J. Dole Balcony, the Republican Leader’s and Assistant Leader’s Offices, and toward the Capitol’s majestic Rotunda. And it includes a short quiz.
Kelly Johnston writes narrative history on a par with Barbara W. Tuchman and other great writers. Who knew a tour of an old building could be made so informative and even exciting.
William A. Hamilton, Ph.D. Granby, CO