Rhode Island and North Carolina not being in
the Union deducted six from this total, making thirty necessary for
a quorum. Day after day, the incomplete House adjourned. New members
arrived at intervals until the first day of April, when a quorum was
had, just four weeks late.
As first formed, the House consisted of the following members: New
Hampshire, 1; Massachusetts, 5; Connecticut, 5; New Jersey, 2;
Pennsylvania, 6; Maryland, 2; Virginia, 8; South Carolina, 1. Other
members arrived from time to time. More or less irregularity had marked
the elections in the various States. A protest soon reached the House
from citizens of New Jersey claiming that the four members from that
State had not been legally elected. The polls had been kept open in
one district for two weeks, until closed by a proclamation from the
governor. From South Carolina came charges against a member that he
had not been a citizen of the United States the required seven years
at the time of his election. Although a native of South Carolina, he
was being educated in Europe during the Revolutionary period and had
returned to the State after the close of the war, but before the
adoption of the national Constitution.
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