William Maclay

Pennsylvania's first senator whose private diary remains the inside record of the early Senate.

Overview

Maclay served a single term from 1789 to 1791 and left no landmark legislation, but his detailed, acerbic diary of the first Senate sessions is the only sustained insider account of that chamber in its founding years. He recorded the debates over titles for the president, the assumption of state debts, and the location of the capital, and he fought bitterly against what he saw as rising monarchy and corruption around the Washington administration. His lonely opposition to Treasury Secretary Hamilton's plans cost him re-election, but historians mine his diary for the texture of the early republic.