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

“The Constitution contemplated the President of the Senate as the Vice-President of the United States, the elect of all the people. And to him is confided the great trust, the custodianship of the only official record of the election of President. What is it to ‘open the certificates’? It would be a narrow and inadequate view of that word to say that it means only the breaking of the seals. To open an envelope is not to ‘open the certificates.’ The certificate is not the paper on which the record is made; it is the record itself. To open the certificates is not a physical but an intellectual act. It is to make patent the record; to publish it. When that is done the election of President and Vice-President is published. But one thing remains to be done; and here the language of the Constitution changes from the active to the passive voice, from the personal to the impersonal. To the trusted custodian of the votes succeeds the impersonality of arithmetic; the votes have been made known; there remains only the command of the Constitution: ‘They shall be counted’—that is, the numbers shall be added up.

“No further act is required. The Constitution itself declares the result:

“‘The person having the greatest number of votes for President shall be President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed.’

“If no person has such majority, the House of Representatives shall immediately choose a President; not the House as organized for legislation, but a new electoral college is created out of the members of the House, by means of which each State has one vote for President, and only one.

“To review the ground over which I have traveled: The several acts that constitute the election of a President may be symbolized by a pyramid consisting of three massive, separate blocks. The first, the creation of the electoral college by the States, is the broad base. It embraces the legislative, the judicial, and the executive powers of the States. All the departments of the State government and all the voters of the State coöperate in shaping and perfecting it.

“The action of the electoral colleges forms the second block, perfect in itself, and independent of the others, superimposed with exactness upon the first.

“The opening and counting of the votes of the colleges is the little block that crowns and completes the pyramid.

“Such, Mr. Speaker, was the grand and simple plan by which the framers of the Constitution empowered all the people, acting under the laws of the several States, to create special and select colleges of independent electors to choose a President, who should be, not the creature of Congress, nor of the States, but the Chief Magistrate of the whole Nation—the elect of all the people.”

But the Electoral Commission was constituted by law, and Garfield himself chosen unanimously by his party as a member thereof. He accepted, saying: “Since you have appointed me, I will serve. I can act on a committee when I do not believe in its validity.” That fact could not affect the justice of his decisions.

It is impossible to even hint at more than a small portion of the vast field of work which occupied General Garfield during this and the succeeding Congress.