Sold – Luminaries in the 1850 Senate Read the Debates of the Founding Fathers

September 1850 was an important time for the 31st U.S. Congress, as the measures known as the Compromise of 1850 were debated and passed. In the Senate were many hallowed names, both lions of the Antebellum period and promising stars of the future. There were 30 states in the Union until that month, but with California’s admission on September 9, 1850, that number rose to 31; so the number of Senators within September started at 60 and increased to 62.

The “Annals of Congress” are volumes covering and recording the debates of the 1st Congress through the first session of the 18th Congress, from 1789 to 1824. They provide a record of the debates of the Founding Fathers in those early years, and are more comprehensive and useful than the House and Senate Journals covering that time. The Annals were not published contemporaneously, but were compiled between 1834 and 1856, using the best records available, primarily newspaper accounts. As volumes were readied for publication, Senators could put their names down to receive copies. Volumes 1-6 covered the period of the Washington administration, and they were apparently much coveted, as the entire United States Senate seems to have acquired them.

Document Signed, Washington, circa late September 1850, acknowledging receiving the desirable books: “Received of A. Dickens, Secretary of the Senate, one copy of the Annals of Congress in six volumes.” 58 Senators have signed the document plus 2 others had a clerk sign for them. Among those signing were the great compromisers Henry Clay and Daniel Webster (though Webster had left the Senate July 22, 1850 to become Secretary of State, it seems he still wanted a copy); Texas founders Sam Houston and Thomas Rusk; candidates who ran against Abraham Lincoln Stephen A. Douglas and John Bell; future Confederates President Jefferson Davis, Ambassador to Britain James M. Mason, Secretary of State Robert Hunter, and Senator Robert W. Barnwell; future Lincoln cabinet members Secretary of State William Seward, and Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase; first vice presidential candidate of the Republican Party William Dayton; Senate President pro tempore David Rice Atchison; future Vice President William King; 1848 presidential candidate Lewis Cass; Roger Baldwin, defense attorney for the Africans of the Amistad; David Yulee, first Jew to serve in the Senate; William Gwin, first Senator from California; future Union General James Shields; former cabinet officers Attorney General John M. Berrien and Treasury Secretary Thomas Ewing; former House Speaker Robert Winthrop; and dozens of others.