1825. STATE RIGHTS IN NEW YORK. 417 eral courts of Kentucky under the name of Rules of Court were wholly unwarranted; and that Congress ought to so reorganize the Supreme Court as to preserve the sovereignty of the State over its own soil, and the right of the people to rule themselves.* Not a year now went by but one or more States bade defiance to the Federal Government. When an attempt was made in 1824 to license and exact tonnage duties from the boats on the New York canals, a resolution appeared in the State Senate denouncing it as a claim not founded in right, and so unjust and oppressive as to call for the interference of the State in defence of its citizens. The tax was not collected. But when, in 1826, rumor stated that it would be, Van Buren, in the United States Senate, declared that such a construction of the act of 1793, if correct, was unauthorized by the Constitution of the United States, and an encroachment on the rights of the State, which she ought and would resist to the last extremity. That same year the decision of Judge Johnson that the South Carolina Negro Seaman Act, the opinion of the Attorney-General, and the wish of Adams that the law should be repealed, called from the Governor the statement that "a firm determination to resist at the threshold every invasion of our domestic tranquillity, and to preserve our sovereignty and independence as a State, is earnestly recommended"; and that when all other efforts failed, "there would be more glory in forming a rampart with our bodies on the confines of our territory than to be the victims of successful rebellion or the slaves of a great consolidated government." The Senate replied that "duty is paramount to all laws, all treaties, all constitutions, and will never by this State be renounced, compounded, controlled, or participated with any power whatever." The protests, the resolutions, the defiant language called forth by the tariffs of 1824 and 1828 from Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi,† and the political doctrines announced by Georgia ‡ in The Argus, July 13, 1825. History of the People of the United States, vol. v, pp. 251-253, 264–267. her quarrel with the President over the Indian treaties, have already been passed in review. Thus was it that in the short space of twenty years thirteen of the four-and-twenty States then in the Union asserted the doctrine of State sovereignty in one form or another. They charged Congress with usurpation of powers; they proposed amendments to the Constitution; they defied the President; denied the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court; declared laws unconstitutional; threatened resistance if others were enacted; asserted the doctrine of nullification, and in their Legislatures talked openly of secession. The change wrought in political ideas by a half century of independence is again manifest in the development of an Executive utterly different from that contemplated by the fathers. The men who met at Philadelphia in 1787 and framed the Constitution lived at a time when great political parties, national in extent, highly organized, ably led, and commanding a patronage of enormous value, had no existence. It was combinations of States, not of men, they feared. The evils they sought to remedy were to come from the union of large against small, free against slave, agricultural against commercial States. They were dealing with a people few in numbers, scattered over a wide area of country, and destitute of the many mechanical appliances which in our day annihilate time and space, and reduce whole continents to the limits of a town. Small as our republic was in 1787, the lack of every sort of modern means of communication, of every device for the collection and dissemination of information-the steamboat, the railroad, the telephone, the telegraph-made it immense, and powerfully affected the Convention in its attempt to create an Executive. The vast extent of the country; the difficulties in the way of communication; the diversity of interests in the Eastern, the Middle, and the Southern States; the ignorance of the people in each one of these sections of the wants of their fellows in the other two, led to a serious effort in the Convention to establish an Executive of three men, representing the three geographical divisions or groups of States. That a New Eng 1787. THE EXECUTIVE. 419 land man, however well meaning and sincere, could understand and appreciate the needs of Southerners, or that a man born and bred in Pennsylvania could impartially administer the law to the people of Massachusetts, was declared to be impossible. When it was answered that the Executive was to be the mere instrument for carrying out the will of Congress; that the energy, despatch, and responsibility necessary for the proper carrying out of that will could not exist in an Executive of more than one; that if the administration of the laws were intrusted to three men, each would consider himself the representative of his section, responsible to his section, and would guard its special interests rather than the welfare of all, the reply was, a single Executive is "the fœtus of monarchy," and the temper of the people is opposed to even the semblance of monarchy. They will never repose confidence in an Executive consisting of one man. At last, after many postponements and many debates, the decision was made to have a President; but the difficulty was as far from a settlement as ever, for it was transferred to the next question, How shall he be chosen? Every State save one agreed that an election by the people was not to be thought of. The country was too