The son of one United States Senator, James A. Bayard, of Delaware, and the grandson of another, Mr. Bayard represented well the family tradition of integrity. Born in 1828, he succeeded to his father's place in the Senate when forty-one years of age, and remained in the public service until within a short time of his death. He was Secretary of State under the first Cleveland administration and ambassador to England under the second. In the convention which nominated Mr. Cleveland in 1884, Mr. Bayard, who had been strongly supported for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1880, was so close to the presidency at the beginning of the balloting that his managers confidently expected his success. He became much attached to President Cleveland, and in 1896 he took a course on the financial issue then uppermost, which alienated many of his friends, as far as friends could be alienated by the political action of a man whose public and private life were so full of dignity, simplicity, and the qualities which result from habitual good faith. Mr. Bayard survived almost into the twentieth century as a last representative of the colonial gentlemen who debated the Federal Constitution. Supposed to be cold and unapproachable, he was really warm in his friendships, with a memory which never allowed an act of service done him to escape it. Few better men have had anything to do with the politics of the second half of the century. He died in 1898.
W. V. B.
A PLEA FOR CONCILIATION IN 1876
("Counting the Electoral Votes," United States Senate, January 24th, 1877)
Mr. President, I might have been content as a friend of this measure to allow it to go before the Senate and the country unaccompanied by any remarks of mine had it not been the pleasure of the Senate to assign me as one of the minority in this Chamber to a place upon the select committee appointed for the purpose of reporting a bill intended to meet the exigencies of the hour in relation to the electoral votes. There is for every man in a matter of such gravity his own measure of responsibility, and that measure I desire to assume. Nothing less important than the decision, into whose hands the entire executive power of this government shall be vested in the next four years, is embraced in the provisions of this bill. The election for President and Vice-President has been held, but as to the results of that election the two great political parties of the country stand opposed in serious controversy. Each party claims success for its candidate and insists that he and he alone shall be declared by the two houses of Congress entitled to exercise the executive power of this government for the next four years. The canvass was prolonged and unprecedented in its excitement and even bitterness. The period of advocacy of either candidate has passed, and the time for judgment has almost come. How shall we who purpose to make laws for others do better than to exhibit our own reverence for law and set the example here of subordination to the spirit of law?
It cannot be disguised that an issue has been sought, if not actually raised, in this country, between a settlement of this great question by sheer force and arbitrary exercise of power or by the peaceful, orderly, permanent methods of law and reason. Ours is, as we are wont to boast, a government of laws, and not of will; and we must not permit it to pass away from us by changing its nature.
"O, yet a nobler task awaits thy hand,
For what can war but endless war still breed?"
By this measure now before the Senate it is proposed to have a peaceful conquest over partisan animosity and lawless action, to procure a settlement grounded on reason and justice, and not upon force. Therefore, it is meant to lift this great question of determining who has been lawfully elected President and Vice-President of these United States out of the possibility of popular broils and tumult, and elevate it with all dignity to the higher atmosphere of legal and judicial decision. In such a spirit I desire to approach the consideration of the subject and shall seek to deal with it at least worthily, with a sense of public duty unobstructed, I trust, by prejudice or party animosity. The truth of Lord Bacon's aphorism that "great empire and little minds go ill together," should warn us now against the obtrusion of narrow or technical views in adjusting such a question and at such a time in our country's history.
Mr. President, from the very commencement of the attempt to form the government under which we live, the apportionment of power in the executive branch and the means of choosing the chief magistrate have been the subject of the greatest difficulty. Those who founded this government and preceded us in its control had felt the hand of kingly power, and it was from the abuse of executive power that they dreaded the worst results. Therefore it was that when the Constitution came to be framed that was the point upon which they met and upon which they parted, less able to agree than upon almost all others combined. A glance at the history of the convention that met at Philadelphia on the fourteenth of May, 1787, but did not organize until the twenty-fifth day of the same month, will show that three days after the convention assembled two plans of a Constitution were presented, respectively, by Mr. Edmund Randolph, of Virginia, and Mr. Charles Pinckney, of South Carolina. The first proposed the election of the executive by the legislature, as the two houses were then termed, for a term of seven years, with ineligibility for re-election. The other proposed an election, but left the power to elect or the term of office in blank. Both of these features in the schemes proposed came up early for consideration, and, as I have said before, as the grave and able minds of that day approached this subject they were unable to agree, and accordingly, from time to time, the question was postponed and no advance whatever made in the settlement of the question. Indeed, so vital and wide was the difference that each attempt made during the course of the five months in which that convention was assembled only seemed to result in renewed failure. So it stood until the fourth day of September had arrived. The labors of the convention by that time had resulted in the framing of a Constitution, wise and good and fairly balanced, calculated to preserve power sufficient in the government, and yet leaving that individual freedom and liberty essential for the protection of the States and their citizens. Then it was that this question, so long postponed, came up for consideration and had to be decided. As it was decided then, it appears in the Constitution as submitted to the States in 1787; but an amendment of the second article was proposed in 1804, which, meeting the approval of the States, became part of the Constitution.
I must be pardoned if I repeat something of what has preceded in this debate, by way of citation from the Constitution of the United States, in order that we may find there our warrant for the present measure. There were difficulties of which these fathers of our government were thoroughly conscious. The very difficulties that surround the question to-day are suggested in the debates of 1800, in which the history of double returns is foretold by Mr. Pinckney in his objections to the measure then before the Senate. The very title of that act, "A Bill Prescribing a Mode of Deciding Disputed Elections of President and Vice-President of the United States," will show the difficulties which they then perceived and of which they felt the future was to be so full. They made the attempt in 1800 to meet those difficulties. They did not succeed. Again and again the question came before them. In 1824 a second attempt was made at legislation. It met the approval of the Senate. It seemed to meet the approval of the Committee on the Judiciary of the House, by whom it was reported without amendment, but never was acted upon in that body, and failed to become a law. This all shows to us that there has been a postponement from generation to generation of a subject of great difficulty that we of to-day are called upon to meet under circumstances of peculiar and additional disadvantage; for while in the convention of 1787 there was a difference arising from interest, from all the infinite variances of prejudice and opinion upon subjects of local, geographical, and pecuniary interests, and making mutual concessions and patriotic considerations necessary at all times, yet they were spared the most dangerous of all feelings under which our country has suffered of late; for, amid all the perturbing causes to interfere with and distract their counsels, partisan animosity was at least unknown. There was in that day no such thing as political party in the United States:—