Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-cjp7w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-22T23:46:28.487Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From Moderator to Leader

Floor Participation by U.S. House Speakers, 1789–1841

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Randall Strahan ,
Matthew Gunning  and
Richard L. Vining Jr
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article, we examine participation in floor debates by U.S. House Speakers in the First through Twenty-sixth Congresses (1789-1841). Consistent with the often-stated view that Speaker Henry Clay of Kentucky transformed the office of Speaker by using the prerogatives of the office more expansively than other early Speakers, Clay stands out among the Speakers of this period for the frequency and length in which he engaged in House debates. However, we also find that Speakers were regularly participating in floor debates over a decade before Clay held the office and that the five Speakers who succeeded Clay did not regularly participate in debate. Although Clay was not the first Speaker to participate regularly in floor debate, we propose that he transformed the office by effectively using all of the leadership tools available to the Speaker, demonstrating to his House colleagues the benefits of having the Speakership function as the central leadership institution for the chamber.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , Spring 2006 , pp. 51 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2006 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Cooper, Joseph (1970) The Origins of the Standing Committees and the Development of the Modern House. Houston: Rice University.Google Scholar
Cooper, Joseph, and Young, Cheryl D. (1989) “Bill introduction in the nineteenth century: A study of institutional change.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 14: 67–105.Google Scholar
Follett, Mary Parker (1896) The Speaker of the House of Representatives. New York: Longmans, Green.Google Scholar
Fuller, Herbert Bruce (1909) The Speakers of the House. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Gamm, Gerald, and Shepsle, Kenneth (1989) “Emergence of legislative institutions: Standing committees in the House and Senate, 1810–1825.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 14: 39–66.Google Scholar
Harlow, Ralph Volney (1917) The History of Legislative Methods in the Period before 1825. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Jenkins, Jeffery A. (1998) “Property rights and the emergence of standing committee dominance in the nineteenth-century House.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 23: 493–520.Google Scholar
Library of Congress (2005) A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation: U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates, 1774–1875, lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lawhome.html.Google Scholar
Lientz, Gerald R. (1978) “House Speaker elections and congressional parties, 1789–1860.” Capitol Studies 6: 63–89.Google Scholar
Martis, Kenneth C. (1989) The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress, 1789–1989. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Peters, Ronald M. Jr. (1997) The American Speakership: The Office in Historical Perspective. 2nd ed. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Peterson, Merrill D. (1987) The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Polsby, Nelson W. (1968) “The institutionalization of the U.S. House of Representatives.” American Political Science Review 62: 144–68.Google Scholar
Remini, Robert V. (1991) Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Risjord, Norman K. (1992) “Partisanship and power: House committees and the powers of the Speaker, 1789–1801.” William and Mary Quarterly 49: 628–51.Google Scholar
Ritchie, Donald A. (1991) Press Gallery: Congress and the Washington Correspondents. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Culver H. (1977) The Press, Politics, and Patronage: The American Government’s Use of Newspapers, 1789–1875. Athens: University of Georgia Press.Google Scholar
Stewart, Charles III, (1998) “Architect or tactician? Henry Clay and the institutional development of the U.S. House of Representatives.” Paper delivered at the 1998 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, DC, September.Google Scholar
Stewart, Charles III, (2000) “Speakership elections and control of the U.S. House: 1839-1859.” Paper delivered at the 2000 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, September.Google Scholar
Strahan, Randall, Moscardelli, Vincent G., Haspel, Moshe, and Wike, Richard S. (2000) “The Clay Speakership revisited.” Polity 23: 561–93.Google Scholar
Swift, Elaine K. (1998) “The start of something new: Clay, Stevenson, Polk, and the development of the Speakership, 1789–1869,” in Davidson, Roger H., Hammond, Susan Webb, and Smock, Raymond W. (eds.) Masters of the House: Congressional Leaders over Two Centuries. Boulder, CO: Westview: 9–32.Google Scholar
Welch, Richard E. (1965) Theodore Sedgwick, Federalist: A Political Portrait. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Young, James Sterling (1966) The Washington Community, 1800–1828. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar