On January 31, 1961, Ham the space chimpanzee made history after blasting off hundreds of miles into low Earth orbit inside a Mercury capsule. Before NASA could send humans into space, they used animals as test subjects to determine whether or not a human could perform tasks or even survive miles above the Earth’s surface. This photo, submitted by NASA to the Senate Committee on Space and Astronautics, captured the image of Ham stretching for an apple after landing safely aboard the capsule. More than just a passive rider, Ham readily performed a series of learned tasks on his journey proving that humans would have at least a limited functionary capability in space. One apple seems a pittance for Ham’s great contribution to the Mercury project and human space flight. Nevertheless, he seemed glad to have it! Photograph of Ham reaching for an apple, SEN 89A-F1, 1/31/1961, Records of the U.S. Senate (ARC 7038095)
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On January 31, 1961, Ham the space chimpanzee made history after blasting off hundreds of miles into low Earth orbit inside a Mercury capsule. Before NASA could send humans into space, they used animals as test subjects to determine whether or not a human could perform tasks or even survive miles above the Earth’s surface. This photo, submitted by NASA to the Senate Committee on Space and Astronautics, captured the image of Ham stretching for an apple after landing safely aboard the capsule. More than just a passive rider, Ham readily performed a series of learned tasks on his journey proving that humans would have at least a limited functionary capability in space. One apple seems a pittance for Ham’s great contribution to the Mercury project and human space flight. Nevertheless, he seemed glad to have it!


Photograph of Ham reaching for an apple, SEN 89A-F1, 1/31/1961, Records of the U.S. Senate (ARC 7038095)

usnatarchives: It would be several years before construction started on the actual Capitol of the United States (seen here). In late June 1787, the delegates attending the Constitutional Convention were still weighing their options on the framework of a document and government. Three conceptual frameworks for the new government had been presented. In addition to Randolph’s Virginia Plan and Paterson’s New Jersey Plan, Alexander Hamilton proposed a third possibility which called for a strong executive branch that reminded many delegates an awful lot of the English monarchy.  Each plan had its advocates. The Virginia Plan was generally favored by larger states. The New Jersey Plan was generally favored by smaller states. The Hamilton plan was generally favored by Alexander Hamilton.  The concepts of the two major plans were not rooted in size but in divergent values and priorities deeply influenced by size. Larger states had more people and more natural resources at their disposal, and they believed they deserved a proportional voice in the new government. Smaller states asserted the nation had formed as a union of equal states and that each state deserved an equal voice in the new government. Nowhere was the conflict between proportional representation and equal representation more evident than in the Convention’s debates about how to organize the legislative branch. Debate about the legislature began on June 20, and the Convention took less than two days to agree it should consist of two houses. The question of how to determine representation in each house was hotly contested for weeks. On June 29, Oliver Ellsworth from Connecticut proposed representation in the First House be proportional to population and representation in the Second House be equally distributed to each state. After another week and a half of debates, the Convention finally adopted Ellsworth’s compromise as the foundation of the modern U.S. Congress. Image: Photograph of the Capitol Building Under Construction in Washington, DC.  
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usnatarchives:

It would be several years before construction started on the actual Capitol of the United States (seen here). In late June 1787, the delegates attending the Constitutional Convention were still weighing their options on the framework of a document and government.

Three conceptual frameworks for the new government had been presented. In addition to Randolph’s Virginia Plan and Paterson’s New Jersey Plan, Alexander Hamilton proposed a third possibility which called for a strong executive branch that reminded many delegates an awful lot of the English monarchy.

 Each plan had its advocates. The Virginia Plan was generally favored by larger states. The New Jersey Plan was generally favored by smaller states. The Hamilton plan was generally favored by Alexander Hamilton.

 The concepts of the two major plans were not rooted in size but in divergent values and priorities deeply influenced by size. Larger states had more people and more natural resources at their disposal, and they believed they deserved a proportional voice in the new government. Smaller states asserted the nation had formed as a union of equal states and that each state deserved an equal voice in the new government.

