CHAPTER XIII. REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF DETAIL, CONTINUED. ELECTION a di IN describing the manner in which the Constitution and powers of the Senate were finally arranged, I have already had occasion to state, that, after the report of the committee of detail came in,— vesting the appointment of the President in the national legislature, creating a term of seven years, and making the incumbent ineligible a second time, rect election by the people was negatived by a large majority. This mode of election, as a means of removing the appointment from the legislature, would have been successful, but it was inadmissible on other accounts. In the first place, it would have given to the government a character of complete consolidation, so far as the executive department was concerned, to have vested the election in the people of the United States as one community. In the second place, not only would the States, as sovereignties, have been excluded from representation in this department, but the slaveholding States would have had a relative weight in the election only in the proportion of their free inhabitants. On the other hand, to provide that the executive should be appointed by electors, to be chosen by the people of the States, involved the necessity of prescribing some rule of suffrage for the people of all the States, or of adopting the existing rules of the States themselves. Probably it was on account of this embarrassment, that a proposition for electors to be chosen in this mode was negatived, by a bare majority, soon after the vote rejecting a direct election of the President by the people.1 There remained the alternatives of an election by one or both of the houses of Congress, or by electors appointed by the States in a certain ratio, or by electors appointed by Congress. The difficulty of selecting from these various modes led the Convention to adhere to an election by the two houses; and when the disadvantages of this plan, already described, had developed the necessity for some other mode of appointment, the relations between the Senate and the executive were, as we have seen, sent to a grand committee, who devised a scheme for their adjustment. In this plan it was proposed that each State should appoint, in such manner as its legislature might direct, a number of electors equal to the whole number of senators and representatives in Congress to which the State might be entitled under the provisions of the Constitution already agreed upon. The advantages of this plan were, that it referred the mode of appointing the electors to the States themselves, so that they could adopt a popular election, or an election by their legislatures, as they might prefer; and 1 August 24. Elliot, V. 472, 473. that it would give to each State the same weight in the choice of the President that it was to have in the two houses of Congress, provided a majority or a plurality of the electoral votes were to determine the appointment. The committee recommended that the electors should meet in their respective States, on the same day, and vote by ballot for two persons, one of whom, at least, should not be an inhabitant of the same State with themselves; and that the person having the greatest number of votes, if such number were a majority of all the electoral votes, should be the President. To this part of the plan, there was likely to be little objection. But the mode of electing the President in case of a failure to concentrate a majority of the electoral votes upon one person, or in case more than one person should have such a majority, was the most difficult part of the whole scheme. The object of the committee was to devise a process which should result in the election both of a President and a Vice-President; and they proposed to make the person having the next largest number of electoral votes the Vice-President. If two of the persons voted for should have a majority of all the votes, and the same number of votes, then the Senate were immediately to choose one of them, by ballot, as the President; if no person should have such a majority, then the Senate were to choose the President by ballot from the five highest on the list of candidates returned by the electors. If a choice of the President had been effected by the electoral votes, the person having the next highest number of electoral votes was to be the Vice-President; and if there were two or more having an equal number of electoral votes, the Senate were to choose one of them as Vice-President. From the proceedings which took place upon this plan, it appears that what many of the framers of the Constitution most apprehended was, that the votes in the electoral bodies would not be sufficiently concentrated to effect a choice, from want of the requisite general knowledge of the persons who might be considered in different parts of the Union as fit candidates for these high offices; and consequently that the election would be thrown into such other body as might be directed to make it after a failure in the action of the electors. It is a remarkable proof of their wisdom, that, although intimations began to appear in the public prints, as soon as the Constitution was published, that Washington would be the first President of the United States, an expectation that must, therefore, have been entertained by the members of the Convention before they had finished their labors, they were at no time under the influence of this pleasing anticipation.' They kept steadily in view a state of things in which, from the absence of statesmen of national reputation and influence, and from the effect of local preferences, no choice would be made by the electors. Hence their solicitude to provide for the secondary election, in 1 The Constitution was published in the Pennsylvania Journal, Sept. 19th. On the 27th, another Phila delphia paper suggested, or, as we should now say, "nominated” General Washington for the Presidency. such a way as to admit of a re-election of the incumbent. It was soon found that between the President and the Senate there would be a mutual connection and influence, which would be productive of serious ⚫evils, whether he were to be made eligible or ineligible a second time, if the Senate were to have the appointment after the electors had failed to make a choice. To remedy this, many of the members, among whom was Hamilton, preferred to let the highest number of electoral votes, whether a majority or not, appoint the President. As the grand committee had proposed to reduce the term of office from seven to four years, and to strike out the clause making the incumbent ineligible, -a change which met the approbation of a large majority of the States, it became still more necessary to prevent any resort to the Senate for a secondary election. But an appointment by less than a majority of the electoral votes presented, on the other hand, the serious objection that the President might owe his appointment to a minority of the States. To preserve, as far as possible, a federal character for the government, in some of its departments, was justly regarded as a point of great importance. One branch of the legislature had become a depositary of the democratic power of a majority of the people of the United States; the other branch was the representative of the States in their corporate capacities; - the President was to be in some sense a third branch of the legislative power, by means of his limited control over the enactment of laws; and it was, therefore, |