practice was immediately adopted by the National Republican and the Democratic parties.' Thus was established our present system of nominating by party conventions.

2

However, there was one member of Congress at least who did not look with favor upon this method of nomination. Mr. Underwood of Kentucky, in 1838, and again in 1842, in connection with other amendments introduced by him, proposed a new method for the nomination and election of President and VicePresident. It provided that the State legislatures, by a joint vote of each house, should, in behalf of their respective States, nominate candidates for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency, respectively. The governors of the States having reported the nominations to the President, he should publish the same by proclamation. The citizens should vote directly for one person so nominated for each office. The results of the votes given in the respective States should be forwarded to the President. Congress should canvass the votes. The person receiving a majority of all the votes should be declared elected. If no person received a majority, then both Houses of Congress in joint session should choose a President or Vice-President from among those nominated for that office. The votes should be given viva voce, each member having one vote, and a majority of the votes given should decide.3

The only other resolution which proposed the nomination of candidates by the States was introduced by Senator Davis, also of Kentucky, in 1862, and on three subsequent occasions. These proposed amendments are perhaps as curious as any which have been presented during the century. By the terms of the original resolution any State might, within thirty days before the time for the election of President, in any mode adopted by the State, nominate to Congress one candidate; and from the candidates so nominated by the States the two Houses of Congress, meeting together as a convention, should choose one as President of the United States. The unanimous vote of all members elected to both Houses was necessary for the election of the President. This was to be secured by the dropping of the candidates having the least number of votes after a stated time had been spent in balloting. In the same manner the

'Ibid. The Democratic convention was called to decide upon a candidate for VicePresident, as the party was united for the reelection of Jackson.

2 App., Nos. 679, 724.

3 In case a State should fail to nominate in the required manner or report the nomi nation made or the votes given in the manner and time required, the election shall be made without regard to such failure, and shall be valid.

3

Vice-President was to be elected from the remaining candidates. In case of no choice by the convention, the decision was to be referred to the Supreme Court. The same proposition was again made by Mr. Davis early in the following year.2 In December of 1864 Mr. Davis presented a long series of amendments which he desired should be submitted to a convention which should be called for the purpose of revising the Constitution. One of these proposed the same method of choice, changed in several particulars. The first section of the resolution contained in a modified form the suggestion he had made earlier in this same year for the consolidation of certain of the Eastern States into three States "for Federal and national purposes only."4 Provision was made that the President and Vice-President were to be taken alternately from the free and the slave States; that each State was to select one of its own citizens for either the Presidency or the Vice-Presidency, according as it was free or slave and as the free or slave States were entitled to the office. From the candidates so nominated the Supreme Court was to choose the President and Vice-President. In 1867 Mr. Davis proposed this method of nomination by the States for the last time, in a resolution similar to the one originally introduced by him nearly five years before, save that only a majority of the votes of the whole number of members of both Houses was by this proposition necessary to elect.5

47. ELECTION OF PRESIDENT BY LOT.

Among the many curious amendments proposed for the election of President, perhaps the most unique are three suggestions for the choice of the Executive by lot. The first of these was introduced by Mr. Hillhouse, a Federalist Senator from Connecticut, in 1808, as one of the remarkable series of amendments presented by him at this time, for the preservation of the country from the evils engendered by the growth of parties

1 App., No. 978.

2 App., No. 980.

3 App., Nos. 1039b-d.

4 See post, par. 122., App., Nos. 987, 989. The earlier proposition had dealt only with New England. This proposed that Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont should form one State; Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island another, and Maryland, Delaware, and the Eastern Shore of Virginia a third.

App., No. 1207.

6 The plan for selecting electors by lot from the National Legislature was suggested by Wilson in the Federal Convention. Elliot's Debates, v, 362. Ante, par. 37, p. 75, note 8.

2

and party spirit.' This amendment provided that the Senators should hold their office for three years, and one-third retire annually. From the retiring Senators, one should be chosen by lot as President for the ensuing year, in the following manner: Each of these Senators should, in alphabetical order, draw a ball out of the box, one of which was colored; the Senator drawing the colored ball should be President. In his speech in support of these amendments, Senator Hillhouse declared that his experience in Congress for seventeen years had convinced him that some such change as he proposed was necessary for the perpetuity of the Government. "I should not have proposed this mode," said he, "if any other could have been devised which would not convulse the whole body politic, set wide open the door to intrigue and cabal, and bring upon the nation incalculable evils, evils already felt, and grow. ing more and more serious."3 No action was taken by Congress upon these propositions, but some twenty years later Hillhouse revived an agitation in favor of his plan outside of Congress, receiving letters favoring it from Chief Justice Marshall and William H. Crawford, but John Quincy Adams probably reflected the prevailing opinion when he wrote in his diary "a serious discussion of his amendments would be ridiculous.”5

The second, presented by Mr. Vinton of Ohio, in 1844 and again in 1846, arranged that each State should by popular vote elect from its citizens a candidate for the Presidency. From these candidates one was to be chosen by lot." The amusing details of this suggestion were that as many balls as there were Senators and Representatives from each State, inscribed with the name of the State, should be placed in a box. One ball should be drawn from the box and the candidate elected by the State, the name of which should be upon the ball drawn out, should be President.

