Secretary of the Senate Samuel A. Otis by Gilbert Stuart (as illustrated in Laurence
Park's Gilbert Stuart 4:367 (Courtesy of the National Portrait
Gallery,
Smithsonian Institution)
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Under
the Constitution each house of the Congress is required to keep a journal of
its proceedings. Samuel A. Otis, the first Secretary of the Senate, sat in
the chamber and took rough notes. We know from the diary kept by Sen. William
Maclay that the Secretary read the minutes the next day and the senators
attempted to correct them. Maclay was extremely critical of Otis's work:
"Otis, our Secretary makes a most miserable hand of it, the grossest Mistakes
made on our minutes and it cost Us an hour or Two to rectify them." But
historians applaud Otis for his stewardship over Senate records and preservation
of nearly every scrap of documentary evidence.
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