1. John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, and Dennis Hastert, “The Role of the Speaker of the House: A Tribute to Henry Clay,” panel discussion as part of “Henry Clay Week” (Transylvania University, Lexington, KY, 24 June 2011), C-Span, https://www.c-span.org/video/?300391-1/henry-clay-role-speaker-house, 15.39–17.02.

2. Heidler, David S. and Heidler, Jeanne T., Henry Clay: The Essential American (New York, 2011), 88Google Scholar. For similar claims about Clay’s impact on the office by his other biographers, see Eaton, Clement, Henry Clay and the Art of American Politics (Boston, 1957), 22–23Google Scholar; Mayo, Bernard, Henry Clay: Spokesman of the New West (Boston, 1937), 408–9Google Scholar; Peterson, Merrill D., The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun (New York, 1987), 51Google Scholar; Remini, Robert V., Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union (New York, 1991), 79Google Scholar.

3. Bentley, Judith, Speakers of the House (New York, 1994), 32Google Scholar; Bordewich, Fergus M., The First Congress: How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group of Extraordinary Men Invented the Government (New York, 2016), 31Google Scholar; Currie, David P., The Constitution in Congress: The Jeffersonians, 1801–1829 (Chicago, 2001), 345Google Scholar. For more subscribers to the “impartial moderator” model of the pre–Clay Speakership, see Cheney, Richard B. and Cheney, Lynne V., Kings of the Hill: How Nine Powerful Men Changed the Course of American History (New York, 1996), 2Google Scholar; Fuller, Herbert Bruce, The Speakers of the House (1909; New York, 1974), 31Google Scholar; Galloway, George B., History of the House of Representatives, revised by Wise, Sidney (New York, 1976), 109Google Scholar; Grossman, Mark, Speakers of the House of Representatives, 1789–2009 (Amenia, New York, 2009), 11Google Scholar; Jenkins, Jeffrey A. and Stewart, Charles III, Fighting for the Speakership: The House and the Rise of Party Government (Princeton, 2013), 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar; MacNeil, Neil, Forge of Democracy: The House of Representatives (New York, 1963), 67Google Scholar; Mooney, Booth, Mr. Speaker: Four Men Who Shaped the United States House of Representatives (Chicago, 1964), 5Google Scholar; Peters, Ronald M. Jr., The American Speakership: The Office in Historical Perspective (Baltimore, 1997), 5, 34Google Scholar; Ritchie, Donald A., The U.S. Congress: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2010), 8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Smock, Raymond W., “The Institutional Development of the House of Representatives, 1789–1801,” in The House and Senate in the 1790s: Petitioning, Lobbying, and Institutional Development, ed. Bowling, Kenneth R. and Kennon, Donald R. (Athens, OH, 2002), 330–31Google Scholar; Swift, Elaine K., “The Start of Something New: Clay, Stevenson, Polk, and the Development of the Speakership, 1789–1869,” in Masters of the House: Congressional Leaders over Two Centuries, ed. Davidson, Roger H., Hammond, Susan Webb, and Smock, Raymond W. (Boulder, CO, 1998), 10–11.Google Scholar

A small number of scholars have argued that Clay’s transformation of the office has been overstated, though usually in respect to one of its specific functions. See Cooper, Joseph, The Origins of the Standing Committees and the Development of the Modern House (Houston, 1970)Google Scholar; Follett, Mary P., The Speaker of the House of Representatives (New York, 1909)Google Scholar; Hinds, Asher C., “The Speaker of the House of Representatives,” American Political Science Review 3 (May 1909): 155–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Risjord, Norman K., “Partisanship and Power: House Committees and the Powers of the Speaker, 1789–1801,” William and Mary Quarterly 49 (October 1992): 628–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Strahan, Randall, Gunning, Matthew, and Vining, Richard L. Jr., “From Moderator to Leader: Floor Participation by U.S. House Speakers, 1789–1841,” Social Science History 30 (Spring 2006): 51–74Google Scholar.

4. Robert V. Remini, “The Historical Speakership,” paper delivered at “The Cannon Centenary Conference: The Changing Nature of the Speakership” (Cannon House Office Building, Washington, D.C., 12 November 2003), U.S. Government Printing Office, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CDOC-108hdoc204/pdf/CDOC-108hdoc204.pdf, 91.

