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