large and the people were too little informed. It was admitted that the country was blessed with a few characters of continental reputation, but the time would come when such men would not exist, and then the people would never agree on any one man. They would vote for a citizen of their own State or their own section, and nobody would be elected. Very possibly-nay, very probably-the inhabitants of the populous States would combine and carry the elections. Did any one suppose that a native of Georgia or of South Carolina could ever, in times of peace, attain to such public importance as to be heartily supported by the voters of New England in preference to a native of Massachusetts? As one member said, "it was as unnatural to refer the choice of a proper character for Chief Magistrate to the people as it would be to refer a trial of colors to a blind man." This expressed the opinion of every State save Pennsylvania, and was the one view on which there was a general agreement. For a while the Convention could not decide who should elect the Executive, and plan after plan was suggested. Some were for assigning that duty to electors composed of the governors of the States; some to electors chosen by the State Legislatures, or by the people, or by the State executives, or taken by lot from the National Legislature; others were for leaving the whole matter to the Senate, or at least to the Senate and the House of Representatives. Each plan had much to recommend it, but the Convention, utterly unable to determine which was best, voted that there should be an Executive of one, that he should serve for seven years, should be elected by Congress, should not have a second term, and might be removed on impeachment and conviction of malfeasance or neglect of duty. The decision was made in sheer desperation, was not wholly acceptable to any body, and was attacked on all sides. The Executive, it was said, must be independent of the Legislature. This was admitted. But how, it was asked, can he be independent of a Legislature to which he owes his election? Is it not certain that he will be its creature, and will he not in all likelihood secure his election by chicane, by intrigue, by cabal? He ought to control the Legislature; he ought to be a check on its tendency to seize power; he ought to be the protector of the great mass of the people, and stand between them and legislative tyranny. This cannot be if the Legislature elect him or impeach him, or if his service be limited to a single term. The ideal Executive is an officer chosen directly by the people for a short term, eligible to any number of re-elections, unimpeachable by the Legislature, and endowed with power to stop legislation not in the interests of the people. For such an Executive the Convention was not prepared; but the argument unsettled it, and led to a reversal of all that had been done. The presidential term was cut down from seven to four years; the single-term provision was stricken out; the idea of election by the National Legislature was abandoned; and in order that the President might be wholly independent of Congress, and not be subject to coercion on the one hand, and be able to protect the people against unwise laws on the other, he was given the veto. Nothing could induce the Convention to consent to an election by the people, 1787. THE EXECUTIVE. 421 and, as it was now fully determined that the Executive should be independent of Congress, each State was required to appoint, in such manner as its Legislature should prescribe, as many electors as it had senators and representatives in Congress; and to these electoral bodies or colleges, each meeting in its own State and acting independently of every other, was given the double task of selecting a fit character to be President of the United States, and then electing him to the office. Except for the restriction that the electors must vote by ballot for two men, one of whom must not be a resident of the same State as themselves, they were free to do as they pleased; and that their action might be as free as possible, two safeguards were provided. One forbade any senator, representative, or office-holder under the United States to act as elector. The other required the electors to meet in their own States and wote on the same day; for it was feared that, should they come from all parts of the country and gather in one grand convention, they would be subjected to that "chicane, intrigue, and cabal," the dread of which was the reason for taking the election of President away from Congress. While the Convention was thus willing to resort to every means to secure the free election of an independent Executive, it was not unmindful of the fact that his powers must be defined and his action restrained, lest he should become too independent, and by means of the veto coerce Congress and dictate legislation. Provision was made, therefore, that his veto might be destroyed by a two-thirds vote of both Houses; and that should he become too hateful to be endured for even one term, he could be impeached, and on conviction removed from office. As thus defined by the framers of the Constitution, the President of the United States was to be an official chosen and elected by sundry bodies of citizens having no connection with the Government, was to serve as many terms as the electors saw fit to give him, and was to be the guardian of popular rights against legislative encroachment. He was to come to his high office bound by no pledges, representing no section, advocating no policy, belonging to no party, and owing no man anything. He was to be the choice of fellow-citizens who |