When The Constitution Was Framed, Pennsylvania
Returned 8, And New York Only 6; Whereas Virginia Returned 10, And
South Carolina
5, From which may be gathered the relative rate of
increase in population of the free-soil States and the
Slave States.
All these States return two Senators each to the other House - Kansas
sending as many as New York. The work in the House begins at twelve
noon, and is not often carried on late into the evening. Indeed,
this, I think, is never done till toward the end of the session.
The Senate house is in the opposite wing of the building, the
position of the one house answering exactly to that of the other.
It is somewhat smaller, but is, as a matter of course, much less
crowded. There are 34 States, and, therefore, 68 seats and 68 desks
only are required. These also are arranged in a horseshoe form, and
face the President; but there was a sad array of empty chairs when I
was in Washington, nineteen or twenty seats being vacant in
consequence of secession. In this house the Vice-President of the
United States acts as President, but has by no means so hard a job
of work as his brother on the other side of the way. Mr. Hannibal
Hamlin, from Maine, now fills this chair. I was driven, while in
Washington, to observe something amounting almost to a peculiarity
in the Christian names of the gentlemen who were then administrating
the government of the country. Mr. Abraham Lincoln was the
President; Mr. Hannibal Hamlin, the Vice-President; Mr. Galusha
Grow, the Speaker of the House of Representatives; Mr. Salmon Chase,
the Secretary of the Treasury; Mr. Caleb Smith, the Attorney-
General; Mr. Simon Cameron, the Secretary of War; and Mr. Gideon
Welles, the Secretary of the Navy.
In the Senate House, as in the other house, there are very
commodious galleries for strangers, running round the entire
chambers, and these galleries are open to all the world. As with
all such places in the States, a large portion of them is
appropriated to ladies. But I came at last to find that the word
lady signified a female or a decently dressed man. Any arrangement
for classes is in America impossible; the seats intended for
gentlemen must, as a matter of course, be open to all men; but by
giving up to the rougher sex half the amount of accommodation
nominally devoted to ladies, the desirable division is to a certain
extent made. I generally found that I could obtain admittance to
the ladies' gallery if my coat were decent and I had gloves with me.
All the adjuncts of both these chambers are rich and in good
keeping. The staircases are of marble, and the outside passages and
lobbies are noble in size and in every way convenient. One knows
well the trouble of getting into the House of Lords and House of
Commons, and the want of comfort which attends one there; and an
Englishman cannot fail to make comparisons injurious to his own
country.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 25 of 275
Words from 12283 to 12798
of 142339
