The Earliest Vice Presidential-Signed U.S. Senate Chamber Passes

A Reporter's Gallery Pass to the U.S. Senate Chamber signed by Vice President Schuyler Colfax in December 1872. Image Credit: Collection of the Author.

 As will be discussed in future posts, the modern Vice President's Gallery Pass to the U.S. Senate Chamber is a historical artifact that has evolved through multiple iterations across several decades. This naturally begs the question of what is the earliest known forerunner of this pass? Although more research is needed to gain a full contextual understanding, a prime candidate for this accolade is this December 1872 pass to the Reporter's Gallery, signed by Vice President Schuyler Colfax. The pass was issued to Edmund J. Hudson (1848-1921), a Templeton, Massachusetts native who was a longtime Washington-based correspondent for the Boston Herald. It is noteworthy in that it predates Reserved Gallery passes to the U.S. Senate Chamber by over 20 years.  

While this incredibly rare item is certainly one of the oldest, standardized VPOTUS-signed U.S. Senate gallery passes, could it be the OLDEST one? The answer is......maybe. To put it into appropriate context, the modern U.S. Senate Chamber did not open until January 4, 1859, with gallery space for up to 600 visitors. Prior to that, it is unclear whether the public would have been permitted in any great numbers to the various forerunner locations of the U.S. Senate. Moreover, early visitors to the U.S. Senate - at the invitation of the Vice President - would have most likely received short, hand-written notes that constituted the official pass. The first standardized passes to the U.S. Senate Chamber did not really begin to appear until the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson in 1868. Thus, while anything is possible, it is difficult to imagine many official, standardized VPOTUS-signed passes of any sort existing prior to the early 1870s, when this particular pass to the Reporter's Gallery was issued. On a personal note, I would add that when I purchased this Schyuler Colfax-signed pass, the seller (who specializes in selling this sort of political ephemera) mentioned that he had never seen one of these passes before coming across this particular specimen. To my mind, that is another clue that helps to contextualize its rarity. To our current understanding, the next phase of VPOTUS-signed U.S. Senate Chamber passes - VPOTUS-signed passes to the Reserved Gallery - did not begin to appear until the 1890s, as part of the broader standardization of gallery passes to the U.S. House and Senate Chambers.

So, could this be the oldest, standardized VPOTUS-signed U.S. Senate Chamber pass in existence? As mentioned, it might be. However, this is also a field of research where new discoveries are constantly being made, so time will certainly tell whether even earlier examples are out there. Have you ever come across one of these early examples of a VPOTUS-signed U.S. Senate Chamber pass? Give us your story in the comments below!