"Then none were for a party,
But all were for the State."
Political parties were formed afterward and have grown in strength since, and to-day the troubles that afflict our country chiefly may be said to arise from the dangerous excess of party feeling in our councils.
But I propose to refer to the condition of the law and the Constitution as we now find it. The second article of the first section of the Constitution provides for the vesting of the executive power in the President and also for the election of a Vice-President. First it provides that "each State" shall, through its legislature, appoint the number of electors to which it is entitled, which shall be the number of its Representatives in Congress and its Senators combined. The power there is to the State to appoint. The grant is as complete and perfect that the State shall have that power as is another clause of the Constitution giving to "each State" the power to be represented by the Senators in this branch of Congress. There is given to the electors prescribed duties, which I will read:—
The electors shall meet in their respective States and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same State with themselves: they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each; which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted.
Then follows the duty and power of Congress in connection with this subject to determine the time of choosing the electors and the day on which they shall give their votes, which day shall be the same throughout the United States. The next clause provides for the qualifications of the candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency. The next clause gives power to the Congress of the United States to provide for filling the office of President and Vice-President in the event of the death, resignation, or inability of the incumbents to vest the powers and duties of the said office. The other clause empowers Congress thus to designate a temporary President. The other clauses simply relate to the compensation of the President and the oath he shall take to perform the duties of the office. Connected with that delegation of power is to be considered the eighth section of the first article which gives to the Congress of the United States power "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof."
It will be observed, so far, that the Constitution has provided the power but has not provided the regulations for carrying that power into effect. The Supreme Court of the United States sixty-odd years ago defined so well the character of that power and the method of its use that I will quote it from the first volume of Wheaton's Reports, page 326:
Leaving it to the legislature from time to time to adopt its own means to effectuate, legitimate, and mold and model the exercise of its powers as its own wisdom and public interest should require.
In less than four years, in March 1792, after the first Congress had assembled there was legislation upon this subject, carrying into execution the power vested by this second article of the Constitution in a manner which will leave no doubt of what the men of that day believed was competent and proper. Here let me advert to that authority which must ever attach to the contemporaneous exposition of historical events. The men who sat in the Congress of 1792 had many of them been members of the convention that framed the Federal Constitution. All were its contemporaries and closely were they considering with master-minds the consequences of that work. Not only may we gather from the manner in which they treated this subject when they legislated upon it in 1792 what were their views of the powers of Congress on the subject of where the power was lodged and what was the proper measure of its exercise, but we can gather equally well from the inchoate and imperfect legislation of 1800 what those men also thought of their power over this subject, because, although differing as to details, there were certain conceded facts as to jurisdiction quite as emphatically expressed as if their propositions had been enacted into law. Likewise in 1824 the same instruction is afforded. If we find the Senate of the United States without division pass bills which, although not passed by the co-ordinate branch of Congress, are received by them and reported back from the proper committees after examination and without amendment to the committee of the whole House, we may learn with equal authority what was conceded by those houses as to the question of power over the subject. In a compilation made at the present session by order of the House Committee, co-ordinate with the Senate Committee, will be found at page 129 a debate containing expressions by the leading men of both parties in 1857 of the lawfulness of the exercise of the legislative power of Congress over this subject. I venture to read here from the remarks of Mr. Hunter, of Virginia, one of the most respected and conservative minds of his day in the Congress of the United States:—
The Constitution evidently contemplated a provision to be made by law to regulate the details and the mode of counting the votes for President and Vice-President of the United States. The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted. By whom, and how to be counted, the Constitution does not say. But Congress has power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof. Congress, therefore, has the power to regulate by law the details of the mode in which the votes are to be counted. As yet, no such law has been found necessary. The cases, happily, have been rare in which difficulties have occurred in the count of the electoral votes. All difficulties of this sort have been managed heretofore by the consent of the two houses—a consent either implied at the time or declared by joint resolutions adopted by the houses on the recommendation of the joint committee which is usually raised to prescribe the mode in which the count is to be made. In the absence of law, the will of the two houses thus declared has prescribed the rule under which the President of the Senate and the tellers have acted. It was by this authority, as I understand it, that the President of the Senate acted yesterday. The joint resolution of the two bouses prescribed the mode in which the tellers were to make the count and also required him to declare the result, which he did. It was under the authority, therefore, and by the direction of the two houses that he acted. The resolutions by which the authority was given were according to unbroken usage and established precedent.
Mr. President, the debate from which I have read took place in 1857 and was long and able, the question there arising upon the proposed rejection of the vote of the State of Wisconsin, because of the delay of a single day in the meeting of the electors. A violent snowstorm having prevented the election on the third of December, it was held on the fourth, which was clearly in violation of the law of Congress passed in pursuance of the Constitution requiring that the votes for the electors should be cast on the same day throughout the Union. That debate will disclose the fact that the danger then became more and more realized of leaving this question unsettled as to who should determine whether the electoral votes of a State should be received or rejected when the two houses of Congress should differ upon that subject. There was no arbiter between them. This new-fangled idea of the present hour, that the presiding officer of the Senate should decide that question between the two disagreeing houses, had not yet been discovered in the fertility of political invention, or born perhaps of party necessity. The question has challenged all along through our country's history the ablest minds of the country; but at last we have reached a point when under increased difficulties we are bound to settle it. It arose in 1817 in the case of the State of Indiana, the question being whether Indiana was a State in the Union at the time of the casting of her vote. The two houses disagreed upon that subject; but by a joint resolution, which clearly assumed the power of controlling the subject, as the vote of Indiana did not if cast either way control the election, the difficulty was tided over by an arrangement for that time and that occasion only. In 1820 the case of the State of Missouri arose and contained the same question. There again came the difficulty when the genius and patriotism of Henry Clay were brought into requisition and a joint resolution introduced by him and adopted by both houses was productive of a satisfactory solution for the time being. The remedy was merely palliative; the permanent character of the difficulty was confessed and the fact that it was only a postponement to men of a future generation of a question still unsettled.