CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS AND THE PRESIDENTIAL
SUCCESSION BILL
When I entered the Senate, I found one very serious inconvenience
and one very great public danger in existing conditions.
The great inconvenience grew out of the fact that by the Constitution
the session of Congress must end on the fourth of March every
other year. A third of the Senate goes out at the same time,
and every fourth year the Presidential term ends. That session
of Congress meets, according to our usage, on the first Monday
of December. The meeting cannot well come much earlier without
preventing the members of the two Houses of Congress from
taking part in the political campaign, where they are justly
expected by the people to give an account of their stewardship,
and to discuss the questions to be considered by the people
in the election. So there are but thirteen weeks in which
to pass fourteen or fifteen great Appropriation Bills, making
it impossible to deal with any other great subject except by
unanimous consent. The result is also that the Appropriation
Bills are put in the power of a very few men indeed. The
House has to submit to the dictation of the Appropriation
Committee, and cannot be allowed to debate, or even to have
a separate vote on matters which nearly the whole House would
like to accomplish, if there were time, but which the Chairman
of the Appropriation Committee, who is usually omnipotent
with his associates, may happen to dislike. On the other
hand, in the Senate, where there is no cloture rule, any single
member, or at best, a very few members, can defeat an Appropriation
Bill and compel an extra session by exercising their right
of uncontrolled debate.
Besides; people from all parts of the country like to attend
the inauguration of a new President. The fourth of March
is at an inclement season, and is apt to be an inclement day,
and it may come on Saturday or Sunday or Monday. So persons
who attend may be obliged to be away from home over Sunday,
and a great many persons have lost their health or life from
exposure in witnessing the inauguration.
I prepared a Constitutional amendment providing that the inauguration
should take place on the last Thursday in April. I have reported
this to the Senate several times. It has always passed that
body with scarcely a dissenting vote, on debate and explanation.
If that had been adopted, if the session were to begin in
the middle of November, a week after the November elections--
which could be accomplished by an act of Congress--instead
of thirteen weeks, to which the session is now limited, there
would be a session of twenty-three or twenty-four weeks. This
would give time for the consideration of such legislation
as might be needful. It would probably, also, permit the
shortening somewhat of the long session, which not infrequently
extends to July or August. But the plan has never found
much favor in the House. Speaker Reed, when he was in power,
said rather contemptuously, that "Congress sits altogether
too long as it is. The less we have of Congress, the better."
The public danger is found in the fact that there is no provision
in the Constitution for the case where the President-elect
dies before inauguration. The provision is:
"In case of the Removal of the President from Office, or
of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the
Powers and Duties of the said Office, the same shall devolve
on the Vice-President, and the Congress may by Law provide
for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability,
both of the President and Vice-President, declaring what Officer
shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly,
until the Disability shall be removed, or a President shall
be elected."
Strictly construed, it is only in the case of the death,
inability, etc., of a President, that a Vice-President can
succeed, or in the case of the death, inability, etc., of the President
and Vice-President both, that Congress has power to declare
on whom the office shall devolve. It must be a President
and Vice-President that die; not merely a President and Vice-
President-elect. That his is not an imaginary danger is shown
by the fact of the well-known scheme to assassinate Lincoln
on his way to the seat of the Government, and also by the
fact that either the President or the Vice-President has died
in office so many times in the recollection of men now living.
President Harrison died during his term; President Taylor
died during his term; Vice-President King died during Pierce's
term; Vice-President Wilson died during Grant's term; President
Garfield died during his term; Vice-President Hendricks died
during Cleveland's term; Vice-President Hobart died during
McKinley's term, and President McKinley during his own second
term. So within sixty years eight of these high officials
have died in office; five of them within thirty years; four
of them within twenty years.
I have also drawn and repeatedly procured the passage through
the Senate of an amendment to the Constitution to protect
the country against this danger. That also has failed of
attention in the House. I suppose it is likely that nothing
will be done about the matter until the event shall happen,
as is not unlikely, that both President and Vice-President-
elect shall become incapacitated between the election and
the time for entering upon office.
I was more successful in providing against another situation
that might prove quite awkward. In Washington's Administration
Congress exercised, as far as it could, the power given by
the Constitution to provide against the death or disability
of both the President and Vice-President, if it should happen
after they had entered upon office, as follows:
"In case of removal, death, resignation or inability of both
the President and the Vice-President of the United States,
the President of the Senate, or, if there is none, then the
Speaker of the House, for the time being, shall act as President,
until the disability is removed or a President elected."
There is a tradition that when this awkward arrangement was
made, the proposition that the Secretary of State should succeed
in the case of such vacancy was defeated by the suggestion
that Mr. Jefferson had too much power and consequence already.
