Mr. President (47 page)

  9
. Dickinson, on the following day, managed to ensure that the Senate’s appointive powers extended no further than ambassadors and Supreme Court justices, but he did not challenge these.

10
. Morris’s fingerprints can be found on other changes emerging from the Committee of Eleven. The idea of voting for two candidates was his, first suggested on July 25. When the committee inserted a fourteen-year residency requirement for the president, it did not pull that number out of a hat—back on August 9, Morris had pushed that requirement for senators.

11
. Hamilton to King, August 10, 1787, in Hamilton,
Papers
, 4:235. For Morris’s writing this draft, see Morris to Timothy Pickering, December 22, 1814, in Farrand,
Records
, 3:420; James Madison to Jared Sparks, April 8, 1831, in Farrand,
Records
, 3:499; Ezra Stiles, Diary (based on Abraham Baldwin’s account), December 21, 1787, in Farrand,
Records
, 3:170.

12
. For Morris’s biographers and why they failed to focus on his maneuverings, see the Postscript.

13
. In the spray of small details that scattered the floor debates over the final four days, one additional issue marginally affected the presidency. In previous drafts, the U.S. treasurer was to be appointed jointly by Congress, which raised and appropriated the funds the treasurer was supposed to guard. John Rutledge, though, wanted the president, not Congress, to choose the treasurer, and Gouverneur Morris instantly agreed. Morris’s reasoning was a bit strange: Congress would do a better job of overseeing an officer who had been appointed by somebody else. Throughout the convention, Morris had argued that the president should be chosen by someone other than Congress to achieve more independence; now he was saying an independent appointee could be more closely scrutinized. Although his argument made no sense, it further revealed Morris’s stance: the executive should receive all powers the convention was willing to give it. Rutledge’s motion prevailed, not for Morris’s reasons, but for consistency, since most similar appointments now lay with the president.

  1
. Mason to Jefferson, May 26, 1788, in Mason,
Papers
, 3:1045.

  2
. Ibid., 991–92;
DHRC
, 8:43–45 or 13:348–50.

  3
. Mason,
Papers
, 3:1001–5;
DHRC
, 8:46.

  4
. Washington,
Diaries
, 5:186;
DHRC
, 13:243.

  5
. Washington to Mason and Mason to Washington, October 7, 1787, in Mason,
Papers
, 3:1001, 1004–5.

  6
. Madison to Washington, September 30, 1787, in
DHRC
, 8:27 or 13:275; Washington to Madison, October 10, 1787, in ibid., 8:49 or 13:358–59. For the publication of Mason’s “Objections,” see ibid., 13:346–48.

  7
. Washington to Henry, Harrison, and Nelson, September 24, 1787, in ibid., 8:15.

  8
. Washington to Knox, October 15, 1787, in ibid., 56–57; and Washington to Stuart, October 17, 1787, in ibid., 69.

  9
. Hamilton to Washington, November 10, 1787, Madison to Washington, November 18, 1787, Washington to Stuart, November 30, 1787, and Washington to Madison, December 7, 1787, in ibid., 152, 167–68, 181–82, 193–94, 224.

10
. Washington,
Writings
, 26:483–96.

11
. Mason’s “Objections,” in
DHRC
, 8:45 or 13:350; Washington to Stuart, November 30, 1787, in ibid., 8:193.

12
. Washington to Madison, December 7, 1787, in ibid., 8:224; Washington to Stuart, November 30, 1787, in ibid., 193.

13
. Donald to Jefferson, November 12, 1787, in ibid., 155.

14
. Ibid., 197, 216, 276–78.

15
. Douglas Southall Freeman,
George Washington: A Biography
(New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1951), 6:119.

16
. Ibid., 125; Madison,
Notes
, September 17.

17
. Grayson to William Short, November 20, 1787, in
DHRC
, 8:150; Lee to Randolph, October 16, 1787, in ibid., 61.

18
. John G. Roberts, “An Exchange of Letters Between Jefferson and Quesnay de Beaurepaire,”
Virginia Magazine of History and Biography
, April 1942, 134–42; Virginius Dabney,
Richmond: The Story of a City
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990), 40–44.

