fewer than 40 senators, party affiliation was in the most generalized terms and debate was on the informal conversational plane rather than a contest of oratorical persuasion:
Many of those that are there are either writing letters or reading newspapers. At the fireside a majority is seated, and often in private conversation the question under debate is there settled by a free interchange of opinions.
Senator William Plumer (New Hampshire), 1806
It was not to remain so quiet for long.
Expansion of the nation brought more and larger inland states into the union; and with them came sharper divisions of opinion than the close-knit East Coast states had imagined. The original purpose of the Senate came back into focus: to enforce, through equality of representation, the protection of all states's rights and interests. The division between North and South, slave and anti-slave, however, became the defining issue of early Senate divisions - and in this the filibuster was employed frequently as one of the more dignified methods of debate. Dignified takes on an important meaning when placed in context: fistfights, canings and challenges to duel were methods employed by members of both houses of Congress to suppress their opponents' voices. Indeed, in 1839, one such representative, having instigated a fatal duel between two other Congressmen, argued against limiting debate to words, complaining that members of Congress would now call each other cowards and liars on the floor, "And, Sir, there the matter will drop. There will be no fight."
In general, filibusters have followed two forms of characterization: the personal and the organized. In the former variation, the personal filibuster, color and absurdity have been injected into Senate proceedings by the private initiative of an individual senator whose reasoning for bringing debate to a halt might range from the shallow to the sublime. During the 1840s, when ...