The Mace of the House of Representatives

A Mace is the emblem of authority for the House of Representatives. It has been the custom every day, since 1880, upon the opening of session, for the Sergeant-at-Arms to bear the mace ahead of the Speaker and lay it upon its specially prepared rack on the Rostrum in front of the Speaker. The Mace remains on its rack until recess or adjournment. When the House and Senate meet in a Joint Assembly the Mace is always borne at the head of the procession.

The Mace was made in London, in 1756, by Magdalen Feline. It was purchased by the "Commons House of Assembly of the Province of South Carolina" for 90 guineas. Around the cylindrical head, below the crown, are four circular decorative panels. The four panels depict art work that is representational of craftsmanship from England, France, Ireland and Germany. Made of solid silver, with gold burnishing, it resembles the Mace of the Common Council of Norwich, England. The Mace weighs about 11 pounds and it is scepter-like in appearance. It is topped with a symbolic royal diadem that was modelled after the Crown of St. Edward. At some point in the fourteenth century the idea of the battle-mace was combined with that of the royal scepter, and the ceremonial mace was conceived.

So far as Mr. A.S. Salley, Historian Emeritus, was able to learn it is the only Mace in use in the United States that antedates the American Revolution. In the diary of Joseph Quincey, Jr. of Massachusetts it is recorded that on March 19, 1773, he visited the House in Charleston and saw the Mace. He declared that "a very superb and elegant one," resides on the table before the Speaker. During the Revolution this Mace was appropriated by British sympathizers who offered it for sale to the House of Assembly of the Bahama Islands. The records of the body show that authority was given to purchase it. Mr. Salley reported that "as a matter of fact" it was not purchased.

During the latter part of the American Revolution the mace disappeared from its resting place in the old State House of Charles Town, now Charleston. In 1819 when the Hon. Langdon Cheves of South Carolina went to Philadelphia as President of the Bank of the United States, he found the Mace in a vault of the bank and returned it to South Carolina.

In a letter to Mr. Salley, the Hon. James Simons of Charleston, states that the "Mace was not used after war until I became Speaker, when I had it brought up into the House and used for the purposes for which it was intended."

During the night of February 3, 1971, the Mace was taken from the locked glass enclosure. On Feb. 24, 1971, it was recovered in Gainsville, Fla., by Chief J.P. Strom of SLED and returned to the House of Representatives, where it is displayed in a vault.

The South Carolina House of Representatives Mace is the oldest legislative mace in use in the United States.