x machine, fantastic in proportion and impracticable in its
workings. They afford us evidence of the bewilderment which beset
Congress as well as the outside public, and not so much the absence of
reasonable political principles as the absence of a simple and direct
political will, which would resolutely insist that recognized
principles and existing laws should be respected and obeyed.

[Sidenote] "Globe," Dec. 12, 1860, p. 77.

[Sidenote] Ibid., p. 78.

Among the propositions submitted then and afterwards were several wild
and visionary projects of government. Thus Mr. Jenkins, a Virginia
member, proposed an arrangement requiring separate sanction of the
slave-holding interest to each and every operation of government; a
dual executive; a dual senate, or dual majority of the senate, or other
advisory body or council. Mr. Noell, of Missouri, proposed to abolish
the office of President, create an executive council of three members,
from districts of contiguous States, give each member the veto power,
and establish equilibrium between the free and the slave-States in the
Senate by voluntary division of some of the slave-States.

[Sidenote] Ibid., Dec. 13, 1860, pp. 82, 83.

Stronger minds were not entirely free from the infection of this mania
for innovation and experiment. On the 13th of December, 1860, Andrew
Johnson, of Tennessee, afterwards President of the United States,
submitted to the Senate a proposal to amend the Constitution in
substance as follows: That the Presidential election should take place
in August; that a popular plurality in each district should count as
one vote; that Congress should count the votes on the second Monday of
October; that the President chosen in 1864 be from a slave-holding
State, and the Vice-President from a free-State; and in 1868 the
President be from a free-State and the Vice-President from a slave
State, and so alternating every four years. Senators to be elected by
vote of the people. Federal judges to be divided so that one-third of
the number would be chosen every fourth year; the term of office to be
twelve years; also all vacancies to be filled, half from free and half
from slave States, the Territories to be divided, establishing slavery
south and prohibiting it north of a fixed line, and providing that
three-fifths representation and inter-State slave trade shall not be
changed.

[Sidenote] "Globe," Feb. 7, 1861, pp. 794, 795.

Perhaps the most complicate