“In my view, then, the foremost question is this: What will be the effect of this measure upon our institutions? I can not make that inquiry intelligibly without a brief reference to the history of the Constitution, and to some of the formidable questions which presented themselves to our fathers nearly a hundred years ago, when they set up this goodly frame of Government.
“Among the foremost difficulties, both in point of time and magnitude, was how to create an executive head of the Nation. Our fathers encountered that difficulty the first morning after they organized and elected the officers of the Constitutional Convention. The first resolution introduced by Randolph, of Virginia, on the 29th day of May, recognized that great question, and invited the Convention to its examination. The men who made the Constitution were deeply read in the profoundest political philosophy of their day. They had learned from Montesquieu, from Locke, from Fénelon, and other good teachers of the human race, that liberty is impossible without a clear and distinct separation of the three great powers of government. A generation before their epoch, Montesquieu had said:
“‘When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty, because apprehensions may arise lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws and execute them in a tyrannical manner.
“‘There would be an end of every thing were the same man or the same body, whether of the nobles or of the people, to exercise these three powers, that of enacting the laws, that of executing the public resolutions, and of trying the causes of individuals.’
“This was a fundamental truth in the American mind, as it had long been cherished and practiced in the British empire.
“There, as in all monarchies, the creation of a chief executive was easily regulated by adopting a dynasty, and following the law of primogeniture.
“But our fathers had drawn the deeper lesson of liberty from the inspirations of this free New World, that their Chief Executive should be born, not of a dynasty, but of the will of a free people regulated by law.
“In the course of their deliberations upon this subject, there were suggested seven different plans, which may be grouped under two principal heads or classes. One group comprised all the plans for creating the Chief Executive by means of some one of the preëxisting political organizations of the country. First and foremost was the proposition to authorize one or both Houses of the National Legislature to elect the Chief Executive. Another was to confer that power upon the governors of the States, or upon the legislatures of the States. Another, that he should be chosen directly by the people themselves under the laws of the States. The second group comprised all the various plans for creating a new and separate instrumentality for making the choice.
“At first the proposition that the Executive should be elected by the National Legislature was received by the Convention with almost unanimous approval; and for the reason that up to that time Congress had done all that was done in the way of national government. It had created the nation and led its fortunes through a thousand perils, had declared and achieved independence, and had preserved the liberty of the people in the midst of a great war. Though Congress had failed to secure a firm and stable Government after the war, yet its glory was not forgotten. As Congress had created the Union, it was most natural that our fathers should say Congress should also create the Chief Executive of the nation. And within two weeks after the Convention assembled, they voted for that plan with absolute unanimity.