This Was The Intention Of
Those Who Framed The Constitution.
It may, as I have said, be
doubted whether this theory has ever availed for action; but since
the days of Jackson it has been absolutely abandoned.
The intention
was sufficiently conservative. The electors to whom was to be
confided this great trust, were to be chosen in their own States as
each State might think fit. The use of universal suffrage for this
purpose was neither enjoined nor forbidden in the separate States -
was neither treated as desirable or undesirable by the Constitution.
Each State was left to judge how it would elect its own electors.
But the President himself was to be chosen by those electors and not
by the people at large. The intention is sufficiently conservative,
but the intention is not carried out.
The electors are still chosen by the different States in conformity
with the bidding of the Constitution. The Constitution is exactly
followed in all its biddings, as far as the wording of it is
concerned; but the whole spirit of the document has been evaded in
the favor of democracy, and universal suffrage in the presidential
elections has been adopted. The electors are still chosen, it is
true; but they are only chosen as the mouth-piece of the people's
choice, and not as the mind by which that choice shall be made. We
have all heard of Americans voting for a ticket - for the Democratic
ticket, or the Republican ticket. All political voting in the
States is now managed by tickets. As regards these presidential
elections, each party decides on a candidate. Even this primary
decision is a matter of voting among the party itself. When Mr.
Lincoln was nominated as its candidate by the republican party, the
names of no less than thirteen candidates were submitted to the
delegates who were sent to a convention at Chicago, assembled for
the purpose of fixing upon a candidate. At that convention Mr.
Lincoln was chosen as the Republican candidate and in that
convention was in fact fought the battle which was won in Mr.
Lincoln's favor, although that convention was what we may call a
private arrangement, wholly irrespective of any constitutional
enactment. Mr. Lincoln was then proclaimed as the Republican
candidate, and all Republicans were held as bound to support him.
When the time came for the constitutional election of the electors,
certain names were got together in each State as representing the
Republican interest. These names formed the Republican ticket, and
any man voting for them voted in fact for Lincoln. There were three
other parties, each represented by a candidate, and each had its own
ticket in the different States. It is not to be supposed that the
supporters of Mr. Lincoln were very anxious about their ticket in
Alabama, or those of Mr. Breckinridge as to theirs in Massachusetts.
In Alabama, a Democratic slave ticket would, of course, prevail. In
Massachusetts, a Republican free-soil ticket would do so.
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