are in no danger! The road which is contem- who can find himself in the presence of that plated will trespass upon the soil, or infringe upon great man, and retire from it without bringing the jurisdiction of no State whatsoever. It runs off some fact, or some maxim, of eminent utility a course and a distance to avoid all that; for it to the human race. I trust that I did not so begins upon the outside line of the outside State, manage. I trust that, in bringing off a fact and runs directly off towards the setting sun- which led to the discovery of the precedent, far away from all the States. The Congress and which is to remove the only serious objection to the Indians are alone to be consulted, and the the road in question, I have done a service, if not statute book is full of precedents. Protesting to the human family, at least to the citizens of against the necessity of producing precedents for the two greatest Republics in the world. It an act in itself pregnant with propriety, I will was on the evening of Christmas day that I yet name a few in order to illustrate the policy called upon Mr. Jefferson. The conversation, of the government, and show its readiness to among other things, turned upon roads. make roads through Indian countries to facilitate spoke of one from Georgia to New Orleans, the intercourse of its citizens, and even upon made during the last term of his own adminisforeign territory to promote commerce and na-tration. He said there was a manuscript map tional communications."

Precedents were then shown. 1. A road from Nashville, Tennessee, through the Chicasaw and Choctaw tribes, to Natchez, 1806; 2, a road through the Creek nations, from Athens, in Georgia, to the 31st degree of north latitude, in the direction to New Orleans, 1806, and continued by act of 1807, with the consent of the Spanish government, through the then Spanish territory of West Florida to New Orleans; 3, three roads through the Cherokee nation, to open an intercourse between Georgia, Tennessee, and the lower Mississippi; and more than twenty others upon the territory of the United States. But the precedent chiefly relied upon was that from Athens through the Creek Indian territory and the Spanish dominions to New Orleans. It was up to the exigency of the occasion in every particular-being both upon Indian territory within our dominions, and upon foreign territory beyond them. The road I wanted fell within the terms of both these qualifications. It was to pass through tribes within our own territory, until it reached the Arkansas River: there it met the foreign boundary established by the treaty of 1819, which gave away, not only Texas, but half the Arkansas besides; and the bill which I brought in provided for continuing the road, with the assent of Mexico, from this boundary to Santa Fé, on the Upper del Norte. I deemed it fair to give additional emphasis to this precedent, by showing that I had it from Mr. Jefferson, and said:

He

of it in the library of Congress (formerly his own), bound up in a certain volume of maps, which he described to me. On my return to Washington, I searched the statute book, and I found the acts which authorized the road to be made: they are the same which I have just read to the Senate. I searched the Congress Library, and I found the volume of maps which he had described; and here it is (presenting a huge folio), and there is the map of the road from dred miles of which, marked in blue ink, is Georgia to New Orleans, more than two huntraced through the then dominions of the King of Spain!"

and was not entirely covered by the precedent. The foreign part of the road was the difficulty, That was a road to our own city, and no other direct territorial way from the Southern States than through the Spanish province of West Florida: this was a road to be, not only on foreign territory, but to go to a foreign country. Some Senators, favorable to the bill, were startled at it, and Mr. Lloyd, of Massachusetts, moved to strike out the part of the section which provided for this ex-territorial national highway; but not in a spirit of hostility to the bill itself providing for protection to a branch of commerce. Mr. Lowrie, of Pennsylvania, could not admit the force of the objection, and held it to be only a modification of what was substitution of land for water; and instanced the now done for the protection of commerce-the the Mediterranean Sea, and in the most remote sums annually spent in maintaining a fleet in oceans for the same purpose. Mr. Van Buren, thought the government was bound to extend the same protection to this branch of trade as to any other; and the road upon the foreign territory was only to be marked out, not made. Mr. Macon thought the question no great mat

"For a knowledge of this precedent, I am indebted to a conversation with Mr. Jefferson himself. In a late excursion to Virginia, I availed myself of a broken day to call and pay my respects to that patriarchal statesman. The individual must manage badly, Mr. President, ter. Formerly Indian traders followed "traces:"

with the consent of the Mexican government. The bill passed the Senate by a large vote-30 to 12; and these are the names of the Senators voting for and against it:

YEAS.-Messrs. Barton, Benton, Bouligny, Brown, D'Wolf, Eaton, Edwards, Elliott, Holmes of Miss., Jackson (the General), Johnson of Kentucky, Johnston of Lou., Kelly, Knight, Lanman, Lloyd of Mass., Lowrie, McIlvaine, McLean, Noble, Palmer, Parrott, Ruggles, Seymour, Smith, Talbot, Taylor, Thomas, Van Buren, Van Dyke―30.