Nowhere was the conflict between proportional representation and equal representation more evident than in the Convention’s debates about how to organize the legislative branch. Debate about the legislature began on June 20, and the Convention took less than two days to agree it should consist of two houses. The question of how to determine representation in each house was hotly contested for weeks.

On June 29, Oliver Ellsworth from Connecticut proposed representation in the First House be proportional to population and representation in the Second House be equally distributed to each state.

After another week and a half of debates, the Convention finally adopted Ellsworth’s compromise as the foundation of the modern U.S. Congress.

Image: Photograph of the Capitol Building Under Construction in Washington, DC.

 

The April 18, 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, estimated at 7.9 magnitude, was one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history, claiming more than 3,000 lives. Congress responded to the disaster in several ways. The House and the Senate Appropriations Committees enacted emergency appropriations. Other congressional action included the House Claims Committee handling claims from owners seeking reimbursement for destroyed property. The Senate also passed a resolution asking the Secretary of War to furnish the Senate with a copy of a report on the earthquake and fire. The report on the relief efforts and accompanying captioned photographs, prepared by the U.S. Army, are now housed with the records of the Senate Committee on Printing and include the above photos.

Visit our featured document article for more information on this tragic event and the congressional response.

Photograph of Union Street Car Line After the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, Records of the U.S. Senate (ARC 2127302)

Photograph of the Effect of Earthquake on Houses Built on Loose or Made Ground After the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, Records of the U.S. Senate (ARC 2127357)

Photograph of Souvenir Hunters After the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, Records of the U.S. Senate (ARC 2127316)

Photograph of St. Francis Hotel Showing the Clean Sweep of Fire in the Business Section of All Except Class A Steel Frame Buildings After the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, Records of the U.S. Senate (ARC 2127289)

Photograph of a Military Camp on the Fourth Day After the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, Records of the U.S. Senate (ARC  2127305)

Photograph of a Typical Bread Line in the Early Stages of Relief Distribution After the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, Records of the U.S. Senate (ARC 306190)

Congress in the Archives will feature monthly staff posts on our blog. Today’s post comes from Center archivist Kris Wilhelm.

It was a dark and stormy night off the coast of New Jersey on April 3, 1933. The captain of the Navy’s dirigible, USS Akron, had altered course several times to avoid ominous weather. By 12:30 am, the Akron was being buffeted by violent updrafts and downdrafts that tore away control cables and forced her into surf that ripped off her lower fin. Without adequate means to navigate the enormous vessel, she was doomed. Only 3 of the airship’s 77 officers and men survived the crash.

The loss of the USS Akron prompted Congress to create the Joint Committee to Investigate Dirigible Disasters. The 10-member panel studied the causes of this and other wrecks as well as the utility and viability of dirigibles for military purposes. Although the dearth of survivors among the Akron’s crew made it difficult for the committee to assess contradictory eyewitness accounts; nevertheless, the records of the disaster tell a chilling tale of the tragic end to a mighty airship.

Surreal Detail of the Week: Senator Hamilton Kean (R-NJ) was a member of the Joint Committee to Investigate Dirigible Disasters. His grandson, Tom Kean, co-chaired the 9/11 Commission with Lee Hamilton.

Photograph of the USS Akron “Nose section being attached to nearly completed framework,” 1933, Records of the Joint Committees of Congress (ARC 6821379)

Photograph of the USS Akron “Ready to walk USS Akron out of Goodyear-Zeppelin dock,” 1933, Records of the Joint Committees of Congress (ARC 6821381)

Photograph of the USS Akron “Crew bunks,” 1933, Records of the Joint Committees of Congress (ARC 6821377)

todaysdocument: Representative Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973), By Matzene, 1917; Courtesy of the Senate Historical Office On November 7, 1916, Jeannette Rankin was the first woman elected to Congress, 4 years before woman suffrage was added to the Constitution in 1920 with the 19th Amendment. Since Rankin, there have been nearly 200 women elected to Congress.
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todaysdocument:

Representative Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973), By Matzene, 1917; Courtesy of the Senate Historical Office

On November 7, 1916, Jeannette Rankin was the first woman elected to Congress, 4 years before woman suffrage was added to the Constitution in 1920 with the 19th Amendment. Since Rankin, there have been nearly 200 women elected to Congress.

todaysdocument:

The Volstead Act

Approved by the Senate on October 28, 1919, the National Prohibition Act, aka the Volstead Act, aka the 18th Amendment, prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic liquors.  It would remain in effect until repealed by the 21st Amendment in 1933.

