Joint Resolution proposing an Amendment of the Constitution, confining
the President to One Term.
Whereas for many years there has been an increasing conviction among
the people, without distinction of party, that one wielding the vast
patronage of the President should not be a candidate for reëlection,
and this conviction has found expression in the solemn warnings of
illustrious citizens, and in repeated propositions for an Amendment of
the Constitution confining the President to one term:
Whereas Andrew Jackson was so fully impressed by the peril to
Republican Institutions from the temptations acting on a President,
who, wielding the vast patronage of his office, is a candidate for
reëlection, that, in his first Annual Message, he called attention
to it;[131] that, in his second Annual Message, after setting forth
the design of the Constitution “to secure the independence of each
department of the Government, and promote the healthful and equitable
administration of all the trusts which it has created,” he did not
hesitate to say, “The agent most likely to contravene this design
of the Constitution is the Chief Magistrate,” and then proceeded to
declare, “In order particularly that his appointment may as far as
possible be placed beyond the reach of any improper influences; in
order that he may approach the solemn responsibilities of the highest
office in the gift of a free people uncommitted to any other course
than the strict line of constitutional duty; and that the securities
for this independence may be rendered as strong as the nature of power
and the weakness of its possessor will admit, I cannot too earnestly
invite your attention to the propriety of promoting such an Amendment
of the Constitution as will render him ineligible after one term of
service”;[132] and then, again, in his third Annual Message, the same
President renewed this patriotic appeal:[133]
Whereas William Henry Harrison, following in the footsteps of Andrew
Jackson, felt it a primary duty, in accepting his nomination as
President, to assert the One-Term principle in these explicit words:
“Among the principles proper to be adopted by any Executive sincerely
desirous to restore the Administration to its original simplicity and
purity, I deem the following to be of prominent importance: first,
to confine his service to a single term”;[134] and then, in public
speech during the canvass which ended in his election, declared, “If
the privilege of being President of the United States had been limited
to one term, the incumbent would devote all his time to the public
interest, and there would be no cause to misrule the country”; and he
concluded by pledging himself “before Heaven and Earth, if elected
President of these United States, to lay down, at the end of the term,
faithfully, that high trust at the feet of the people”:[135]
Whereas Henry Clay, though differing much from Andrew Jackson, united
with him on the One-Term principle, and publicly enforced it in a
speech, June 27, 1840, where, after asking for “a provision to render
a person ineligible to the office of President of the United States
after a service of one term,” he explained the necessity of the
Amendment by saying, “Much observation and deliberate reflection have
satisfied me that too much of the time, the thoughts, and the exertions
of the incumbent are occupied during his first term in securing his
reëlection: the public business consequently suffers”;[136] and then,
again, in a letter dated September 13, 1842, while setting forth what
he calls “principal objects engaging the common desire and the common
exertion of the Whig party,” the same statesman specifies “an Amendment
of the Constitution, limiting the incumbent of the Presidential office
to a single term”:[137]
Whereas the Whig party, in its National Convention at Baltimore, May
1, 1844, nominated Henry Clay as President and Theodore Frelinghuysen
as Vice-President, with a platform where “a single term for the
Presidency” is declared to be among “the great principles of
the Whig party, principles inseparable from the public honor and
prosperity, to be maintained and advanced by the election of these
candidates”;[138] which declaration was echoed at the great National
Ratification Convention the next day, addressed by Daniel Webster,
where it was resolved that “the limitation of a President to a single
term” was among the objects “for which the Whig party will unceasingly
strive until their efforts are crowned with a signal and triumphant
success”:[139]
Whereas, in the same spirit and in harmony with these authorities,
another statesman, Benjamin F. Wade, at the close of his long
service in the Senate, most earnestly urged an Amendment of the
Constitution confining the President to one term, and in his speech
on that occasion, February 20, 1866, said, “The offering of this
resolution is no new impulse of mine, for I have been an advocate of
the principle contained in it for many years, and I have derived the
strong impressions which I entertain on the subject from a very careful
observation of the workings of our Government during the period that
I have been an observer of them; I believe it has been very rare that
we have been able to elect a President of the United States who has
not been tempted to use the vast powers intrusted to him according to
his own opinions to advance his reëlection”; and then, after exposing
at length the necessity of this Amendment, the veteran Senator further
declared, “There are defects in the Constitution, and this is among the
most glaring; all men have seen it; and now let us have the nerve, let
us have the resolution to come up and apply the remedy”:[140]
Whereas these testimonies, revealing intense and wide-spread
convictions of the American people, are reinforced by the friendly
observations of De Tocqueville, the remarkable Frenchman to whom our
country is under such great and lasting obligations, in his famous
work on “Democracy in America,” where he says, in words of singular
clearness and force, “Intrigue and corruption are vices natural to
elective Governments; but when the chief of the State can be reëlected,
these vices extend themselves indefinitely, and compromise the very
existence of the country: when a simple candidate seeks success by
intrigue, his manœuvres can operate only over a circumscribed space;
when, on the contrary, the chief of the State himself enters the
lists, he borrows for his own use the force of the Government: in the
first case, it is a man, with his feeble means; in the second, it
is the State itself, with its immense resources, that intrigues and
corrupts”:[141] and then, again, the same great writer, who had studied
our country so closely, testifies: “It is impossible to consider the
ordinary course of affairs in the United States without perceiving that
the desire to be reëlected dominates the thoughts of the President;
that the whole policy of his Administration tends toward this point;
that his least movements are made subservient to this object; that,
especially as the moment of crisis approaches, individual interest
substitutes itself in his mind for the general interest”:[142]
Whereas all these concurring voices, where patriotism, experience, and
reason bear testimony, have additional value at a moment when the
country is looking anxiously to a reform of the civil service, for the
plain reason that the peril from the Chief Magistrate, so long as he is
exposed to temptation, surpasses that from any other quarter, and thus
the first stage in this much-desired reform is the One-Term principle,
to the end that the President, who exercises the appointing power,
reaching into all parts of the country and holding in subserviency
a multitudinous army of office-holders, shall be absolutely without
motive or inducement to employ it for any other purpose than the public
good:
And whereas the character of Republican Institutions requires that the
Chief Magistrate shall be above all suspicion of using the machinery
of which he is the official head to promote his own personal aims:
Therefore,
_Be it resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives, &c._,
That the following Article is hereby proposed as an Amendment to
the Constitution of the United States, and, when ratified by the
Legislatures of three-fourths of the several States, shall be valid, to
all intents and purposes, as part of the Constitution; to wit: