were scattered among other persons, there were practically only two presidential candidates before the country, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, for the former of whom the electors of the Federalist party, for the latter those of the Republican (Democratic)1 party were expected to vote. The fourth election was a regular party struggle, carried on in obedience to party arrangements. Both Federalists and Republicans put the names of their candidates for President and Vice-President before the country, and round these names the battle raged. The notion of leaving any freedom or discretion to the electors had vanished, for it was felt that an issue so great must and could be decided by the nation alone. From that day till now there has never been any question of reviving the true and original intent of the plan of double election, and consequently nothing has ever turned on the personality of the electors. They are now so little significant that to enable the voter to know for which set of electors his party desires him to vote, it is found necessary to put the name of the presidential candidate whose interest they represent at the top of the voting ticket on which their own names are printed.

The completeness and permanence of this change has been assured by the method which now prevails of choosing the electors. The Constitution leaves the method to each State, and in the earlier days many States entrusted the choice to their legislatures. But as democratic principles became developed, the practice of choosing the electors by direct popular vote, originally adopted by Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, spread by degrees through the other States, till by 1832 South Carolina was the only State which retained the method of appointment by the legislature. She dropped it in 1868, and popular election now rules everywhere.3 In some States the electors were for a time chosen by districts, like members of the House of Representatives. But the plan of choice by a single

The party then called Republican has for the last sixty years or so been called Democratic. The party now called Republican did not arise till 1854.

In 1876 the suggestion was thrown out that the disputed election of that year might be settled by the exercise of free choice on the part of the electors; but the idea found no favour with the politicians.

3

This, however, is merely matter of State law. Any State could go back to choice by the legislature. Colorado, not having time, after her admission to the Union in 1876, to provide by law for a popular choice of electors to vote in the election of a President in the November of that year, left the choice to the legislature, but now elects its presidential electors by popular vote like the other States.

popular vote over the whole of the State found increasing favour, seeing that it was in the interest of the party for the time being dominant in the State. In 1828 Maryland was the only State which clung to district voting. She, too, adopted the "general ticket" system in 1832, since which year it has been universal. Thus the issue comes directly before the people. The parties nominate their respective candidates, in manner to be hereinafter described, a tremendous "campaign" of stump speaking, newspaper writing, street parades, and torchlight processions sets in and rages for about four months: the polling for electors takes place early in November, on the same day over the whole Union, and when the result is known the contest is over, because the subsequent meeting and voting of the electors in their several States is mere matter of form.

So far the method of choice by electors may seem to be merely a roundabout way of getting the judgment of the people. It is more than this. It has several sin gular consequences, unforeseen by the framers of the Constitution. It has made the election virtually an election by States, for the present system of choosing electors by "general ticket" over the whole State causes the whole weight of a State to be thrown into the scale of one candidate, that candidate whose list of electors is carried in the given State. Pennsylvania, for instance, with her population of four and a half millions, has thirty electoral votes. Each party runs its list or "ticket" of thirty presidential electors for that State, who are bound to vote for the party's candidate, let us say Mr. Blaine or Mr. Cleveland. The Republican list (i.e. that which includes the thirty Blaine electors) is carried by a majority of 473,000 against 392,000. It is of course carried entire, if carried at all, because it would be absurd for any partisans of Mr. Blaine to vote for some only and not for all of the electors whose only function is to vote for him. The Blaine list being thus carried, all the thirty electoral votes of Pennsylvania are secured for Mr. Blaine. The hundreds of thousands of votes given by the people for the Democratic list (i.e. for the Cleveland electors) do not go to swell the support which Mr. Cleveland obtains in other States, but are utterly lost. Hence in a presidential election, the struggle concentrates itself in the doubtful States, where the great parties are pretty equally divided, and is languid in States where a distinct majority either 1 See the chapter on National Nominating Conventions in Vol. II.

way may be anticipated, because, since it makes no difference whether a minority be large or small, it is not worth while to struggle hard to increase a minority which cannot be turned into a majority. And hence also a man may be, and has been,1 elected President by a minority of popular votes.

When such has been the fate of the plan of 1787, it need hardly be said that the ideal President, the great and good man above and outside party, whom the judicious and impartial electors were to choose, has not been secured. The ideal was realized once and once only in the person of George Washington. His successor in the chair (John Adams) was a leader of one of the two great parties then formed, the other of which has, with some changes, lasted down to our own time. Jefferson, who came next, was the chief of that other party, and his election marked its triumph. Nearly every subsequent President has been elected as a party leader by a party vote, and has felt bound to carry out the policy of the men who put him in power.2 Thus instead of getting an Olympian President raised above faction, America has, despite herself, reproduced the English system of executive government by a party majority, reproduced it in a more extreme form, because in England the titular head of

1 This happened in 1876, when Mr. Hayes received, on the showing of his own partisans, only 4,033,708 popular votes, against 4,285,992 given for Mr. Tilden, but was elected President by 185 electoral votes against 184 for Mr. Tilden. In 1880 Mr. Garfield was elected by 214 against 155 electoral votes, but had a popular majority of only 4,454,146 against 4,444,952, less than 10,000 out of the whole Union. In 1860 Abraham Lincolu received much less than half the total popular vote, but had an electoral majority among the presidential electors of 180 against 123 voting for his various rivals. So neither Polk in 1844, nor Taylor in 1848, nor Buchanan in 1856, had an absolute majority of the popular vote. In 1884 the whole thirty-six votes of New York State were cast for Mr. Cleveland, although his popular majority in that State, out of a poll of more than 1,100,000, was just over 1100. And as these thirty-six votes turned the election, it was a majority of only 1100 that determined the issue of the struggle over the whole Union, in which nearly 10,000,000 votes were given.