5. For examples of this interest, see Bateman, David A., Katznelson, Ira, and Lapinski, John S., Southern Nation: Congress and White Supremacy after Reconstruction (Princeton, 2018)Google Scholar; Brooks, Corey M., Liberty Power: Antislavery Third Parties and the Transformation of American Politics (Chicago, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Malavasic, Alice Elizabeth, The F Street Mess: House Southern Senators Rewrote the Kansas-Nebraska Act (Chapel Hill, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Peart, Daniel, “System, Process, Agency, and Contingency in the Study of Antebellum Policymaking: The Tariff of 1846,” Journal of the Civil War Era 7 (June 2017), 181–205CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ponce, Pearl T., To Govern the Devil in Hell: The Political Crisis in Territorial Kansas (DeKalb, IL, 2014)Google Scholar; and Shelden, Rachel A., Washington Brotherhood: Politics, Social Life, and the Coming of the Civil War (Chapel Hill, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. These works build on an older literature, most obviously Holt, Michael F.’s magisterial The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (Oxford, 1999)Google Scholar. On the importance of lawmakers’ contribution to constitutional debates during this period, see Currie, David P., The Constitution in Congress, 4 vols. (Chicago, 1997–2005)Google Scholar.

6. Publius [James Madison], “The Federalist, 58” (1788), in Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, The Federalist Papers, ed. Lawrence Goldman (Oxford, 2008), 290.

7. “The Constitution of the United States,” Article I, Section 2, National Archives, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript.

8. For Britain as the Founders’ model for the Speakership, see Remini, “Historical Speakership,” 89–90; and Risjord, “Partisanship and Power,” 629. For the colonies, see Follett, Speaker of the House of Representatives, 1–26; Fuller, Speakers of the House, 1–21; and Hinds, “Speaker of the House of Representatives,” 155–57. And for a hybrid argument that they were more influenced by their experience of the colonial assemblies, but reacted against that by adopting the “impartial moderator” model for Congress, see Peters, American Speakership, 18–20; and Swift, “Start of Something New,” 11–13.

9. Smock, “Institutional Development of the House of Representatives,” 331.

10. Samuel Osgood to Elbridge Gerry, 19 February 1789, cited in Bickford, Charlene Bangs and Bowling, Kenneth R., Birth of the Nation: The First Federal Congress, 1789–1791 (Madison, 1989), 5Google Scholar; Currie, David P., The Constitution in Congress: The Federalist Period, 1789–1801 (Chicago, 1997), 3Google Scholar.

11. James Madison to Samuel Johnston, 21 June 1789, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-12-02-0150.

12. Annals of Congress, 1st Cong., 1st sess., 1 April 1789, 100.

13. Regional balance is the reason given for Muhlenberg’s election by Follett, Speaker of the House of Representatives, 65; Fuller, Speakers of the House, 23; and Bickford and Bowling, Birth of the Nation, 16. Legislative experience is preferred by Smith, William Henry, Speakers of the House of Representatives of the United States with Personal Sketches of the Several Speakers (1928; New York, 1971), 18Google Scholar. Both are mentioned in Jenkins and Stewart III, Fighting for the Speakership, 26–27; and Peters, American Speakership, 24–25. And Muhlenberg’s “clear penetrating voice” is cited in Remini, Robert V., The House: The History of the House of Representatives (New York, 2007), 15Google Scholar.

14. Zephaniah Swift to David Daggett, 31 December 1793, in “Selections from Letters Received by David Daggett, 1786–1802,” ed. Franklin B. Dexter, Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 4 (December 1887), 370.

15. Annals of Congress, 1st Cong., 1st sess., 2, 7 April 1789, 101, 102–6. The appointing power was initially limited to committees of three members or fewer, with larger bodies appointed by ballot, but this exception was eliminated at the following session, presumably to end the delays incurred in balloting.

16. “The Valedictory,” [New York] Morning Post and Daily Advertiser, 21 August 1790. The efforts of the Pennsylvania delegation to remove the federal capital can be followed in William Maclay, Documentary History of the First Federal Congress, 1789–1791, vol. 7: The Diary of William Maclay and Other Notes on Senate Debates, ed. Kenneth R. Bowling and Helen E. Veit (Baltimore, 1988). On the “vacuum of institutionalized leadership” in the first House, see also Bordewich, The First Congress, 31.

