C ONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES, Sessions of and Politcal Parties in. In accordance with the usage of the 'Annals of Congress,' the (Register of Debates in Con gres.s,' the Congressional Globe and the Coil vot. 7— 33 'greksional Record, we have used the legislative day for the termination of the first 56 Con . gresses and the calendar day beginning with die 57th Congress in 1901. The practice of Cos . gress in this connection is based on the fact that it does not recogniae the calendar day but only the legislative day; nor are Sundays aud the forenoon'of 4 Man% recognized as legisla tive days. The legislative day of 3 March does riot expire until 12 o'clock noon of, 4 March.
,In the Monthly Catalogue United States Public 'Documents (No. 195, p. 492, March 1911) sued by the superintendent of public documents, 'is the following note: " If on any day either Senate or Hanoi-dusts to adjourn. but instead takes a reams. no matter of what duration. the legislative day continues without regard to the almanac. This prolongation of the legislative day has, under the rules, various effects upon the status and the progtess of pending ,billa and motions. . . . Whatever they may be, le legiAative day remains simply a legislative fiction. T e calendar day, th'e real day, of course can not be affected y any action of Congress. In the Proceedings of Congress as revorted in the Conareesional Record both the fictitious 1-latsve date and the true calendar date have been pub lish. in recent years when the two dates conflict. Of course as a general rule the two dates harmoniously agree. It is only when a parliamentary struggle or ' filibuster ' is afoot that the fictitious legislative day sets the Gregorian calendar at defiance. Almost the only cases in which the recognition 'of the legislative day affects the accuracy of the public records u when it rnakes the sessions of Congress seem to have closed at a time when they seally did not close., " The Constitution fixes the duration of Congre, simnel 'terms, but the comititutional provision has been differently construed at different periods. In the early jeans of the Republic it was generally held thet the terrn o a Congress lawfully ended at midnight of March 3 in the d-numbered years.. As a matter of fact it never did end then. Tbe work lmulation was usually continued far into the small hairs pf March 4, davit° earnest protests often made. Finally, March 3, 1851, both the Senate and the House took official action determining that the legal date for the closing Of 'Congress is 12 o'clock noon of March 4 (Consult A. C. Hinds, !Precedents pf. the House of Representativee.: Vol. V„ pp.
862-863). This ruling has been ever since invariably , fcd lowed. Whenever the legislative varies from thit date as'the daring date of a Congress it is wrong. Minor departures. provided for by turning back the official clocks, and winked at by all departments of the government. have of course been disregarded in compiling the check list." In spite of this ruling and another in 1881, however, the Congressional Record continued io use the old legislative day as the running headline date until the end of the 56th Congress in 1901, though the text indicates the 'calendar days covered by the legislative days, which is very apt to confuse one not accustomed to this method. Moreover, in several instances (as in the last sessions of the 39th, 50th, 53d and 56th Congresses) 3 March was Sunday, wherefore the Record is antedated to 2 March (Saturday), though the pages of the volumes themselves in dicate not only that C,ongress sat on Sunday but also on Monday, 4 March. Hence, while the Record shows that in these cases a member of either House made a speech on Monday, 4 March, calendar day, he is said to have spoken on Saturday, 2 March, legislative day.
Another source of probable confusion to those unfamiliar with Congressional proceedings is the method pursued by Gales and Seaton in printing the (Annals of Congress.' The pro ceedings of some special sessions will be found in the volumes containing the proceedings of the Congress which had just expired, For in stance, the'proceedings of the special session of the Senate 8-26 June 1795 (which was a part of the 4th Congress) will be found at the end of the proceedings of the second session of the 3d Congress. As they are incorporated there without explanation or comment of any kind, the reader may be misled into supposing that this session of the Senate belonged to the 3d Congress.
When the government came into being in 1789 there were two parties - the Federalist and Republican, which, like European and Eng lish parties, were based largely on class distinc tions. For all practical purposes the first ses sion of Congress was non-partisan, since the few Senators and Representatives who openly avowed anti-Federalist sentiments never acted together as a party. But when the measures of Alexander Hamilton (q.v.) were introduced and pushed, the opposition gradually began to assume permanent form, though members did not consider themselves strictly party men. The following figures indicate as nearly as possible the number of those who upheld and those who feared and disliked the government and its measures.