The Senate censured South Carolina Senators Benjamin Tillman (pictured) and John McLaurin for engaging in a fist fight several days earlier. While McLaurin was away from the Senate chamber, Tillman charged that his colleague had changed his position on a pending treaty in return for special favors. Hearing of Tillman's statement, McLaurin stormed into the chamber and branded the allegation "a willful, malicious, and deliberate lie." Tillman then punched McLaurin and triggered a melee that was quelled with great difficulty. When tempers finally cooled, the Senate adopted a rule providing that "No Senator in debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator."

A bomb with the equivalent force of twenty pounds of dynamite exploded on the ground floor of the Capitol's Senate wing, causing $300,000 in damage in cracked walls, broken windows, weakened floors, and spoiled artwork. No one was injured.

Under indictment for the murder of Alexander Hamilton, Vice President Aaron Burr delivered a farewell address to the Senate at the conclusion of his term of office. He described the Senate as "a sanctuary, a citadel of law, of order, and of liberty." He concluded that "it is here in this exalted refuge; here if anywhere, will resistance be made to the storms of political phrensy and the silent arts of corruption; and if the Constitution be destined ever to perish by the sacrilegious hands of the demagogue or the usurper, which God avert, its expiring agonies will be witnessed on this floor."

On three separate occasions in a single day, and by increasingly negative margins, a hostile Senate majority rejected President John Tyler's nomination of Caleb Cushing to be treasury secretary. An outspoken defender of the unpopular president, Cushing became the second cabinet nominee in history not to be confirmed. Thirty-one years later, Senate opposition forced President Ulysses Grant to withdraw Cushing's nomination as chief justice of the United States.

The Senate convened for the first time. Only eight of the twelve members necessary to form a quorum appeared in the new chamber at New York City's Federal Hall. Consequently, the Senate reconvened periodically until April 6, when the twelfth member presented his credentials.

To allow all members of each party to sit together in the chamber, the Senate began the practice of moving desks according to party division rather than keeping an even number of desks on each side of the center aisle.

In a move toward greater institutional efficiency, the Senate created a Committee on Appropriations, so that legislative committees would no longer be responsible for appropriating as well as authorizing funds. Thirty-two years later, responding to mounting pressure from authorizing committees, the Senate removed most funding bills from the Appropriations Committee's jurisdiction. The Senate ultimately restored that jurisdiction in 1922.