A SINGLE TERM FOR THE PRESIDENT, AND CHOICE

BY DIRECT VOTE OF THE PEOPLE.

REMARKS IN THE SENATE, ON AN AMENDMENT OF THE NATIONAL CONSTITUTION, FEBRUARY 11, 1867.

THE Senate had under consideration an Amendment to the National Constitution, reported by the Judiciary Committee, as follows:

"No person elected President or Vice-President, who has once served as President, shall afterward be eligible to either office."

Mr. Fessenden, of Maine, thought that the words "who has once served as President" should be struck out. Mr. Williams, of Oregon, suggested: "No person who has once served as President shall afterward be eligible to either office." Mr. Poland, of Vermont, moved, as a substitute, the following:

"The President and Vice-President of the United States shall hereafter be chosen for the term of six years; and no person elected President or Vice-President, who has once served as President, shall afterward be eligible to either office."

Mr. Sumner said :

I

AGREE with the Senator from Maryland [Mr.

JOHNSON], So far as I was able to follow his remarks. It seems to me it would be better, if the term of the President were six years rather than four. I regretted that the report of the Committee did not embody such a change. I am therefore thankful to the Senator from Vermont, who by his motion gives us an opportunity to vote on that proposition.

But allow me to go a little further, and there I should like the attention of my friend opposite [Mr. JOHNSON]. If the term of the President is to be six years, should we not abolish the office of Vice-President? Are you willing to take the chance of a VicePresident becoming President a few weeks after the beginning of the six years' term, and then serving out that full term? We all know, in fact, that the VicePresident is nominated often as a sort of balance to the President. It is too much with a view to certain political considerations, and possibly to aid the election of the President, rather than to secure the services of one in all respects competent to be President. Suppose, therefore, we have a President only, and leave to Congress the provision for a temporary filling of the office, as now on the disability of the President and Vice-President.

I throw out these views without making any motion. I submit that we do not meet all the difficulties of the present hour, unless we go still further and provide against abnormal troubles from the nomination of a Vice-President selected less with reference to fitness than to transient political considerations. As my friend says, he is thrown in for a make-weight, and then, in the providence of God, the make-weight becomes Chief Magistrate. It seems to me important, that, if possible, we should provide against the recurrence of such difficulties.

But suppose the proposition of the Committee to stand as reported, I am brought then to the question raised by the Senator from Maine [Mr. FESSENDEN], whether it should be applicable to a Vice-President in the providence of God called to be President. On

that point I am obliged to go with the Committee. It seems to me that the evil we wish to guard against in the case of the President naturally arises in the case of a Vice-President who becomes President. I say this on the reason of the case, and then I say it on our melancholy experience. The three cases in our history which distinctly teach the necessity of the Amendment before us are of three Vice-Presidents who in the providence of God became Presidents. But for these three cases, nobody would have thought of change. It is to meet the difficulties found to arise from a VicePresident becoming President, and then hearkening to the whisperings and temptations which unhappily visit a person in his situation, that we have been led to contemplate the necessity of change. I hope, therefore, if the proposition of the Senator from Vermont [Mr. POLAND] is not taken as a substitute, that the words of the Committee will be preserved.

I am disposed to go still further. I would have an additional Amendment, one that has not appeared in this discussion, though not unknown in this Chamber, for distinguished Senators who once occupied these seats have more than once advocated it, I mean an Amendment providing for the election of President directly by the people, without the intervention of Electoral Colleges. Such an Amendment would give every individual voter, wherever he might be, a positive weight in the election. It would give minorities in distant States an opportunity of being heard in determining who shall be Chief Magistrate. Now they are of no consequence. Such an Amendment would be of peculiar value. It would be in harmony, too, with those ideas, belonging to the hour, of the unity

of the Republic. I know nothing that would contribute more to bring all the people, to mass all the people, into one united whole, than to make the President directly eligible by their votes. But no such proposition is before us, nor is there any such proposition as I have alluded to with regard to the office of VicePresident. I hope, however, that these subjects will not be allowed to pass out of mind, and that some time or other we shall be able to act on them in a practical way.

After debate, the question was dropped without any vote.

RECONSTRUCTION AT LAST WITH COLORED SUFFRAGE AND PROTECTION AGAINST REBEL INFLUENCE.

SPEECHES IN THE SENATE, ON THE BILL TO PROVIDE FOR THE MORE EFFICIENT GOVERNMENT OF THE REBEL STATES, FEBRUARY 14, 19, AND 20, 1867.

THE subject of Reconstruction was uppermost during the present session, sometimes in Constitutional Amendments and sometimes in measures of legislation.

February 13th, the Senate received from the House of Representatives a bill "to provide for the more efficient government of the Insurrectionary States," which, after various changes, was finally passed under the title of "An Act to provide for the more efficient government of the Rebel States," being the most important measure of legislation in the history of Reconstruction. As this bill came from the House it was a military bill, creating five military districts in the South, without any requirement with regard to suffrage, and with no exclusion of Rebels. Mr. Bingham, of Ohio, and Mr. Blaine, of Maine, announced in the House amendments requiring in the new constitutions "that the elective franchise shall be enjoyed by all male citizens of the United States twenty-one years old and upward, without regard to race, color, or previous condition of servitude, except such as may be disfranchised for participating in the late Rebellion or for felony at Common Law." But they had not been able to obtain a direct vote; nor was there any exclusion of Rebels in their propositions. Mr. Stevens, of Pennsylvania, said :—

"The amendment of the gentleman from Maine [Mr. BLAINE] lets in a vast number of Rebels and shuts out nobody. All I ask is, that, when the House comes to vote upon that amendment, it shall understand that the adoption of it would be an entire surrender of those States into the hands of the Rebels."