"To no other branch of Government has the constitution assigned powers more various or important than to the Senate. [T]o this body, only, is granted a participation in all the different powers of the Government - Legislative, Executive, and Judiciary."
-Vice President John C. Calhoun, Address to the Senate, March 4, 1825. "What we do today is not alone for ourselves...; it is for all everywhere who suffer from tyranny and wrong; for all everywhere who bend beneath the yoke; for all everywhere who feel the blight of unjust power; it is for all mankind..."
-Senator Charles Sumner, closing argument for admission of Hiram Revels to the Senate, February 25, 1870. "...Wherever we sit we shall be the Senate of the United States of America - a great, a powerful, a conservative body in the government of this country, and a body that will maintain, as I trust and believe, under all circumstances and in all times to come, the honor, the right, and the glory of this country."
-Senator John J. Crittenden, upon the Senate’s move to its current chamber, January 4, 1859. "Administrations come and go, Houses assemble and disperse, Senators change, but the Senate is always there in the Capitol, and always organized, with an existence unbroken since 1789."
-Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, 1903. "Page life was in those days, and it must be now, the school of manners and manliness. No boy could have spent that much time at the impressionable age, in such close contact with those high-minded men without taking on to a greater or less extent the attributes of courteous, manly character."
-Christian F. Eckloff, Memoirs of a Senate Page, 1909. "When the women of the country come in and sit with you [senators]... you will get ability, you will get integrity of purpose, you will get exalted patriotism, and you will get unstinted usefulness."
-Senator Rebecca Felton, 1922. |