NAYS.-Messrs. Branch, Chandler, Clayton, Cobb, Gaillard, Hayne, Holmes of Maine, King of Ala., King of N. Y., Macon, Tazewell, Williams-12.

It passed the House of Representatives by a majority of thirty-received the approving signature of Mr. Monroe, among the last acts of his public life-was carried into effect by his successor, Mr. John Quincy Adams-and this road has remained a thoroughfare of commerce between Missouri and New Mexico, and all the western internal provinces ever since.

now they must have roads. He did not care for precedents: they are generally good or bad as they suit or cross our purposes. The case of the road made by Mr. Jefferson was different. That road was made among Indians comparatively civilized, and who had some notions of property. But the proposed road now to be marked out would pass through wild tribes who think of nothing but killing and robbing a white man the moment they see him, and would not be restrained by treaty obligations even if they entered into them. Col. Johnson, of Kentucky, had never hesitated to vote the money which was necessary to protect the lives or property of our sea-faring men, or for Atlantic fortifications, or to suppress piracies. We had, at this session voted $500,000 to suppress piracy in the West Indies. We build ships of war, erect lighthouses, spend annual millions for the protection of ocean commerce; and he could not suppose that the sum proposed in this bill for the protection of an inland branch of trade so valuable to the West could be denied. Mr. Kelly, of Alabama, said the great object of the bill was to cherish and foster a branch of commerce already in existence. It is carried on by land through several Indian tribes. To be safe, a road must be had—a right of way-"a trace," if you please. To answer its purpose, this road, or "trace," must pass the boundary of the United States, and extend several hundred miles through the PRESIDENTIAL AND VICE-PRESIDENTIAL ELECwilderness country, in the Mexican Republic to the settlements with which the traffic must be carried on. It may be well to remember that the Mexican government is in the germ of its existence, struggling with difficulties that we have long since surmounted, and may not feel it convenient to make the road, and that it is enough to permit us to mark it out upon her soil; which is all that this bill proposes to do within her limits. Mr. Smith, of Maryland, would vote for the bill. The only question with him was, whether commerce could be carried on to advantage on the proposed route; and, being satisfied that it could be, he should vote for the bill. Mr. Brown, of Ohio (Ethan A.), was very glad to hear such sentiments from the Senator from Maryland, and hoped that a reciprocal good feeling would always prevail between different sections of the Union. He thought there could be no objection to the bill, and approved the policy of getting the road upon Mexican territory

CHAPTER XVII.

TION IN THE ELECTORAL COLLEGES.

FOUR candidates were before the people for the office of President-General Jackson, Mr. John Quincy Adams, Mr. William H. Crawford, and Mr. Henry Clay. Mr. Crawford had been nominated in a caucus of democratic members of Congress; but being a minority of the members, and the nomination not in accordance with public opinion, it carried no authority along with it, and was of no service to the object of its choice. General Jackson was the candidate of the people, brought forward by the masses. Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay were brought forward by bodies of their friends in different States. The whole number of electoral votes was 261; of which it required 131 to make an election. No one had that number. General Jackson was the highest on the list, and had 99 votes; Mr. Adams 84; Mr. Crawford 41; Mr. Clay 37. No one having a majority of the whole of electors, the election devolved upon the House of

Representatives; of which an account will be from that high station during the intermediate given in a separate chapter. thirty years, devoted himself to the noble pursuits of agriculture, literature, the study of po

