Congress.gov New, Tip, and Top – November 2024, Part 2

In our last release announcement, Andrew discussed the migration of the United States Senate Journals to Congress.gov. Today, we are excited to announce that we are migrating the Journals of the United States House of Representatives to Congress.gov from our legacy Century of Lawmaking site.

We have previously discussed how you can use the Annals of Congress, a predecessor to the Congressional Record, to discover congressional reactions to historic events, such as the attack on Washington by the British in 1814 that left many public buildings, including the White House and Capitol Building, in ruins. So, I decided to see what the Journals of the House of Representatives say about the attack on Washington on August 24, 1814. I clicked “browse” at the top of the screen. Next, I chose the 13th Congress in the dropdown menu, since that Congress corresponds to my date. Next, I looked under the heading “Congressional Activity.” I noticed the 3rd session of the House Journal contained an entry for September 19, 1814, which is the closest time to the attack date. I clicked on the 3rd session, which brought up a date picker, and then I clicked on September 19, 1814. I used the “previous” and “next page” buttons to browse the journal. You can also click on the “view source image” button to view an image of the journal. After flipping through a few pages that discussed who was assembled at this meeting of the House, I found a reprint of a message from President Madison providing an update to Congress on the progress of the war. I used the page turner to flip through a few more pages of the Journal, and found that on September 26, the House was notified,

Mr. Speaker: The Senate have passed a resolution for the appointment of a joint committee to have the application of the money appropriated for the use of the Library, in which they ask the concurrence of this House. The said resolution was read, and concurred in by the House; and Mr. Seybert, Mr. Lowndes, and Mr. Gaston, were appointed the said committee on the part of this House.

Congress had moved quickly to begin to rebuild the Library of Congress which was destroyed in the attack on Washington.
The migration of this legacy data has been challenging since the data is imperfect. If you find any errors in the data or have suggestions on how we might improve its presentation, please leave us some feedback.

Enhancements

New – Historical House Journals

• Historical House Journals from the 1st (1789 – 1791) through the 43rd Congress (1873 – 1875) are available to browse and search.
• Find links to the House Journal in the Congressional Activity section of the Browse page. Select a session date to go to a calendar display with links to each day’s journal.
• Using the search bar, select All Congresses and enter your word or phrase query. Check Journals under the Limit Your Search filter on your search results page. Check House Journal under the Journals filter.
• Select a search result from the list to view a text version of the House Journal page. Use the View Source Images link to display an image of the original print page.

Congress.gov Tip

Search operators will greatly improve the quality of your search results on Congress.gov. Learn how to use them on our Search Tools page.

Most-Viewed Bills

The most-viewed bills for the week of November 17, 2024 are below.

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