Following the 1806 rule change, a minority could begin to use the filibuster to obstruct actions in the Senate. But that didn’t really happen. In fact, for most of American history, majorities who held both the House and the Senate were generally able to get through nominations and laws, as the Framers intended.

Scholars debate the lessons of early congressional history. Some point to a 1790 debate over where to locate Congress as the earliest example of delay tactics akin to a filibuster. Others mention early master obstructionists, such as Virginia’s John Randolph and South Carolina’s John C. Calhoun. For example, as Erwin Chemerinsky and Catherine Fisk explain, Randolph had “compiled such a record for protracted irrelevant talk during his service in the House and his subsequent brief tenure in the Senate that Thomas Jefferson used the generic term ‘a John Randolph’ to describe one who protracted the proceedings of Congress.” And, as Chafetz notes, Calhoun “repeatedly used” delay tactics “in an attempt to protect the interests of the Southern states.”

Chemerinsky and Fisk also point to specific examples of early filibusters in antebellum America—for instance, in fights over patronage positions on the Congressional Globe and in a battle over the national bank. By 1863, the filibuster—as an exercise in obstruction—had acquired its official name. Nevertheless, as Chafetz explains, filibusters were “relatively rare in the nineteenth century.” And, Chemerinsky and Fisk add that “almost every filibustered measure before 1880 was eventually passed.” So, as late as 1880, the filibuster did not yet function as a regular veto by a Senate minority. But the Senate’s workload increased significantly after the Civil War, as the role of the national government grew. As a result, the costs of the filibuster greatly increased.

Senate concerns about ongoing obstruction came to a head in 1917, in a debate over a bill that would have armed merchant ships in the run-up to American involvement in World War I. As Will Englund explained, this was intended to protect the ships from German U-boats. A group of 11 progressive Senators—led by Senator Robert La Follette, a Republican from Wisconsin—blocked the bill. President Woodrow Wilson countered, “A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own . . . have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.” The Senate then adopted the cloture rule, which provided a way of cutting off debate and ending a filibuster with a two-thirds vote.

Despite this rule change, the filibuster did not yet function as a de facto super-majority requirement for all major legislation. Take the New Deal era, for example. As Chafetz notes, Democrats didn’t have a filibuster-proof majority at the beginning of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first term. Nevertheless, no cloture motions were filed during this period, and Congress passed several landmark pieces of legislation, including the National Industrial Recovery Act, the Glass-Steagall Act, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, and the Securities Act.