In the vice-presidential election it was different. Mr. John C. Calhoun (who in the be-litical economy, and the service of his State or ginning of the canvass had been a candidate county when called by his fellow-citizens. Perfor the Presidency, but had been withdrawn by sonally I knew him but slightly, our meeting in his friends in Pennsylvania, and put forward the Senate being our first acquaintance, and our for Vice-President), received 182 votes in the senatorial association limited to the single seselectoral college, and was elected. Mr. Nathan sion of which he was a member-1823-24;-at Sandford, Senator in Congress from New-York, the end of which he died. But all my observahad been placed on the ticket with Mr. Clay, tion of him, and his whole appearance and deand received 30 votes. The 24 votes of Vir- portment, went to confirm the reputation of his ginia were given to Mr. Macon, as a compli- individuality of character, and high qualities ment, he not being a candidate, and having of the head and the heart. I can hardly figure refused to become one. The nine votes of to myself the ideal of a republican statesman Georgia were given to Mr. Van Buren, also as a more perfect and complete than he was in recompliment, he not being on the list of candi-ality:-plain and solid, a wise counsellor, a ready dates. Mr. Albert Gallatin had been nominated and vigorous debater, acute and comprehensive, in the Congress caucus with Mr. Crawford, ripe in all historical and political knowledge, inbut finding the proceedings of that caucus un-nately republican-modest, courteous, benevolent, acceptable to the people he had withdrawn from hospitable—a skilful, practical farmer, giving his the canvass. Mr. Calhoun was the only sub- time to his farm and his books, when not called stantive vice-presidential candidate before the by an emergency to the public service-and repeople, and his election was an evidence of good turning to his books and his farm when the feeling in the North towards southern men-he emergency was over. His whole character was receiving the main part of his votes from that announced in his looks and deportment, and in quarter-114 votes from the non-slaveholding his uniform (senatorial) dress—the coat, waistStates, and only 68 from the slaveholding. A coat, and pantaloons of the same "London southern man, and a slaveholder, Mr. Calhoun brown," and in the cut of a former fashionwas indebted to northern men and non-slave- beaver hat with ample brim-fine white linen holders, for the honorable distinction of an elec--and a gold-headed cane, carried not for show, tion in the electoral colleges-the only one in but for use and support when walking and the electoral colleges-the only one on all the bending under the heaviness of years. He lists of presidential and vice-presidential candi- seemed to have been cast in the same mould dates who had that honor. Surely there was with Mr. Macon, and it was pleasant to see no disposition in the free States at that time to them together, looking like two Grecian sages, be unjust, or unkind to the South. and showing that regard for each other which every one felt for them both. He belonged to that constellation of great men which shone so brightly in Virginia in his day, and the light of which was not limited to Virginia, or our America, but spread through the bounds of the civilized world. He was the author of several works, political and agricultural, of which his Arator in one class, and his Construction Construed in another, were the principal-one adorning and exalting the plough with the attributes of science; the other exploring the confines of the federal and the State governments, and presenting a mine of constitutional law very profitably to be examined by the political student who will not be repulsed from a banquet of rich

CHAPTER XVIII.

DEATH OF JOHN TAYLOR, OF CAROLINE.

FOR by that designation was discriminated, in his own State, the eminent republican statesman of Virginia, who was a Senator in Congress in the first term of General Washington's administration, and in the last term of Mr. Monroeand who, having voluntarily withdrawn himself

ideas, by the quaint Sir Edward Coke style- Thus the theory had failed in its application to

the electoral college; but there might be a second or contingent election, and has been; and here the theory of the constitution has failed again. In the event of no choice being made by the electors, either for want of a majority of electoral votes being given to any one, or on account of an equal majority for two, the House of Representatives became an electoral college for the occasion, limited to a choice out of the five highest (before the constitution was amended), or the two highest having an equal majority. The President and Vice-President were not then voted for separately, or with any designation of their office. All appeared upon the record as presidential nominees-the highest on the list having a majority, to be President; the

(the only point of resemblance between the republican statesman, and the crown officer of Elizabeth and James)-in which it is dressed. Devotion to State rights was the ruling feature of his policy; and to keep both governments, State and federal, within their respective constitutional orbits, was the labor of his political life. In the years 1798 and '99, Mr. Taylor was a member of the General Assembly of his State, called into service by the circumstances of the times; and was selected on account of the dignity and gravity of his character, his power and readiness in debate, and his signal devotion to the rights of the States, to bring forward those celebrated resolutions which Mr. Jefferson conceived, which his friends sanctioned, which Mr. Madison drew up, and which "John Taylor, of Caroline," | next highest, also having a majority, to be Vicepresented;—which are a perfect exposition of the principles of our duplicate form of government, and of the limitations upon the power of the federal government ;—and which, in their declaration of the unconstitutionality of the alien and sedition laws, and appeal to other States for their co-operation, had nothing in view but to initiate a State movement by two-thirds of the States (the number required by the fifth article of the federal constitution), to amend, or authoritatively expound the constitution;-the idea of forcible resistance to the execution of any act of Congress being expressly disclaimed at the time.

CHAPTER XIX.

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION IN THE HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES.

It has already been shown that the theory of the constitution, and its practical working, was entirely different in the election of President and Vice-President-that by the theory, the people were only to choose electors, to whose superior intelligence the choice of fit persons for these high stations was entirely committed-and that, in practice, this theory had entirely failed from the beginning. From the very first election the electors were made subordinate to the people, having no choice of their own, and pledged to deliver their votes for a particular person, according to the will of those who elected them.

