Congress passed a bill sponsored by Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, with support from the Immigration Restriction League, requiring a literacy test for immigrants, though President Grover Cleveland later vetoed the bill in 1897.
Eleven Southerners, including Jefferson Davis, resigned from the Senate and the House of Representatives.
At the battle of Ball’s Bluff, Virginia, federal forces suffered 921 casualties to the Confederacy’s 155. A Union rout at Ball’s Bluff led to the imprisonment of Gen. Charles P. Stone for mistakes made during the battle. Edward Baker, a friend of Lincoln’s, was killed.
The Health Care and Security Act of 1993, championed by President Clinton and Hillary Clinton, was abandoned when the 1994 mid-term elections saw Republicans returned to power in the House and the Senate.
The US House of Representatives voted to impeach President Bill Clinton for lying under oath about an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
In the US Senate, Rufus King condemned slavery as contrary to Natural Law.
The US Senate voted to censure Andrew Jackson for removing government deposits from the Bank of the United States. Legislators accused the President of having “assumed upon himself authority and power not conferred by the Constitution and laws.” The Senate expunged the censure in 1837.
Colin Powell was sworn in as the first African American secretary of state, having been nominated by President Bush and unanimously confirmed by the US Senate.
In the 2006 mid-term elections, Democrats regained control of both chambers of Congress. They had campaigned against Iraq policy and corruption in the Republican Party.
William Peffer of Kansas became the first Populist to be elected to the United States Senate.