17. Fuller, Speakers of the House, 25; Jenkins and Stewart III, Fighting for the Speakership, 27; and Lientz, Gerald R., “House Speaker Elections and Congressional Parties, 1789–1860,” Capitol Studies 6 (Spring 1978): 63–64Google Scholar.

18. Theodore Sedgwick to Pamela Sedgwick, 30 December 1794, folder 18, box 1, Sedgwick Family Papers (Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston).

19. Zephaniah Swift to David Daggett, 13 December 1794, folder 314, box 11, David Daggett Papers (Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, New Haven); James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, 14 April 1794, Founders Online, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-15-02-0203.

20. Annals of Congress, 2nd Cong., 1st sess., 24 October 1791, 141–42. Muhlenberg’s remarks on his two elections to the chair are unfortunately not recorded.

21. William C. C. Claiborne to Jonathan Dayton, 4 March 1799, folder 37, Jonathan Dayton Papers (New Jersey Historical Society, Newark).

22. Freeman, Joanne B., Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic (New Haven, 2001), 176–77Google Scholar. Freeman’s is the best study of political duelling during this period, though she does not mention the Dayton-Claiborne correspondence specifically.

23. Pierce, William, “Character Sketches of Delegates to the Federal Convention” (1787), in Farrand, Max, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 (3 vols., New Haven, 1911), 3:90Google Scholar.

24. Theodore Sedgwick to Ephraim Williams, 7 December 1795, folder 21, box 5, Sedgwick Family Papers. See also Annals of Congress, 4th Cong., 1st sess., 7 December 1795, 126.

25. “From Philadelphia,” dated 8 December, [Boston] Columbian Centinel, 19 December 1795; Joseph Jones to James Madison, 19 December 1795, Founders Online, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-16-02-0086.

26. Albert Gallatin to Hannah N. Gallatin, 7 April 1794, in Henry Adams, The Life of Albert Gallatin (Philadelphia, 1880), 221–22; William Branch Giles to Thomas Jefferson, 20 December 1795, Founders Online, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-28-02-0434.

27. Theodore Sedgwick to Ephraim Williams, 5 April 1796, folder 23, box 5, Sedgwick Family Papers.

28. Theodore Sedgwick to Ephraim Williams, 1 April 1796 (quotation), and 5 April 1796, ibid.

29. Annals of Congress, 4th Cong., 1st sess., 30 April 1796, 1289–90, 1291–92. For Findley and his trunk, see “A Political Free Thinker” to “Mr. Scull,” Pittsburgh Gazette, 9 July 1796. If Dayton’s casting vote had been required on the appropriation too, Federalist were confident the Speaker would have delivered. For that, and also another report of Findley’s having “sneaked off,” see Jonathan Trumbull Jr. to Jeremiah Wadsworth, 2 May 1796, Correspondence with Congressmen, vol. 1: 1780–1801, Jonathan Trumbull Jr. Papers (Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford).

30. Jonathan Dayton to [no addressee], 19 Apil 1796, in Francis Childs and William Denning, Public Speculation Unfolded; in Sixteen Letters, Addressed to F. Childs and J. H. Lawrence, of New–York; by Jonathan Dayton, of New-Jersey; while Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States (New York, 1800), Letter No. XV, 18. The New York Republicans were Theodorus Bailey and Philip Van Cortlandt, who voted for the appropriation, and John Hathorn, Jonathan N. Havens, and Edward Livingston, who did not.

31. Charles, Joseph, “The Jay Treaty: The Origins of the American Party System,” William and Mary Quarterly 12 (October 1955), 581–630CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Combs, Jerald A., The Jay Treaty: Political Battleground of the Founding Fathers (Berkeley, 1970)Google Scholar; Estes, Todd, The Jay Treaty Debate, Public Opinion, and the Evolution of Early American Political Culture (Amherst, 2006)Google Scholar; and Pasley, Jeffrey L., The First Presidential Contest: 1796 and the Founding of American Democracy (Lawrence, KS, 2013)Google Scholar.

32. Pasley, The First Presidential Contest, 171; Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 15 February 1798, Founders Online, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-17-02-0057.

33. Strahan, Gunning, and Vining, “From Moderator to Leader,” 60 (second quotation), 61 (fig. 1), 65 (fig. 5), and 68 (first quotation).