The arrangement seemed to me clearly objectionable. In the
first place the Vice-President, who, it is supposed, has died
or become incapable, is the Constitutional President of the
Senate. The Senate, under the practice and construction of
its power which prevailed down to a very recent period, only
elected a President pro tempore when the Vice-President vacated
the chair. His office terminated when the Vice-President
resumed it, and there was no Constitutional obligation on
the Senate to elect a President pro tempore at all. So it
was quite uncertain whether there would be a President pro
tempore of the Senate at any particular time, especially when
the Senate was not in session. There have been two instances
where the President of the Senate has refused to vacate the
chair, for the reason that he did not desire to have a President
pro tempore elected, and thereby have an honor conferred on
a member of another party than his own. That happened once
in the case of Vice-President Gerry, and again, within my
personal knowledge, in the case of Vice-President Arthur.
When he succeeded to the Presidency there was no President
of the Senate who would have taken his place if he too had
happened to be assassinated. So of the Speaker of the House.
For a great many years the first session of a newly-elected
House of Representatives has begun in December. There is
no Speaker from the previous fourth of March until that time.
Beside, the Senate, whose members hold office for six years
and of whom only one-third goes out every two years, is very
apt to have a majority whose political opinions are opposed
to those which have prevailed in the last Presidential election.
So, if the President and Vice-President both die before taking
their seats, the President of the Senate is quite likely to
bring into the Executive Office opinions which the people
have just rejected in the election.
On the other hand, the Secretary of State is always a member
of the party that has prevailed in the last election, and
is usually the member of the party, next to the President
himself, highest in its confidence. Our Secretaries of State,
with rare exceptions, have been among the very ablest public
men of the country. Among them have been Timothy Pickering,
John Marshall, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams,
Henry Clay, Martin Van Buren, Edward Livingston, Louis McLane,
John Forsyth, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, James Buchanan,
John M. Clayton, Edward Everett, Elihu B. Washburne, Hamilton
Fish, William M. Evarts, James G. Blaine, Thomas F. Bayard,
John Sherman, and John Hay. These men, with scarcely an exception,
have been among the very foremost statesmen of their time.
Several of them have been Presidents of the United States,
and a good many more of them have been prominent candidates
for the Presidency. On the other hand, the list of Presidents
of the Senate contains few names of any considerable distinction.
Another objection to the arrangement was the fact that the
President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House might
be changed at the will of the body that elected them. So
the acting President might be displaced at the will of a political
body. There is a good deal of reason, also, for claiming
that if Congress declare that the officer shall act as President,
he must discharge the duties of his office and the duties
of the President at the same time, a burden which would be
very hard for one man to support. Accordingly I drew and
introduced the existing law, which reads as follows:
_"Be it enacted, etc.,_ That in case of removal, death, resignation
or inability of both the President and Vice-President of the
United States, the Secretary of State, or if there be none,
or in case of his removal, death, resignation or inability,
then the Secretary of the Treasury, or if there be none, or
in the case of his removal, death, resignation or inability,
then the Secretary of War, or if there be none, or in case
of his removal, death, resignation or inability, then the
Attorney-General, or if there be none, or in case of his
removal, death, resignation or inability, then the Secretary of
the Interior, shall act as President until the disability of the
President or Vice-President is removed or a President shall
be elected:
"_Provided,_ That whenever the powers and duties of the office
of President of the United States shall devolve upon any of
the person named herein, if Congress be not then in session,
or if it would not meet in accordance with law within twenty
days thereafter, it shall be the duty of the person upon whom
said powers and duties shall devolve to issue a proclamation
convening Congress in extraordinary session, giving twenty
days' notice of time of meeting.
"Sec. 2. That the preceding section shall only be held to
describe and apply to such officers as shall have been appointed
by the advice and consent of the Senate to the offices therein
named, and such as are eligible to the office of President
under the Constitution, and not under impeachment by the House
of Representatives of the United States at the time the powers
and duties of the office shall devolve upon them respectively.
"Sec. 3. That sections one hundred and forty-six, one hundred
and forty-seven, one hundred and forty-eight, one hundred
and forty-nine and one hundred and fifty of the Revised Statutes
are hereby repealed. (_January_ 19, 1886)."
There was some objection to it at first. It was resisted very
strenuously to the end by Senator Edmunds. But after full
discussion it passed the Senate with few dissenting votes.
In the House Mr. Reed, afterward Speaker, appealed without
success to the political feeling of his associates, demanding
to know if they would rather have Mr. Bayard, who was then
Secretary of State, than John Sherman, who then happened to
be President of the Senate, for President of the United States.
But the House, also, by a large majority, passed the measure.