19
. Mason to Martin Cockburn, May 26, 1774, in Mason,
Papers
, 1:190.

20
.
DHRC
, 9:963–64.

21
. For Robertson’s note taking, see ibid., 902–6.

22
. Ibid., 962.

23
. Ibid., 1045, 1063.

24
. Ibid., 1051, and 10:1476.

25
. Herbert J. Storing, ed.,
The Complete Anti-Federalist
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 5:196, 4:277, 3:129.

26
.
DHRC
, 10:1378–79.

27
. Storing,
Complete Anti-Federalist
, 5:196.

28
. John DeWitt, Dissent of the Minority of the Convention of Pennsylvania, and Federal Farmer, in ibid., 4:26, 3:162, 2:304.

29
. Ibid., 3:129, 89–90.

30
. Madison,
Notes
, September 15.

31
.
DHRC
, 10:1376.

32
. The amendments can be found in the respective volumes of
DHRC
, in
The Bill of Rights: A Documentary History
, ed. Bernard Schwartz (New York: Chelsea House, 1971), vol. 2, or by searching the Web site of Yale Law School’s Avalon Project for “ratification” plus each particular state.

33
. New York also tried to close a worrisome loophole. In case of death or incapacity of both the president and the vice president, Congress was empowered to appoint their successors, but nowhere was it stipulated that these would serve only for the
remainder
of a four-year term. To solve this, they proposed there must be a presidential election every four years.

34
.
DHRC
, 9:822, 10:1547–50.

35
. Ibid., 10:1373–75.

36
. Ibid., 1373; Madison,
Notes
, May 31; Storing,
Complete Anti-Federalist
, 2:115, 5:168. Cato is believed to have been either Governor George Clinton or Abraham Yates (
DHRC
, 13:255).

37
.
DHRC
, 10:1376. Although creating a method for popular elections would have presented great political challenges, it would not have been impossible at the Federal Convention. (See chapter 5, note 7.) After the convention, however, the difficulties in negotiating compromises addressing the issues mentioned in this paragraph were greatly magnified; coming up with a politically viable alternative within the state ratifying conventions
was
nearly impossible.

38
. Ibid., 2:566–67.

39
. Madison,
Notes
, September 4, 6, and 7;
DHRC
, 13:341.

40
. Madison to Washington, April 16, 1787, in Madison,
Papers
, Congressional Series, 9:384–85.

41
. Madison,
Notes
, September 7, 8, 12, 14, and 15.

42
. On February 24, 1815, Morris wrote to W. H. Wells, “I was warmly pressed by Hamilton to assist in writing the Federalist, which I declined” (Farrand,
Records
, 3:421).

43
. Hamilton,
Papers
, 4:185–86.

44
. Madison,
Notes
, September 7 and July 17.

  1
. Washington to Pierce, January 1, 1789, and Washington to Madison, January 2, 1789, in Washington,
Papers
, Presidential Series, 1:227, 229; editorial comment, in ibid., 2:152–53; Washington to Henry Lee, September 22, 1788, in Washington,
Writings
, 30:97–98.

  2
. The draft Washington sent to Madison was originally composed by David Humphreys, his longtime aide, then copied and edited by the presumed author. Both the draft and the final speech, with editorial explanation, appear in Washington,
Papers
, Presidential Series, 2:152–77.

  3
. Maclay,
Journal
, 9–12.

  4
. Ibid., 24–29, 34–36;
Senate Journal
, 1:23–25, Library of Congress, American Memory, A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation,
http://​memory​.​l​oc​.gov​/ammem​/amlaw​/lwej​.html
;
Annals
, 1:331–37; Stuart to Washington, July 14, 1789, in Washington,
Papers
, Presidential Series, 3:199.

  5
. Henry Knox to Washington, May 13, 1789, in Washington,
Papers
, Presidential Series, 2:289–94.

