son constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States. 1

461. Election of 1825.-Only once since 1800 has the election of President gone to the House of Representatives. In 1824 Andrew Jackson received 96 electoral votes, John Quincy Adams 84, W. H. Crawford, 41, and Henry Clay, 37. A majority to each required 130 votes. Mr. Clay was excluded from the further competition by the rule limiting the choice to the three highest candidates on the list, and his following in the House went to Mr. Adams, who was elected. The vote stood: Adams, 13 States; Jackson, 7; Crawford, 4. John C. Calhoun received 182 electoral votes for Vice-President, and was declared elected. This election, like that of 1800, was attended by much excitement. General Jackson had received a large plurality of the popular vote as well as of the electoral vote, and he and his friends charged that there was a bargain and sale between Adams and Clay, especially as Clay was made Secretary of State. At the time there was much talk of amending the Constitution so as to exclude the House from all participation in future elections, but nothing was done in that direction.

462. Election of 1876.—The election of 1876 was, with the exception of that of 1800, the most exciting and dangerous one in our history. Of the 369 Electors, 184 were in favor of Tilden and Hendricks, the Democratic candidates; 164 in favor of Hayes and Wheeler, the Republican candidates; while from South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, and Oregon there were plural returns. In all 21 votes were in dispute. Two questions arose: Which are the legal votes for these four States? and, Who shall determine which are legal? The second was the practical question, and nothing in the laws, National or State, or in the practice in counting previous votes, answered it directly. This

1 This amendment was not made without difficulty. In one Congress it failed to secure the requisite majority, and it finally passed the House of Representatives, December 12, 1803, three years after the election that led to it, only by the Speaker's casting vote. Nearly a year more passed before the necessary number of ratifications was obtained, and then the vote stood 13 to 4.

question filled Congress and the country with heat and tumult throughout the winter of 1876-7.

463. The Electoral Commission.-The Senate was Republican and the House of Representatives Democratic, and it was well known in advance that the Houses would not agree when the time came to count the votes. Congress accordingly created an Electoral Commission, for that case only, consisting of 5 Senators, 5 Representatives, and 5 Justices of the Supreme Court, with power to decide which of the disputed votes should be counted. After listening to lengthy arguments pro and con, the Commission decided, 8 to 7, that the Republican votes from all the States in dispute were the legal ones, and the Republican candidates were declared elected, 185 votes to 184.

464. Law of 1887.-Serious difficulties in the election of President had now occurred in 1800, 1824, and 1876. Moreover, such difficulties would have occurred at other times, as in 1865 and 1869, had not the same political party controlled large majorities in both Houses of Congress. Experience had therefore proved that Presidential elections were fraught with serious dangers to the Republic. To meet these points of danger, Congress passed, in 1887, an "Act to provide for and regulate the counting of votes for President and Vice-President, and the decision of questions arising therein." Section 2 of this act makes the determination of the State authorities, under State laws previously passed, final in all cases of disputed appointments of Electors, thus answering the principal question of 1877. Subsequent sections prescribe the mode of procedure in cases of objection to a single return or of plural returns from any State. This law, which is very minute in its provisions, removes from a Presidential election many of the dangers that had previously attended it.

465. The Vice-President. If the House of Representatives, when the right of choice devolves upon it, shall not choose a President before the fourth day of March next following, then the Vice-President-elect shall act as Presi

dent, as in case of the death, resignation, or removal of the President. Such a case as this has never occurred. If no man has for Vice-President a majority of the votes of the Electors appointed, then the Senate shall choose one of the persons having the two highest numbers on the list for Vice-President. R. M. Johnson lacked one vote of an election in 1836, and the Senate promptly elected him. When the election of the President goes to the House, and the election of the Vice-President to the Senate, the Vice-President may be chosen first.

Section 1, Clause 4.-The Congress may determine the time of choosing the Electors, and the day on which they shall give their votes; which day shall be the same throughout the United States.

466. Days Fixed. The Continental Congress appointed the first Wednesday in January, 1789, as the day for choosing the first Electors; the first Wednesday in February as the day for the Electors to give their votes, and the first Wednesday in March as the day for the new Government to go into operation. In 1792 Congress enacted that the appointment of Electors should be made within thirtyfour days preceding the first Wednesday of December, every fourth year; and this rule continued in force until 1845, when Congress made the day uniform throughout the Union, the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November. From 1792 to 1887 the Electors gave their votes on the first Wednesday in December; the present rule is the second Monday in January. The Old Congress did not fix the day for opening the certificates and counting the votes in 1789; it was done April 16, but since that date the rule has been the second Wednesday of February. The propriety of uniform days for appointing Electors, and for them to give their votes throughout the Union, is manifest.

The first Wednesday in March, 1789, was the fourth day of that month. Congress enacted in 1792: "That the term of four years for which the President and Vice-President shall be elected shall in

all cases commence on the fourth day of March next succeeding the day on which the votes of the Electors shall have been given." Amendment XII. makes this day a part of the Constitution itself. The following table is a partial exhibit of the methods that have been employed in appointing Electors. (The table is copied, with corrections, from The Nation, No. 1351.)

CHAPTER XXX.

THE FAILURE OF THE ELECTORAL PLAN.

REFERENCES.

Johnston's articles, The Executive in United States History, Electors and the Electoral System, Electoral Votes and Disputed Elections (In Lalor's Cyclopædia); Stanwood, History of Presidential Elections; Bryce, The American Commonwealth, Chaps. V., VII., VIII.; The Presidential Count: A Complete Official Record of the Proceedings of Congress at the Counting of the Electoral Votes, Etc. (Published by D. Appleton & Co.)

It was formerly supposed that the electoral method of choosing the President and Vice-President was the happy invention of the Federal Convention. But in later years attempts have been made to find an original for it. Some writers have seen a resemblance between this plan and the election of the Pope by the College of Cardinals. Sir H. S. Maine thought the Convention was influenced by the constitution of the Holy Roman Empire, according to which the Emperor was chosen by seven imperial electors. A far more probable conjecture is that the framers of the Constitution found their copy in provisions of the constitution of Maryland, 1776, which delegated the choice of the fifteen State senators to an electoral body chosen every five years by the qualified electors of the State.1 But whether invented or copied, the electoral scheme has failed more signally to accomplish the ends for which it was designed than any other part of the Federal Constitution. Professor Johnston, who held the theory of invention, remarks that the system is almost the only feature of the Constitution which was purely artificial, and not a natural growth, that

1 Stevens: The Sources of the Constitution, pp. 152-154.