The Life and Work of James A. Garfield, Twentieth President of the United States / Embracing an Account of the Scenes and Incidents of His Boyhood; the Struggles of His Youth; the Might of His Early Manhood; His Valor As a Soldier; His Career As a Statesman; His Election to the Presidency; and the Tragic Story of His Death.

by John Clark Ridpath

“But with equal unanimity they agreed that this plan would be fatal to the stability of the Government they were about to establish, if they did not couple with it some provision that should make the President’s functions independent of the power that created him. To effect this, they provided that the President should be ineligible for reëlection. They said it would never do to create a Chief Executive by the voice of the National Legislature, and then allow him to be reëlected by that same voice; for he would thus become their creature.

“And so, from the first day of their session in May, to within five days of its close in September, they grappled with the mighty question. I have many times, and recently very carefully, gone through all the records that are left to us of that great transaction. I find that more than one-seventh of all the pages of the Madison papers are devoted to this Samson of questions, how the Executive should be chosen and made independent of the organization that made the choice. This topic alone occupied more than one-seventh of all the time of the Convention.

“After a long and earnest debate, after numerous votes and reconsiderations, they were obliged utterly to abandon the plan of creating the Chief Executive by means of the National Legislature. I will not stop now to prove the statement by a dozen or more pungent quotations from the masters of political science in that great assembly, in which they declared that it would be ruinous to the liberty of the people and to the permanence of the Republic if they did not absolutely exclude the National Legislature from any share in the election of the President.

“They pointed with glowing eloquence to the sad but instructive fate of those brilliant Italian republics that were destroyed because there was no adequate separation of powers, and because their senates overwhelmed and swallowed up the executive power, and, as secret and despotic conclaves, became the destroyers of Italian liberty.

“At the close of the great discussion, when the last vote on this subject was taken by our fathers, they were almost unanimous in excluding the National Legislature from any share whatever in the choice of the Chief Executive of the nation. They rejected all the plans of the first group, and created a new instrumentality. They adopted the system of electors. When that plan was under discussion, they used the utmost precaution to hedge it about by every conceivable protection against the interference or control of Congress.

“In the first place, they said the States shall create the electoral colleges. They allowed Congress to have nothing whatever to do with the creation of the colleges, except merely to fix the time when the States should appoint them. And, in order to exclude Congress by positive prohibition, in the last days of the Convention they provided that no member of either House of Congress should be appointed an elector; so that not even by the personal influence of any one of its members could the Congress interfere with the election of a President.

“The creation of a President under our Constitution consists of three distinct steps: First, the creation of the electoral colleges; second, the vote of colleges; and third, the opening and counting of their votes. This is the simple plan of the Constitution.

“The creation of the colleges is left absolutely to the States, within the five limitations I had the honor to mention to the House a few days ago. First, it must be a State that appoints electors; second, the State is limited as to the number of electors it may appoint; third, electors shall not be members of Congress or officers of the United States; fourth, the time for appointing electors may be fixed by Congress; and, fifth, the time when their appointment is announced, which must be before the date for giving their votes, may also be fixed by Congress.

“These five simple limitations, and these alone, were laid upon the States. Every other act, fact, and thing possible to be done in creating the electoral colleges was absolutely and uncontrollably in the power of the States themselves. Within these limitations, Congress has no more power to touch them in this work than England or France. That is the first step.

“The second is still plainer and simpler, namely, the work of the colleges. They were created as an independent and separate power, or set of powers, for the sole purpose of electing a President. They were created by the States. Congress has just one thing to do with them, and only one: it may fix the day when they shall meet. By the act of 1792 Congress fixed the day as it still stands in the law; and there the authority of the Congress over the colleges ended.