Has "congressman" ALWAYS meant "representative, not senator"?

[Joel S. Berson]

At 10/20/2010 02:37 PM, Neal Whitman wrote:
>For election day, I'm writing a column about the usage of "congressman" to
>mean "representative", as opposed to "member of Congress, from either
>house".

Thinking a bit more, one complication is that the revolutionaries
referred to the several continental assemblies as "congresses", when,
I believe, they were unicameral bodies.  (This seems also true of the
so-called Congress of the Confederation".  Wikipedia gives its
"Structure" as 50 members, but varying in number, and having 13
votes, one per state.)  So in answering the above question one must,
I think, discard usages of "congressman" to refer to members of these bodies.

Joel

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