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Show Washington Comment On March 4, 1939, at the capitol, the seventy-sixth congress met in joint session to e-elehrate the 150th anniversary of the first congress. It was on March 4, 1789, that a daring young government attempted attempt-ed to convene its first congress; but such were the difficulties of travel that only eight of the 22 elected senators were able to be present, and only 14 of the 59 representatives. rep-resentatives. So the first little congress, being without a quorum, was forced to adjourn from day t day (rather reminiscent of our present senate which votes itself an awful lot of recesses). It was 27 days before the first house of representatives could drum up a quorum and get down to business, busi-ness, and 33 days before the first senate managed to follow suit. George Washington Wasnlt even elected president at that time, nor John Adams vice president. So there wasn't a presiding vice president to head the senate, but I the house had a speaker, its first, 1 Frederick A. Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania. Penn-sylvania. The last important action of the old congress of the revolution, predecessor of the first congress under the constitution, had been to provide that the states should choose presidential electors on the first Wednesday in January, Janu-ary, 1789; ,tbat these should, a month later, elect a president and vice-president, and that the new, I (and first) congress, should meet the first Wednesday in March f ol-i ol-i lowing. The first Wednesday happened hap-pened to fall on the fourth of March; so it was thus, by chance, .that March fourth became the regular meeting-day of subsequent congresses and;, after President Washington, the inaugural day of all presidents, until the "Lame . Duck" amendment set the Roose- velt inaugural forward to January j 20. The first congress met, of course, in New York, and it was ' at that .time intended to have a ' permanent meeting place, either 011 the banks of the Delaware, or ' the Potomac. The Delaware project, pro-ject, on which engineers actually went to work, fell through, and to Washington, "on the banks of the Potomac", fell the honor and glory I of housing the congress of the 1 United States. |