Our Presidents and how we make them

by Alexander K. McClure

Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Lincoln, Grant, and Cleveland were twice elected President. Jefferson, Jackson, and Cleveland were each defeated for the Presidency, although twice elected. Jefferson and Jackson were defeated in their first contests, and then elected to two successive terms, and Cleveland was elected in 1884, defeated in 1888, and re-elected in 1892. Jackson and Cleveland are the only two Presidents who were candidates in three national elections and received an increased plurality in each successive contest. Both were defeated in one battle when they had received the largest popular vote. Grant was the only President who made a struggle for a third term.

Four Presidents died in office—namely, Harrison in 1841, after having served but little over a month; Taylor in 1850, after having served less than a year and a half; Lincoln in 1865, only a little more than a month after his second inauguration, and Garfield in 1881, before the close of the first year of his administration.

Six Vice-Presidents have died in office: Clinton in 1812, after having presided over the Senate for seven years; Gerry in 1814, after little more than a year of service; William R. King, in 1853, who took the oath as Vice-President on the 4th of March of that year in Cuba, and died soon thereafter; Henry Wilson in 1875, having served but little more than half his term; Thomas A. Hendricks in 1885, having served less than a year, and Hobart in 1899, leaving nearly a year and a half of his term unexpired.

No President pro tem. of the Senate has ever reached the Presidency. There was only one occasion in the history of the Government when it seemed probable that the President pro tem. might be called to the chief executive office of the nation. Johnson, as Vice-President, had succeeded Lincoln as President, and Senator Wade, of Ohio, was president pro tem. of the Senate. In 1868, some ten months before the expiration of Johnson’s term, he was impeached by the House, and acquitted in the Senate by a single vote. The question was then raised as to whether the President pro tem. of the Senate was such an officer as was contemplated by the Constitution to fill the office of President, and there was considerable agitation from time to time on the subject in Congress, which finally culminated in the passage of the Presidential Succession bill of January 18, 1886, by which the succession to the Presidency is fully defined and eligibles are provided quite sufficient in number to meet any possible emergency. The following is the full text of the present law regulating the Presidential succession:

Be it enacted, etc., that in case of the removal, death, resignation, or inability of both the President and Vice-President of the United States, the Secretary of State, or if there be none, or in case of his removal, death, resignation, or inability, then the Secretary of the Treasury, or if there be none, or in case of his removal, death, resignation, or inability, then the Secretary of War, or if there be none, or in case of his removal, death, resignation, or inability, then the Attorney-General, or if there be none, or in case of his removal, death, resignation, or inability, then the Postmaster-General, or if there be none, or in case of his removal, death, resignation, or inability, then the Secretary of the Navy, or if there be none, or in case of his removal, death, resignation, or inability, then the Secretary of the Interior shall act as President until the disability of the President or Vice-President is removed, or a President shall be elected: provided, that whenever the powers and duties of the office of President of the United States shall devolve upon any of the persons named herein, if Congress be not then in session, or if it would not meet in accordance with law within twenty days thereafter, it shall be the duty of the person upon whom said powers and duties shall devolve to issue a proclamation convening Congress in extraordinary session, giving twenty days’ notice of the time of meeting.

Section 2. That the preceding section shall only be held to describe and apply to such officers as shall have been appointed by the advice and consent of the Senate to the offices therein named, and such as are eligible to the office of President under the Constitution, and not under impeachment by the House of Representatives of the United States at the time the powers and duties of the office shall devolve upon them respectively.

Sec. 3. That sections 146, 147, 148, 149, and 150 of the Revised Statutes are hereby repealed.

CONTESTED PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

There have been only two seriously contested elections in the history of our Presidential conflicts. They were the contest between Jefferson and Burr in 1800–1 and the contest between Hayes and Tilden in 1876–7. The Hayes-Tilden contest brought the country to the verge of revolution, and the very close battle between Garfield and Hancock four years later, and the Cleveland-Blaine struggle of 1884, that turned upon 1100 majority in a vote of nearly 6,000,000 in New York State, taught the necessity of having some definite statute providing for the determination of disputed electoral votes in the States by which such disputes would be practically eliminated from the powers of Congress. The following is the full text of the present statute, approved February 3, 1887, providing for the determination of contested electors:

Be it enacted, etc., that the electors of each State shall meet and give their votes on the second Monday in January next following their appointment, at such place in each State as the Legislature of such State shall direct.