The Campaign of 1896 151 



choice of Adams for President and of his anti-type, 

 Jefferson, as Vice-President, the combination being 

 about as incongruous as if we should now see Mc- 

 Kinley President and either Bryan or Watson Vice- 

 President. Even in theory such an arrangement is 

 very bad, because under it the Vice-President might 

 readily be, and as a matter of fact was, a man utterly 

 opposed to all the principles to which the President 

 was devoted, so that the arrangement provided in 

 the event of the death of the President, not for a 

 succession, but for a revolution. The system was 

 very soon dropped, and each party nominated its 

 own candidates for both positions. But it was many 

 years before all the members of the electoral college 

 of one party felt obliged to cast the same votes for 

 both President and Vice-President, and consequently 

 there was a good deal of scrambling and shifting in 

 taking the vote. When, however, the parties had 

 crystallized into Democratic and Whig, a score of 

 years after the disappearance of the Federalists, the 

 system of party voting also crystallized. Each party 

 then, as a rule, nominated one man for President 

 and one for Vice-President, these being voted for 

 throughout the nation. This system in turn speed- 

 ily produced strange results, some of which remain 

 to this day. There are and must be in every party 

 factions. The victorious faction may crush out and 

 destroy the others, or it may try to propitiate at 

 least its most formidable rival. In consequence, the 

 custom grew of offering the Vice-Presidency as a 

 consolation prize, to be given in many cases to the 