  6
. Washington to Adams, May 10, 1789, in ibid, 245–47; Washington to Madison, May 12, 1789, in ibid, 282; and Washington to David Stuart, July 26, 1789, in ibid., 322–23; Forrest McDonald,
The Presidency of George Washington
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1974), 26. See also Washington to Catharine Sawbridge Macaulay Graham, January 9, 1790, in Washington,
Papers
, Presidential Series, 4:552.

  7
. Washington,
Papers
, Presidential Series, 2:165.

  8
.
Annals
, 1:473–78.

  9
. Ibid., 479–82.

10
. Ibid., 514–15, 574, 544.

11
. Ibid., 558, 599. The full debate extends from page 473 to 599. The following Monday, the House returned to the issue from a slightly different perspective. The vote to make the secretary of foreign affairs removable by the president implied congressional authority to make such a decision; this made many members uneasy, for they had argued that this was a matter of constitutional interpretation, not a grant by Congress. So, in its stead, they substituted a convoluted motion that implied the power already existed within the Constitution, and this motion passed by approximately the same margin (ibid., 599–608).

12
. Maclay,
Journal
, 111–16. Thirty-five years later, William Harris Crawford stated (not from firsthand evidence) that Washington “at an early period of his administration” had “gone to the Senate with a project of a treaty to be negotiated, and been present at their deliberations upon it. They debated it and proposed alterations, so that when Washington left the Senate chamber he said he would be damned if he ever went there again.” James Monroe, present during Crawford’s telling of this story, said that some eighteen months after the forming of the government he had gone to the Senate and heard that “something like this had happened.” These tales do not reliably depict what happened on August 22 and 24, 1789, but they do speak to the legacy of what transpired. (James Hart,
The American Presidency in Action, 1789: A Study in Constitutional History
[New York: Macmillan, 1948], 96, citing
The Memoirs of John Quincy Adams
[Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1876], 6:427.)

13
. The removal debate was not forever settled. In 1867, Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act, which prohibited a president, without consent from the Senate, from removing key executive officers who had been appointed by a previous president. This was specifically intended to shift control over Reconstruction from President Andrew Johnson, a foe to the radical Republicans who controlled Congress, to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, their ally. Although the act remained in force for twenty years, it was not effective. Johnson removed Stanton anyway, for which he was impeached, but the Senate acquitted him. Subsequent presidents in those years found ways around the Tenure of Office Act, affirming their control over removal. In 1926, while ruling on a similar law, the Supreme Court declared in
Myers v. United States
“that the Tenure of Office Act of 1867, insofar as it attempted to prevent the President from removing executive officers who had been appointed by him by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, was invalid.”

14
. Charles C. Thach,
The Creation of the Presidency, 1775–1789
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1922), 157–59. Adding to the confusion was a clause in Article II, Section 2 authorizing the president to “require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices.” On the one hand, this would seem to imply presidential authority over executive officers, but opponents of presidential removal could argue the reverse. Why would the framers grant this one very specific authority if they had intended the president to have absolute control over other officers, his alleged underlings, in all matters?

15
. Washington to the U.S. Senate, August 22, 1789, in Washington,
Papers
, Presidential Series, 3:521–25.

16
. Maclay,
Journal
, 128–31.

17
. Washington to Morris, October 13, 1789, in ibid., 4:176.

18
. Washington,
Diaries
, 5:452–53, 460–97. For a map of the tour, see Washington,
Papers
, Presidential Series, 4:200–201.

  1
. Maclay,
Journal
, 174.

  2
. Washington,
Papers
, Presidential Series, 4:543–46.

  3
. Hamilton, “Report on the Public Credit,” January 9, 1790, in Hamilton,
Papers
, 6:65–168.

  4
. Hamilton,
Papers
, 6:99; Franklin to James Parker, March 20, 1750 (or 1751), in Franklin,
Papers
, 4:119.

  5
. Maclay,
Journal
, 189, 194.

  6
. Ibid., 177.

  7
. Randolph to Washington, February 12, 1791, in Washington,
Papers
, Presidential Series, 7:337.