Don Estevan Miro left his name on the judicial records and reports of Tennessee, where it remained until November 4, 1809, when, by act of the general assembly, the state was divided into five judicial circuits, to which the act affixed numbers instead of names. Miro District, in addition to Davidson, Sumner and Tennessee counties, included at one time the counties of Smith, Wilson and Williamson. When “the territory of the United States of America south of the river Ohio” was admitted into the Union as the state of Tennessee, the county of Tennessee, at the first session of the general assembly, by an act passed April 9, 1796, was divided into Montgomery and Robertson counties. Thus the “District of Mero” and “Tennessee county” appeared on and then disappeared from the face of the map and the public records of the state of Tennessee.
The “Superior Courts of Law and Equity” for the Miro District were held in Nashville. An act of the first session of the first general assembly of Tennessee, passed April 22, 1796, recites that the court house, or the “office of the clerk and master of the District of Mero was lately destroyed by fire, and the books, records and papers thereof lost,” etc., and then provides for setting up the records.
While the capital and the state treasury were located at Knoxville, there was a branch treasury kept in the Miro District at Nashville.
The present chief justice of the United States, Hon. Melville W. Fuller, in an opinion on the constitutionality of a recent law of the state of Michigan, providing for the selection of presidential electors by a vote of each congressional district separately taken, refers to an act of the general assembly of the state of Tennessee, which appointed a committee of citizens in the District of Miro and empowered it to elect presidential electors—the chief justice, as I understand him, approving both these methods as a compliance with the constitution. The act referred to is worthy of acquaintance, and I therefore embody the substance of it in this chapter, as I presume that there are very few persons familiar with its provisions. The act was passed August 8, 1796, and is as follows:
Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Tennessee, that three electors shall be elected, one in the district of Washington, one in the district of Hamilton and one in the district of Mero, as directed by this Act, to elect a president and vice president of the United States, and that the said electors may be elected with as little trouble as possible to the citizens.
Sec. 2nd. Be it enacted that John Carter, John Adams, and John McCollester of the County of Washington; John Rhea, John Spurgeon and Robert Allison of Sullivan County; Daniel Kennedy, Joseph Hardin and James Stinson of the county of Greene; and Richard Mitchell, John Young and Bartlet Marshall of the county of Hawkins, are appointed electors to elect an elector for that purpose for the district of Washington; John Adair, Charles McClung and Samuel Flonnagan of the County of Knox; Andrew Henderson, Josiah Jackson and Christopher Hains of the County of Jefferson; Samuel McGahey, Josiah Gist, Alexander Montgomery of the County of Sevier; and Robert Boid, William Lowry and David Caldwell of Wells Station of the County of Blount, are appointed electors to elect an elector for the purpose aforesaid for the district of Hamilton; Thomas Molloy, William Donelson and George Ridley of the County of Davidson; Kasper Mansco, Edward Douglass and John Hogan of the County of Sumner; George Nevill senior, Josiah Fort and Thomas Johnson of the late county of Tennessee, are appointed electors to elect an elector in the District of Mero, for the purpose aforesaid.
Sec. 4. The electors in this Act before named shall convene, those for the District of Washington at Jonesborough, those for the District of Hamilton at Knoxville, and those for the District of Mero at Nashville, on the Second Monday of November in the year 1796, and being so convened, they, or so many of them as shall attend on said day, proceed to elect by ballot an elector qualified as by this Act directed, for the purpose aforesaid.
The act further provides that, “if two or more persons shall have the same number of votes, it shall be decided in the same manner as Grand Jurors are drawn for, in the Superior Courts”—that is, the names of such persons as received the same number of votes were to be written on slips of paper and put into a box or hat; a boy under twelve years of age then drew out one of the slips, and the person whose name appeared thereon received the certificate of election.
The electors chosen received certificates of election signed by the committee, and the three electors thus chosen were directed by the act to “convene at Knoxville on the first Wednesday in December, 1796, and proceed to elect a president and vice-president of the United States.”
This act, or method of selecting presidential electors, was re-enacted by the general assembly of Tennessee, October 26, 1799, for the presidential election to occur in 1800. I am not aware that this method of selecting presidential electors was ever adopted by any other state.