For other propositions, see ante, pars. 26, 30; post, pars. 56, 57, 59, 60.
App., No. 392.

Speech in full in American Register for 1809, Chap. II (p. 15). He said that this method was suggested from the experience of "some of the republics of Switzerland,” Berne in particular. Ibid., pp. 17-18. He cited twelve reasons in favor of its adoption. 4John Adams wrote a criticism on these amendments. See Works, Vol. VI., pp. 523 et seq. It would seem he was dissuaded by his son from publishing it. See Memoir of John Quincy Adams, Vol. VII, pp. 225-226. For connection of Hillhonse with the schemes of a Northern Confederacy, ibid., p. 141. See also post, par. 60.

Strife

Marshall wrote: "We shall no longer be under the banners of particular men. will no longer effect its object; neither the people at large nor the councils of the nation will be agitated by the all-disturbing question, Who shall be President?" Harper's Weekly, April 28, 1877; O'Neil, p. 258. Adams's diary, as above.

App., Nos. 740, 744.

The last, the most novel and complicated of the three, was reserved for Senator Powell of Kentucky to bring forward in 1864. This scheme, containing eleven sections, still retained the electoral college, but it reduced considerably its number by providing that Congress should apportion among the several States the electors according to the following ratio of population in Federal numbers: One elector to each State having less than a million, two to each State having one, but less than two million, and so on to seven to each State having a population of eight millions. Each State having but one elector should be an electoral district, and each of the other States should be divided by Congress into districts equal to the num ber of its electors, each district to elect one elector. The electors should convene at the seat of government and form an electoral college on the first Monday of February, over which the Chief Justice of the United States should preside. The electors should then be distributed alphabetically into six classes as nearly equal as possible. Each class should choose an elector from the class next succeeding it, except class six, which should choose from class one. From the six so chosen two should be designated by lot, and from these two the college should choose one to be President, the other to be VicePresident. If the college should fail, except from exterior violence or intimidation, to make an election within twentyfour hours from the time it was formed, it should be dissolved, and a new election ordered, and the college should convene and proceed as before directed. Should there be no election by an electoral college before the 1st day of June, the Senate of the United States should form itself into an electoral college, and proceed according as was directed for the electoral college, within twenty-four hours. If they should fail to elect the office should devolve upon such officer of the Government as Congress should have theretofore directed. Then followed four other sections relating to further details of the system, one of which stipulated that every elector before entering upon the duties of his office should take an oath to support the Constitution, and declare that he had not and would not pledge his vote as an elector in favor of any person, or toward aiding any political party.

App., No. 1026. The plan of Judge Nicholson of Kentucky.

48. ELECTION OF PRESIDENT FROM PRESIDENTIAL SECTIONS.

The desire that a President should be selected only out of a previously designated group of men is akin to the design to compel the choice of a man resident in a designated section. Two amendments have been proposed which divide the country into Presidential sections. The first was introduced in 1822 by Mr. Montgomery of Kentucky; it did not change the method of the election, but provided for the creation of Presidential sections. The President was to be elected from each of four sections in rotation. The New England States

and New York were to constitute one section. The remainder of the Middle States, with Maryland and Virginia, another; the Southern States another, and Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri another. There being twenty-four States in the Union at this time, it was provided that upon the admission of new States they should be incorporated within the section upon which they bordered. The number of the sections were to be determined by a "lottery" conducted in the presence of Congress. Provision was made for the division of any section when its population was shown by the census to be double that of the section containing the lowest represented number. The reception of the resolution may be inferred from the remark of its author: "However laughable it might appear to some gentlemen, he considered it a very serious matter."

The cause of the amendment was doubtless the jealousy awakened in the Middle States and New England, and still more in the West, by the fact that, with the exception of John Adams, all the Presidents up to this time had come from Virginia.3

The other resolution was introduced nearly forty years later, in February, 1861, shortly before the outbreak of the civil war. Entirely different motives prompted its introduction. It was an attempt by a Northern Democrat to make such a change in the Constitution that the Southern States would refrain from going out of the Union. Calhoun, in his speech of 1850 on the compromise, had made a somewhat similar proposition.

See ante, par. 34, for Mr. Southard's plan for an executive council. 2 App., No. 509.

It

The amendment proposed by Andrew Johnson in 1860 for the election of the President and Vice-President by district provided that the President and Vice-President should alternately be chosen from the North and South. Ante, p. 91.

4 Works, I, 393-396.