[United States House of Representatives]:

$45,000 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

JOURNAL OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES. This rare original printing of the Journal for the first session of the House of Representatives covers the activities of the House from March 4 to September 7, 1789, a period in which many important legislative events took place. Foremost among these was the discussion of the proposed Bill of Rights. Pages 102-105 contain some fine tuning of the language of some of the seventeen amendments originally proposed by James Madison in the House. Some of the measures considered by the House include provisions directly in the Constitution itself, such as to the length of the President's term. Numerous references to individual parts of the Bill of Rights are made throughout the first volume as well, and a preliminary version of the Bill of Rights is printed on pages 107-108. The remainder of the Journal for the first session contains much of the important legislative foundation for the machinery of government, regulating the Customs, Judiciary, Post Office, Mint, and establishing the Executive Office. Also recorded are petitions from individual citizens, including one by Hannah Adams, "to publish and vend a work she has compiled, entitled, "An alphabetical compendium of the various sects which have appeared from the beginning of the christian aera, to the present day...." David Ramsay petitioned Congress to secure copyright for his two histories of the Revolution, and objected to the seating of South Carolina's William Lou

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