Guest Blog: What’s a feminist social historian doing at the Center for Legislative Archives?

The records described in this blog entry were screened by Center staff before they were served. All modern records in the Center, especially those containing personal information like private bills, require screening by our staff to ensure privacy is properly protected. For more information about House and Senate access rules, visit http://www.archives.gov/legislative/research/rules-of-access.html.

I admit it. I approached my two recent research trips to the CLA at Archives I with more than a little trepidation. I knew next to nothing about the record groups and the indexes. I was (and will be for some time) working on the history of transnational adoption to the United States in the period just after WWII, and I knew that the legislative records would lead me through the changes, amendments, false starts and new directions in US immigration law that provided the legal mechanism for the admission of children adopted abroad. But, I thought of this research as the backdrop or scaffolding for frankly more interesting and compelling work on the people and places of transnational adoption that I would pursue in venues more familiar to me as a social historian and an historian of women and gender.  

Nonetheless, I soon found myself deep in the House and Senate bill files generated as tens of thousands of private immigration bills made their way through Congress in the late 1940s and the 1950s. The Private Immigration Bills were a work-around for exclusions and dead-ends in the quota system governing immigration to the United States. Private Immigration Bills asked for “The Relief of*” a potential immigrant whose case somehow fell outside the bounds of the existing system and/or who had a compelling humanitarian tale to tell. A small subset of these bills - still several hundred from the later 1940s to the late 1950s - were bills “For the relief of*” minor children who had been or were to be adopted by US citizens. Most of these bills asked that for the purposes of the Immigration and Nationality Act the child be considered the natural born (vs. adopted) alien child of the adopting parents, thus removing the requirement that the child qualify on her or his own for a quota number that might take years to obtain. Other of the bills asked that the racial exclusions to citizenship laid out in the pre-1952 Immigration and Nationality Act not apply in this case, a crucial stipulation as returning US service families tried to bring Japanese children into the United States. 

With (invaluable) help from archivists Rod Ross and Bill Davis, I worked out a way to find the successful private adoption bills (my terminology) inside the overwhelming mass of successful and failed private immigration bills. What I found in the printed committee reports and in the bill files for these adoption bills was astonishing in its richness. The reports, and especially the bill files themselves, tell deeply moving stories of war and separation, of families torn apart and of families re-created through extended biological kin networks and the invented kin of adoption. The bill files contain letters from adoptive parents, birth parents and occasionally children. They show how adoptive parents used their personal and financial resources to portray themselves as solid citizens capable of raising a new American citizen, and they detail the tragic loss of families and communities seeing no better option than to relinquish their children. They tell the tales of war and civil war, of romance and abandonment, of Cold War realpolitik, and of children’s need for love, security, food and education. They are tales of hope, and of tragedy, and they often moved me to tears. Most touching of all were the photographs of children and families often tucked inside the letters. The photos were sent, as one adoptive mother wrote to the Congressman sponsoring her legislation, “so that you may see who you are helping out.”

My research in the bill files is just beginning, but I hope that I have conveyed my path of discovery and my very rich (if unexpected) research experience at the Center for Legislative Archives. 

Letter from 2nd Lt. Don Dutchess, 2/11/1953, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives

                                                                      

This post was written by a researcher, Dr. Karen Balcom, using records from the Center for Legislative Archives. Dr. Balcom is an associate professor of History and Gender Studies and Feminist Research at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. She is the author most recently on The Traffic in Babies: Cross-Border Adoption and Baby-Selling between Canada and the United States, 1930-1972(University of Toronto Press, 2011). She is working on a monograph on intertwined histories of transnational adoption and US immigration policy in the period 1945-1961.