34. Annals of Congress, 5th Cong., 2nd sess., 10 May 1798, 1679.

35. Ibid., 19 April 1798, 1473.

36. Ibid., 19, 21 June 1798, 1993, 2003, 2004.

37. Theodore Sedgwick to Rufus King, 9 April, 1 July 1798, in Charles R. King, Life and Correspondence of Rufus King (6 vols., New York, 1894–1900), 2:311, 353.

38. Annals of Congress, 5th Cong., 2nd sess., 12 February 1798, 1004.

39. Ibid., 20 Feb. 1798, 10451, 1053–54, 1056, 1057. Thomas Jefferson concluded that “the testimony bears hard on the Speaker.” Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 18 Febuary 179[8], Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-30-02-0077.

40. “Congressional Pugilists” (1798), cartoon, United States House of Representatives: History, Art, and Archives, https://history.house.gov/Collection/Listing/2004/2004-089-000/. On this incident, see also Freeman, Affairs of Honor, 174–75.

41. Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 26 February, 1799, Founders Online, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-17-02-0151; Annals of Congress, 5th Cong., 3rd sess., 25 February 1799, 2985–3017.

42. Annals of Congress, 5th Cong., 3rd sess., 3 March 1799, 3054–55.

43. Jonathan Dayton to William C. C. Claiborne (draft), March [5], 1799, folder 36, Dayton Papers.

44. William C. C. Claiborne to Jonathan Dayton, 5 March 1799, folder 38, ibid.

45. Jonathan Dayton to William C. C. Claiborne (draft), March 6, 1799, folder 39, ibid. We have no record of whether the two men did resume their friendship, though Dayton’s elevation to the Senate in the Sixth Congress at least reduced the opportunities for further collision between them in the House.

46. Peters, American Speakership, 30; Smith, Speakers of the House of Representatives of the United States, 29.

47. Theodore Sedgwick, quoted in “Washington City,” [Washington] National Intelligencer, 19 January 1801.

48. Sedgwick, Catharine M., Life and Letters of Catharine M. Sedgwick, ed. Dewey, Mary E. (New York, 1871), 34Google Scholar.

49. “Speaker of the House of Representatives, of the United States,” signed “W.W.,” [Philadelphia] Aurora, 28 November 1799.

50. Theodore Sedgwick to Rufus King, 26 July 1799, in King, Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, III: 70.

51. For a further enumeration of Sedgwick’s faults, from a Republican perspective, see “Historical Fact: Theodore Sedgwick, Speaker of the House of Representatives, From Dec. 1799 to March 3, 1801,” [Washington] National Intelligencer, 2 March 1801.

52. For these events, see Annals of Congress, 6th Cong., 2nd sess., 4, 9 December 1800, 797–99, 806–17; “Statement of facts attending the application of the Editor for permission to occupy a position within the bar of the House of Representatives, that he might be enabled to report with fidelity their proceedings,” [Washington] National Intelligencer, 12 December 1800; untitled editorials, ibid., 14, 16 January 1801; and Ames, William E., A History of the National Intelligencer (Chapel Hill, 1972), 23–27Google Scholar.

53. Annals of Congress, 6th Cong., 2nd sess., 4 December 1800, 797.

54. “Washington City,” [Washington] National Intelligencer, 19 January 1801.

55. Berkin, Carol, The Crises of the 1790s and the Birth of American Nationalism (New York, 2017)Google Scholar; Currie, David, The Constitution in Congress: The Federalist Period, 1789–1801 (Chicago, 1997)Google Scholar; Halperin, Terri Diane, The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798: Testing the Constitution (Baltimore, 2016)Google Scholar; Pasley, Jeffrey L., “The Tyranny of Printers”: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic (Charlottesville, 2001)Google Scholar; Smith, James, Freedom’s Fetters: The Alien and Sedition Laws and American Civil Liberties (Ithaca, New York, 1956)Google Scholar.

56. “Washington City,” [Washington] National Intelligencer, 19 January 1801.

57. “An Act in addition to the act, entitled ‘An Act for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States,’” Statutes at Large of the United States of America, 1789–1873 (1845), I, 596–97.

58. Theodore Sedgwick, “To the Electors of the First Western District,” 4 June 1800, folder 2, box 10, Sedgwick Family Papers.

