CongressDB
106 notable members of the United States Congress, from the First Congress of 1789 to the present. Senators, representatives, and leaders who shaped legislation, compromise, and the institution itself across every era of American history.
Key Topics
Henry Clay
Elected Speaker on his first day in the House in 1811, Clay transformed the office into a position of real power, stacking committ...
Daniel Webster
Webster served New Hampshire and then Massachusetts in both chambers across four decades, from 1827 to 1841 and 1845 to 1850 in th...
Thaddeus Stevens
Stevens, whose abolitionism dated to the 1830s, returned to Congress in 1859 and became chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, ...
Lyndon B. Johnson
Johnson entered the House in 1937, won a contested Senate seat in 1948 by 87 votes, and rose in 1955 to majority leader, the young...
Jeannette Rankin
A pacifist and lobbyist for national suffrage, Rankin won Montana's at-large seat in 1916, four years before the Nineteenth Amendm...
Shirley Chisholm
A nursery school teacher and state legislator, Chisholm won a redrawn Brooklyn district in 1968 under the slogan Unbought and Unbo...
Edward M. Kennedy
The youngest Kennedy brother took his Senate seat in 1962 and served until his death in 2009, becoming the third-longest-serving s...
Nancy Pelosi
Daughter of a Baltimore congressman-mayor, Pelosi won a San Francisco seat in 1987 and rose through the Appropriations and Intelli...
Mitch McConnell
McConnell, a polio survivor turned procedural savant, entered the Senate in 1985 and led Senate Republicans from 2007 until standi...