CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



tion to which I wish to call the attention of 

 the Senate, iiltlioii(.'h it i* har-lly necessary, the 

 language of the Constitution is so plain, is that 

 the immediate election of the 1'iWident is to 

 1. 1- made by the States in their political char- 

 acters. 1 That is to say, it is the political ri^ht 

 of the State as a State to select for itself, nnd 

 without the intervention or decision of any 

 other power, the persons to the number to 

 which it is entitled who are to express its 

 choice in the electoral college for the Chief 

 Magistrate of the Union. 



" Then it goes on to provide in this same 

 clause, * in such manner as the Legislature 

 thereof may direct.' So that taking the whole 

 clause together it reads : 



" Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the 

 Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors 

 equal to the whole number or Senators and Repre- 

 sentatives to which the State may be entitled. 



" That not only fortifies, but to my mind 

 clinches conclusively the doctrine that the 

 ultimate selection, the actual, the effectual, 

 selection, which is to count in the final ex- 

 pression in this Chamber or in that of the 

 other House where the votes are counted as 

 the voice of the State, is to be made by the 

 State, and it is to be made in the manner that 

 the Legislature of that State muy direct. In 

 other words, it is wholly, exclusively, abso- 

 lutely a matter which the Constitution has re- 

 mitted to the State and to its authority. 



u Now, what does ' manner ' include, Mr. 

 President, in respect of what the Legislature 

 is to do ? The language is that the State is to 

 appoint its electors who are to give their votes 

 and whose votes are to be counted here as the 

 voice of the State for President. The Consti- 

 tution says that the manner of doing that, of 

 this selection, shall be such as the legislative 

 power of the State shall direct. Is it not with- 

 in the manner of this selection for the Legis- 

 lature of the State to provide that he and he 

 only shall be an elector of that State who in 

 case of a dispute shall have submitted to a 

 certain test of ascertaining whether he is the 

 genuine man the State has appointed or not '. 

 If it is not, then there is no value in the dele- 

 gation to the Legislature of the State of the 

 power to prescribe the manner in which this 

 choice shall be made. 



u Can you say that above the State or behind 

 it, or somewhere, there is still a Federal power 

 to enter that State and say, in spite of the dec- 

 laration of its constituted authorities that those 

 persons and those only who have conformed to 

 certain requisites of the law shall be the elec- 

 tors, that somebody else shall ? The Legis- 

 lature may say that they themselves will ap- 

 point the electors. Would it do for the count- 

 ing power, wherever it may be, in such a case 

 to say : ' Well, this is a provision that is within 

 the Constitution, as everybody knows it is, but 

 we are satisfied that this particular Legislature 

 acted under a mistake ; they thought that these 

 VOL. xix. 14 A 



electors were going to vote for the other can- 

 didate for President, and we therefore will ex- 

 ercise the full power that belongs to a court of 

 appeal on review to open the whole record and 

 decide for ourselves what that Legislature in- 

 temled to have done and ought to have done 

 under the circumstances.' That will not do, 

 Mr. President. The two Houses have no pow- 

 er to eay that. The form of the action of the 

 State, its most solemn and authentic procedure, 

 which the Constitution says shall be the act of 

 the State, and then in the other clause that the 

 act of the State shall be respected and its votes 

 counted, you will have to change for a de- 

 cision of Congress, or a Vice-President, or a 

 President of the Senate, or whatever commit- 

 tee or tribunal the law may select or determine 

 upon as the true one to count the votes. 



u This fourth section, then, which provides 

 for the conclusiveness of this State determina- 

 tion, is merely saying that the counting au- 

 thority will recognize as the true act of the 

 State, and give effect to it as such, that body of 

 people that the State itself has finally through 

 its own action determined to be the persons 

 it has chosen. That is all. Can anything be 

 more just if you are to respect the rights of 

 the States under this clause of the Constitu- 

 tion ? The very thing, without any law, with- 

 out any provision, without any rule, that the 

 two Houses meet to do, if it belongs to them 

 to do it, or the very thing that the President 

 of the Senate is to do if it belongs to him to 

 do it, is to count and declare the result of the 

 vote of the State ; that is, to ascertain the will 

 of the State, not according to his notion of 

 what he thinks that will ought to have been, 

 but according to his intellectual and judicial 

 or administrative perception of the fact of 

 what that State has done. Therefore this sec- 

 tion simply provides that what this bill as- 

 sumes to be, or confers as, the counting and 

 declaring power shall respect and follow the 

 choice of the State of her electors, and that 

 the evidence of that choice shall be the action 

 of the very machinery that the State itself has 

 provided to determine whom she has chosen. 



" This action of the State, Mr. President, you 

 will observe, is not an action of a sovereign 

 and independent body in its original and nat- 

 ural right as a separate and independent body, 

 as between foreign nations such acts of inter- 

 course might take place, because without the 

 Constitution of the United States there would 

 be no such officer as President to be elected ; 

 without the Constitution of the United States 

 there would be no such means of the selection 

 of such an officer, if we had one, to be found. 

 The duty of the State, and therefore its power, 

 is one that did not preexist in itself, to elect a 

 President for itself and for all the others of its 

 sisters ; but it is a right and a duty that is im- 

 posed upon it by the Federal Constitution, and 

 the Federal Constitution has therefore mea- 

 sured and defined precisely the power that 

 that State shall exert, and precisely the man- 



