(cid:3) (cid:3) TABLE OF CONTENTS (cid:144)(cid:3)(cid:144)(cid:3)(cid:144) 4 INTRODUCTION In 1789 the United States House of Representatives was not quite 10 years old and some of its members hadn’t yet learned good manners 7 CHAPTER NO_ 1 17 CHAPTER NO_ 2 BUILDING THE HOUSE A CAST OF THOUSANDS When the delegates to the Consti tutional convention in 1787 were designing the government of the new country they started with the group of elected lawmakers It was crucial to begin there All that the Constitution requires of a House member is that he or she be 25 years old a U S citizen for at least 7 years and a resident of the state but not necessarily the dis trict he or she represents 27 CHAPTER NO_ 3 37 CHAPTER NO_ 4 THE JOB DESCRIPTION According to the Constitution there are three things that only the House of Representatives can do Of course none of those things is simple GRIDLOCK AS USUAL In recent years the majorities in both the House and the Senate have swung narrowly between Republicans and Democrats
46 Endnotes 47 Selected Bibliography 47 Websites 48 Index REFERENCE WE THE PEOPLE 46 Endnotes 47 Selected Bibliography 47 Websites 48 Index REFERENCE 9 FREDERICK MUHLENBERG First Speaker of the House 10 JOHN RANDOLPH Ways and Means chairman 19 DAVY CROCKETT Legendary frontiersman and Tennessee representative 20 JOSEPH H RAINEY First black representative 29 JEANNETTE RANKIN First female representative 30 SHIRLEY CHISHOLM A founder of the CBC 39 NEWT GINGRICH 1990s Speaker of the House 40 NANCY PELOSI First female Speaker
INTRODUCTION In 1798 the United States House of Representatives was not quite 10 years old and some of its members hadn’t yet learned good manners THE U S HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Heated debates were common One day Vermont representative Mat thew Lyon spat tobacco juice in the face of Connecticut’s Roger Gris wold Griswold stayed calm at the time But two weeks later Griswold saw Lyon alone at his desk and clubbed him with a hickory cane Lyon grabbed a pair of iron fireplace tongs and whacked Griswold Soon other members of the House were shoving and hitting one another with sticks on the House floor and in the hallways Such physical as saults and even duels with pistols marked government by the peo ple in the early days Today neither guns nor tobacco juice are allowed in chambers But there are still plenty of fights as parties battle one another over legislation using words as their weapons 4
Griswold attacked Lyon after the House voted not to expel Lyon for the spitting incident
