The Special Relationship: the United States Senate and the States, 1789-1821

Terri Halperin
University of Virginia

"Tell Bibb that he and you must make your joint instructions to me, relative to Florida, and which, as I acknowledge the right of instruction, I shall of course obey, or disobey under my responsibility."[1] So, Henry Clay joked to his friends and former Kentucky senators, John J. Crittenden and George M. Bibb. Although Clay, in 1819, was a member of the House of Representatives, he knew how troublesome instructions could be. He also knew that many of his colleagues would not agree with his understanding of the doctrine. Senators and state legislators frequently clashed over the right of states to dictate senators' actions. Some senators, like Clay, believed that as representatives of their states they were bound to follow the dictates of their electors or resign. Other senators thought that instructions inhibited deliberation and that they should be free to use their own best judgment. This paper will examine the Senate's relationship with the states, and thus the meaning of the Constitution and union in the Early Republic.

As an institution, the Senate emerged from the Philadelphia Convention and ratification debates without a well-defined identity. Many Federalists and Antifederalists expected the Senate to act as a council of states. Small state delegates in Philadelphia insisted on state representation in at least one chamber of the national legislature. While the Convention acceded to these delegates' wishes, it adopted several proposals, which directly weakened the Senate's role as a council of states. Long terms without the possibility of recall, per capita voting, and salaries paid from the national treasury all undermined the idea of senators as their states' ambassadors. The ratification debates only further confused the issue of the Senate's character and its relationship to the states.

State legislatures were never shy about expressing their opinions either as recommendations or instructions. All states sent resolutions and remonstrances to the Senate, and on important subjects they sent instructions. For the most part, senators and state legislatures peacefully co-existed. In the most significant episode, the Virginia legislature censured Senators William Branch Giles and Richard Brent -one for disavowing the obligation to obey instructions and the other for outright disobedience of its command to oppose the rechartering of the First Bank of the United States (BUS) in 1811. This episode engendered an extensive debate in the Senate and the states about instructions, the Senate, and the Senate's relationship with the states and the union.

[1] Henry Clay to John J. Crittenden, December 14, 1819, in The Life of John J. Crittenden, ed. Mary Ann Crittenden Butler Chapman (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1871; reprint NY: Da Capo Press, 1970), I: 39.