President; but the people, from the beginning, had discriminated between the persons for these respective places, always meaning one on their ticket for President, the other for Vice-President. But, by the theory of the constitution and its words, those intended Vice-Presidents might be elected President in the House of Representatives, either by being among the five highest when there was no majority, or being one of two in an equal majority. This theory failed in the House of Representatives from the first election, the demos krateo principle-the people to govern-prevailing there as in the electoral colleges, and overruling the constitutional design in each.

The first election in the House of Representatives was that of Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Burr, in the session of 1800-1801. These gentlemen had each a majority of the whole number of electoral votes, and an equal majority -73 each -Mr. Burr being intended for Vice-President. One of the contingencies had then occurred in

which the election went to the House of Representatives. The federalists had acted more wisely, one of their State electoral colleges (that of Rhode Island), having withheld a vote from the intended Vice-President on their side, Mr. Charles Colesworth Pinckney, of South Carolina; and so prevented an equality of votes between him and Mr. John Adams. It would have been entirely constitutional in the House of Representatives to have elected Mr. Burr President, but at the same time, a gross violation of the democratic principle, which requires the will of the majority to be complied with.

took place between the theory of the constitution and the democratic principle; and with eventual defeat to the opposers of that principle, though temporarily successful. Mr. Adams was elected, though General Jackson was the choice of the people, having received the greatest number of votes, and being undoubtedly the second choice of several States whose votes had been given to Mr. Crawford and Mr. Clay (at the general election). The representatives from some of these States gave the vote of the State to Mr. Adams, upon the argument that he was best qualified for the station, and that it was dangerous to our institutions to elect a military chieftain—an argument which assumed a guardianship over the people, and implied the necessity of a superior intelligence to guide them for their own good. The election of Mr. Adams was perfectly constitutional, and as such fully sub

The federal States undertook to elect Mr. Burr, and kept up the struggle for seven days and nights, and until the thirty-sixth ballot. There were sixteen States, and it required the concurrence of nine to effect an election. Until the thirty-sixth Mr. Jefferson had eight, Mr. Burr six, and two were divided. On the thirty-sixth ballot Mr. Jefferson had ten States and was elected. General Hamilton, though not then in public life, took a decided part in this election, rising above all personal and all party considerations, and urging the federalists from the beginning to vote for Mr. Jefferson. Thus the democratic principle prevailed. The choice of the people was elected by the House of Representatives; and the struggle was fatal to those who had opposed that principle. The federal party was broken down, and at the ensuing Congress elections, was left in a small minority. Its candidate at the ensuing presidential election receiv-mitted to by the people; but it was also a violaed but fourteen votes out of one hundred and seventy-six. Burr, in whose favor, and with whose connivance the struggle had been made, was ruined-fell under the ban of the republican party, disappeared from public life, and was only seen afterwards in criminal enterprises, and ending his life in want and misery. The constitution itself, in that particular (the mode of election), was broken down, and had to be amended so as to separate the presidential from the vice-presidential ticket, giving each a separate vote; and in the event of no election by the electoral colleges, sending each to separate houses-the three highest on the presidential lists to the House of Representatives, the two highest on the vicepresidential, to the Senate. And thus ended the first struggle in the House of Representatives (in relation to the election of President), between the theory of the constitution and the democratic principle-triumph to the principle, ruin to its opposers, and destruction to the clause in the constitution, which permitted such a struggle.

The second presidential election in the House of Representatives was after the lapse of a quarter of a century, and under the amended constitution, which carried the three highest on the list to the House when no one had a majority of the electoral votes. General Jackson, Mr. John Quincy Adams, and Mr. William H. Crawford, were the three, their respective votes being 99, 84, 41; and in this case a second struggle

tion of the demos krateo principle; and that violation was signally rebuked. All the representatives who voted against the will of their constituents, lost their favor, and disappeared from public life. The representation in the House of Representatives was largely changed at the first general election, and presented a full opposition to the new President. Mr. Adams himself was injured by it, and at the ensuing presidential election was beaten by General Jackson more than two to one-178 to 83. Mr. Clay, who took the lead in the House for Mr. Adams, and afterwards took upon himself the mission of reconciling the people to his election in a series of public speeches, was himself crippled in the effort, lost his place in the democratic party, joined the whigs (then called national republicans), and has since presented the disheartening spectacle of a former great leader figuring at the head of his ancient foes in all their defeats, and lingering on their rear in their victories. The democratic principle was again victor over the theory of the constitution, and great and good were the results that ensued. It vindicated the demos in their right and their power, and showed that the prefix to the constitution, "We, the people, do ordain and establish," &c., may also be added to its administration, showing them to be as able to administer as to make that instrument. It re-established parties upon the basis of principle, and drew anew party lines, then almost obliterated under