A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 6, part 2: Andrew Johnson

by Unknown

The danger of a defeat of the popular choice in an election by the House of Representatives is no greater than in an election made nominally by the people themselves, when by the laws of party organizations and by the constitutional provisions requiring the people to vote for electors instead of for the President or Vice-President it is made impracticable for any citizen to be a candidate except through the process of a party nomination, and for any voter to cast his suffrage for any other person than one thus brought forward through the manipulations of a nominating convention. It is thus apparent that by means of party organizations that provision of the Constitution which requires the election of President and Vice-President to be made through the electoral colleges has been made instrumental and potential in defeating the great object of conferring the choice of these officers upon the people. It may be conceded that party organizations are inseparable from republican government, and that when formed and managed in subordination to the Constitution they may be valuable safeguards of popular liberty; but when they are perverted to purposes of bad ambition they are liable to become the dangerous instruments of overthrowing the Constitution itself. Strongly impressed with the truth of these views, I feel called upon by an imperative sense of duty to revive substantially the recommendation so often and so earnestly made by President Jackson, and to urge that the amendment to the Constitution herewith presented, or some similar proposition, may be submitted to the people for their ratification or rejection.

Recent events have shown the necessity of an amendment to the Constitution distinctly defining the persons who shall discharge the duties of President of the United States in the event of a vacancy in that office by the death, resignation, or removal of both the President and Vice-President. It is clear that this should be fixed by the Constitution, and not be left to repealable enactments of doubtful constitutionality. It occurs to me that in the event of a vacancy in the office of President by the death, resignation, disability, or removal of both the President and Vice-President the duties of the office should devolve upon an officer of the executive department of the Government, rather than one connected with the legislative or judicial departments. The objections to designating either the President pro tempore of the Senate or the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, especially in the event of a vacancy produced by removal, are so obvious and so unanswerable that they need not be stated in detail. It is enough to state that they are both interested in producing a vacancy, and, according to the provisions of the Constitution, are members of the tribunal by whose decree a vacancy may be produced.

Under such circumstances the impropriety of designating either of these officers to succeed the President so removed is palpable. The framers of the Constitution, when they referred to Congress the settlement of the succession to the office of President in the event of a vacancy in the offices of both President and Vice-President, did not, in my opinion, contemplate the designation of any other than an officer of the executive department, on whom, in such a contingency, the powers and duties of the President should devolve. Until recently the contingency has been remote, and serious attention has not been called to the manifest incongruity between the provisions of the Constitution on this subject and the act of Congress of 1792. Having, however, been brought almost face to face with this important question, it seems an eminently proper time for us to make the legislation conform to the language, intent, and theory of the Constitution, and thus place the executive department beyond the reach of usurpation, and remove from the legislative and judicial departments every temptation to combine for the absorption of all the powers of government.

It has occurred to me that in the event of such a vacancy the duties of President would devolve most appropriately upon some one of the heads of the several Executive Departments, and under this conviction I present for your consideration an amendment to the Constitution on this subject, with the recommendation that it be submitted to the people for their action.

Experience seems to have established the necessity of an amendment of that clause of the Constitution which provides for the election of Senators to Congress by the legislatures of the several States. It would be more consistent with the genius of our form of government if the Senators were chosen directly by the people of the several States. The objections to the election of Senators by the legislatures are so palpable that I deem it unnecessary to do more than submit the proposition for such an amendment, with the recommendation that it be opened to the people for their judgment.

It is strongly impressed on my mind that the tenure of office by the judiciary of the United States during good behavior for life is incompatible with the spirit of republican government, and in this opinion I am fully sustained by the evidence of popular judgment upon this subject in the different States of the Union.

I therefore deem it my duty to recommend an amendment to the Constitution by which the terms of the judicial officers would be limited to a period of years, and I herewith present it in the hope that Congress will submit it to the people for their decision.

The foregoing views have long been entertained by me. In 1845, in the House of Representatives, and afterwards, in 1860, in the Senate of the United States, I submitted substantially the same propositions as those to which the attention of Congress is herein invited. Time, observation, and experience have confirmed these convictions; and, as a matter of public duty and a deep sense of my constitutional obligation "to recommend to the consideration of Congress such measures as I deem necessary and expedient," I submit the accompanying propositions, and urge their adoption and submission to the judgment of the people.

ANDREW JOHNSON.

JOINT RESOLUTION proposing amendments to the Constitution of the United States.