59. Theodore Sedgwick to Henry Van Schaack, 4 January 1800, folder 3, box 5, ibid.

60. “Washington City,” [Washington] National Intelligencer, 19 January 1801.

61. Untitled editorial, [Washington] National Intelligencer, 12 December 1800.

62. Annals of Congress, 5th Cong., 2nd sess., 10 July 1798, 2164.

63. Ibid., 6th Cong., 2nd sess., 18, 20 February 1801, 1036, 1041–44; Follett, Speaker of the House of Representatives, 123–24.

64. Annals of Congress, 6th Cong., 2nd sess., 3 March 1801, 1079–80.

65. Untitled editorial, [Washington] National Intelligencer, 4 March 1801; Smith, John Cotton, “Washington in 1800, with a Brief Notice of the First Session of Congress in that City,” in The Correspondence and Miscellanies of the Hon. John Cotton Smith, LL.D., Formerly Governor of Connecticut, ed. Andrews, William W. (New York, 1847), 221Google Scholar. The Intelligencer actually reports the margin as four votes, but the Annals of Congress and House Journal both record it as five.

66. Ferling, John, Adams vs. Jefferson: The Tumultuous Election of 1800 (Oxford, 2004)Google Scholar; Halperin, Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798; and Sharp, James Roger, The Deadlocked Election of 1800: Jefferson, Burr, and the Union in the Balance (Lawrence, KS, 2010)Google Scholar.

67. Ames, History of the National Intelligencer; Pasley, “Tyranny of Printers”; Ritchie, Donald A., Press Gallery: Congress and the Washington Correspondents (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), 7–34Google Scholar.

68. William Henry Smith, quoted in Thomas Boylston Adams to William Smith Shaw, 21 January 1801, Founders Online, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-03-02-0867. Even Adams, a Federalist, admitted that he “could not help Laughing at the keen Satyre.”

69. Roberts, Jonathan, “Memoirs of a Senator from Pennsylvania: Jonathan Roberts, 1771–1854,” ed. Klein, Philip S., Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 62 (July 1938): 381Google Scholar.

70. Fehrenbacher, Don E., The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government’s Relations to Slavery (Oxford, 2001), 136Google Scholar.

71. Annals of Congress, 9th Cong., 2nd sess., 29 December 1806, 13 February 1807, 225 (quotation), 486–87.

72. Ibid., 31 December 1806, 232.

73. Ibid., 17 December 1806, 169.

74. Ibid., 170.

75. Ibid., 7 January 1807, 265.

76. Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon, 24 March 1826, Founders Online, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-5980; Annals of Congress, 9th Cong., 2nd sess., 7 January 1807, 266. Either Jefferson’s Latin or the transcription of his letter is faulty, for the correct translation would be Ultimus Romanorum.

77. Annals of Congress, 9th Cong., 1st sess., 21 January 1806, 361.

78. Ibid., 8th Cong., 1st sess., 14 February 1804, 998.

79. Ibid., 9th Cong., 2nd sess., 17, 23, 29 December 1806, 172–73, 176–77, 200, 225 (quotation).

80. Finkelman, Paul, “Regulating the African Slave Trade,” Civil War History 54 (December 2008), 401Google Scholar.

81. Fehrenbacher, Slaveholding Republic, 385n64.

82. “What right have we to sell a poor wretch, as a slave, whom we punish another person for attempting to sell?” editorialized the Richmond Enquirer, 1 September 1818. For that quotation, and on the 1819 amendment of the act, see Mason, Matthew, Slavery and Politics in the Early American Republic (Chapel Hill, 2006), 170–71Google Scholar; and also Akehurst, Hazel, “Sectional Crises and the Fate of Africans Illegally Imported into the United States, 1806–1860,” American Nineteenth Century History 9 (June 2008): 103–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83. Annals of Congress, 9th Cong., 2nd sess., 29 December 1806, 221.