It is an odd result of the system that the bestowal of the suffrage on the negroes has operated against the Republican party which bestowed it. The Southern States have in respect of this increase in their voting population received 37 additional presidential votes, and these have in the two last elections (1880 and 1884) been all thrown for the Democratic candidate.

2 John Tyler and Andrew Johnson, both of whom quarrelled with their party, were both elected as Vice-Presidents, and succeeded to the chair on the death of the persons who had been elected Presidents. James Monroe was chosen President in 1820 with practical unanimity; but this was because one of the two parties had for the time been crushed out and started no candidate. So also J. Q. Adams, Monroe's successor, can hardly be called a party leader. After him the party-chosen Presidents go on without interruption.

the State, in whose name administrative acts are done, stands in isolated dignity outside party politics. The disadvantages of the American plan are patent; but in practice they are less serious than might be expected, for the responsibility of a great office and the feeling that he represents the whole nation have tended to sober and control the President. Except as regards patronage, he has seldom, at least since the War of Secession, acted as a mere tool of faction, or sought to abuse his administrative powers to the injury of his political adversaries.

The Constitution prescribes no limit for the re-eligibility of the President. He may go on being chosen for one four year period after another for the term of his natural life. But tradition has supplied the place of law. Elected in 1789, Washington submitted to be re-elected in 1792. But when he had served this second term he absolutely refused to serve a third, urging the risk to republican institutions of suffering the same man to continue constantly in office. Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Jackson obeyed the precedent, and did not seek, nor their friends for them, re-election after two terms. After them no President was re-elected, except Lincoln, down to General Grant. Grant was President from 1869 to 1873, and again from 1873 to 1877, then came Mr. Hayes; and in 1880 an attempt was made to break the unwritten rule in Grant's favour. Each party, as will be more fully explained hereafter, nominates its candidates in a gigantic party assembly called the National Convention. In the Republican party Convention of 1880 a powerful group of the delegates put forward Grant for nomination as the party candidate, alleging his special services as a ground for giving him the honour of a third term. Had there not been among the Republicans themselves a section personally hostile to Grant, or rather to those who surrounded him, the attempt might have succeeded, though it would probably have involved defeat at the polls. But this hostile section found the prepossession of the people against a third term so strong that, by appealing to the established tradition, they defeated the Grant men in the Convention, and obtained the nomination of Mr. Garfield, who was victorious at the ensuing election. This precedent has been taken as practically decisive for the future, because General Grant, though his administration had been marked by grave faults, was an exceptionally popular figure. A principle affirmed against him is not likely to be departed from in favour of any aspirant for many elections to come.

The Constitution (Amendment xii., which in this point repeats the original Art. xi. § 1) requires for the choice of a President "a majority of the whole number of electors appointed." If no such majority is obtained by any candidate, i.e. if the votes of the electors are so scattered among different candidates, that out of the total number (which is now 401) no one receives an absolute majority (i.e. at least 201 votes), the choice goes over to the House of Representatives, who are empowered to choose a President from among the three candidates who have received the largest number of electoral votes. In the House the vote is taken by States, a majority of all the States (i.e. at present of twenty States out of thirty-eight) being necessary for a choice. As all the members of the House from a State have but one collective vote, it follows that if they are equally divided among themselves, e.g. if half the members from a given State, say Pennsylvania, are Democratic and half Republican, the vote of that State is lost. Supposing this to be the case in half the total number of States, or supposing the States so to scatter their votes that no candidate receives an absolute majority, then no President is chosen, and the Vice-President becomes President.1

Only twice has the election gone to the House. In 1800, when the rule still prevailed that the candidate with the largest number of votes became President, and the candidate who came second Vice-President, Jefferson and Aaron Burr received the same number. The Jeffersonian electors meant to make him President, but as they had also all voted for Burr, there was a tie. After a long struggle the House chose Jefferson.2 Feeling ran high, and had Jefferson been kept out by the votes of the Federalist party, his partisans might possibly have taken up arms. In 1824 Andrew Jackson had 99 electoral votes, and his three competitors (J. Q. Adams, W. H. Crawford, and Henry Clay), 162 votes between them, so that Jackson wanted 32 of an absolute majority. The House chose J. Q. Adams by a vote of thirteen States against seven for Jackson and four for Crawford.3

1 As to the choice of the Vice-President by the Senate see Constit., Am. xii. The votes of two States were for a long time divided; but Hamilton's influence at last induced the Federalist members to vote for Jefferson as a person less dangerous to the country than Burr. His action-highly patriotic, for Jefferson was his bitter enemy-cost him his life at Burr's hands.

3 Clay, unlucky throughout in his ambitions for the presidency, had stood fourth in the electoral vote, and so could not be chosen by the House. Jackson had received the largest popular vote in those States where electors were chosen by the people.