84. Ibid., 7 January 1807, 266.

85. Ibid., 29 December 1806, 225.

86. Ibid., 226.

87. Ibid.

88. Nathaniel Macon to Bartlett Yancey, 8 March 1818, in Wilson, Edward Mood, The Congressional Career of Nathaniel Macon (Chapel Hill, 1900), 48–50Google Scholar. The constitutional implications of Bidwell’s amendment are also discussed in Riley, Padraig, Slavery and the Democratic Conscience: Political Life in Jeffersonian America (Philadelphia, 2016), 121–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89. Entry for 1 December 1805, Plumer, William, William Plumer’s Memorandum of Proceedings in the United States Senate, 1803–1807, ed. Brown, Everett Somerville (New York, 1923), 337Google Scholar. For the perspective of one of those Federalists who backed Macon, see Quincy, Edmund, Life of Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts (Boston, 1869), 94Google Scholar.

90. Richards, Leonard, The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780–1860 (Baton Rouge, 2000), 60–61Google Scholar.

91. Adams, Henry A., History of the United States During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison (9 vols., New York, 1889–91), I, 267Google Scholar.

92. Thomas Dwight to John Williams, 28 January 1804, folder “1804 Jan,” box 2, Dwight-Howard Papers (Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston).

93. Nathaniel Macon to Joseph H. Nicholson, Feb. 1, 1815, in “Nathaniel Macon Correspondence,” ed. William E. Dodd, John P. Branch Historical Papers, 3 (June 1909), 71. This is a reference to the Biblical story of David and Jonathan. Other contemporaries also ascribed Randolph’s swift rise to his friendship with the Speaker. See James A. Bayard to John Rutledge Jr., Dec. 20, 1801, Reel 1, John Rutledge Jr. Papers (Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., originals at the University of North Carolina).

94. John Randolph to Joseph H. Nicholson, 18 July 1801, Container 2, Joseph H. Nicholson Papers (Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.).

95. Entry for 24 October 1803, Plumer, William Plumer’s Memorandum of Proceedings in the United States Senate, 24–25.

96. On Jefferson’s management of the legislature, see Cunningham, Noble E. Jr., The Process of Government under Jefferson (Princeton, 1978), 188–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Harlow, Ralph Volney, The History of Legislative Methods in the Period Before 1825 (New Haven, 1917), 165–93Google Scholar.

97. For two different perspectives on Randolph’s breach with Jefferson, see William A. Burwell, “‘Strict Truth’: The Narrative of William Armistead Burwell,” ed. Gerard W. Gawalt, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 101 (Jannuary 1993): 121–23; and Timothy Pickering to Rufus King, 13 January 1806, in King, Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, IV, 476.

98. John Randolph, quoted in Benjamin Tallmadge to Manasseh Cutler, 19 February 1806, in William Parker Cutler and Julia Perkins Cutler, Life, Journals and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler, L.L.D. (2 vols., Cincinnati, 1888), II, 327.

99. Annals of Congress, 9th Cong., 1st sess., 7 April 1806, 982.

100. Thomas Jefferson to Barnabas Bidwell, 5 July 1806, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-3958.

101. Samuel Smith to [no addressee], 14 December 1805, Letterbook 2 December 1805—18 April 1807, Reel 1, Samuel Smith Family Papers (Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.).

102. Barnabas Bidwell to Thomas Jefferson, 28 July 1806, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-4095.

103. William Plumer to William Plumer Jr., 11 March 1806, Letterbook 1804–1807, Reel 3, William Plumer Papers (Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.). The “Rubicon” expression was also used by one of Randolph’s friends. See Joseph Bryan to John Randolph, 23 April 1806, Reel 1, Bryan Family Papers (Library of Virginia, Richmond). On the Quids, see Carson, David A., “The Ground Called Quiddism: John Randolph’s War with the Jefferson Administration,” Journal of American Studies 20 (April 1986): 71–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

104. Nathaniel Macon to Joseph H. Nicholson, 21 April 1806, Container 3, Nicholson Papers; Annals of Congress, 9th Cong., 1st sess., 21 April 1806, 1115.

105. Entry for 9 December 1806, Plumer, William Plumer’s Memorandum of Proceedings in the United States Senate, 525.

106. Annals of Congress, 9th Cong., 2nd sess., 1 December 1806, 111. It was not until the Thirty-Seventh Congress (1861–63) that the rules were changed so that committee assignments were made for the entire life of a Congress rather than for a single session.

107. Nathaniel Macon to Joseph H. Nicholson, 1 December 1806, Container 3, Nicholson Papers.

108. Nathaniel Macon to Joseph H. Nicholson, 2 December 1806, Container 3, Nicholson Papers.

109. The whole charade is recounted in Annals of Congress, 9th Cong., 2nd sess., 5, 9 December 1806, 115, 130; entry for 9 December 1806, Plumer, William Plumer’s Memorandum of Proceedings in the United States Senate, 525–26; and John Rutledge to [no addressee], 10 December 1806, Reel 2, Rutledge Jr. Papers.

110. Memorandum of John Randolph, quoted in William Cabell Bruce, John Randolph of Roanoke, 1773–1833 (2 vols., New York, 1922), I, 307–8.

111. John George Jackson to James Madison, 11 October 1807, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/99-01-02-2213.

112. John Quincy Adams to Abigail Smith Adams, 27 October 1807, Founders Online, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-03-02-1613.

113. Nathaniel Macon to Joseph H. Nicholson, 19 November 1807, Container 4, Nicholson Papers.

114. Annals of Congress, 10th Cong., 1st sess., 26 October 1807, 782.

115. Ibid., 27, 28 October, 789–94 (quotation 791).

116. Joseph Bryan to John Randolph, 24 November 1807, Reel 1, Bryan Family Papers; Joseph B. Varnum to William Plumer, 6 December 1807, Letterbook 1791–1817, Reel 2, Plumer Papers.

117. Quincy, Life of Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts, 116.

118. Entry for 7 February 1806, John Quincy Adams, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848, ed. Charles Francis Adams (12 vols., Philadelphia, 1874–77), I, 403. For a similar view on Jefferson’s management of the legislature, see John Marshall to Alexander Hamilton, 1 January 1801, Founders Online, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-25-02-0154.

119. In addition to those cited previously, recent works on these subjects include Bird, Wendell, Press and Speech Under Assault: The Early Supreme Court Justices, the Sedition Act of 1798, and the Campaign Against Dissent (Oxford, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Estes, Todd, “Shaping the Politics of Public Opinion: Federalists and the Jay Treaty Debate,” Journal of the Early Republic 20 (Autumn 2000): 393–422Google Scholar; Marques, Leonardo, The United States and the Transatlantic Slave Trade to the Americas, 1776–1867 (New Haven, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mason, Matthew E., “Slavery Overshadowed: Congress Debates Prohibiting the Atlantic Slave Trade to the United States, 1806–1807,” Journal of the Early Republic 20 (Spring 2000): 59–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and innumerable biographies of Thomas Jefferson. Indeed, anyone seeking further illustration of this point need only compare the total number of published biographies for the first six Speakers (four) with that for the first six presidents.

120. Annals of Congress, 15th Cong., 1st sess., 1 December 1817, 399.

121. Swift, “The Start of Something New,” 22. Swift identifies only James K. Polk and Andrew Stevenson as strong leaders among the sixteen pre–Civil War Speakers that followed Henry Clay. Polk is also included in Cheney and Cheney, Kings of the Hill. No pre–Civil War examples apart from Clay feature in Bentley, Speakers of the House; Mooney, Mr. Speaker; and Strahan, Randall, Leading Representatives: The Agency of Leaders in the Politics of the U.S. House (Baltimore, 2007)Google Scholar.

122. Floor participation actually dropped after Clay departed the chair. Only Stevenson and Polk of the six succeeding Speakers addressed the House on policy-related matters at all, and then only infrequently compared to Dayton, Macon, and Varnum. See Strahan, Gunning, and Vining, “From Moderator to Leader,” 61–62.

123. On Clay’s efforts to buy the support of the [Washington] National Intelligencer see Ames, A History of the National Intelligencer, 109–11; and entry for July 28, 1822, Adams, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, VI, 47.

124. For Clay’s role the shaping of tariff policy, to take one example, see Peart, Daniel, Lobbyists and the Making of US Tariff Policy, 1816–1861 (Baltimore, 2018)Google Scholar.

125. Clay’s use of the appointing power is the subject of extensive discussion among political scientists as well as historians. This literature is summarized in Charles Stewart III, “Architect or Tactician? Henry Clay and the Institutional Development of the U.S. House of Representatives,” in Party, Process, and Political Change in Congress, Volume 2: Further New Perspectives on the History of Congress, ed. David W. Brady and Mathew D. McCubbins (Stanford, 2007).