the history of our country, under the Constitution
as it now is, a dispute exists with regard to the result of the election
of the Chief Magistrate of the nation.

It is understood that upon the disposition of disputes touching the
electoral votes cast at the late election by one or more of the States
depends the question whether one or the other of the candidates for
the Presidency is to be the lawful Chief Magistrate. The importance of
having clearly ascertained, by a procedure regulated by law, which of
the two citizens has been elected, and of having the right to this high
office recognized and cheerfully agreed in by all the people of the
Republic, can not be overestimated, and leads me to express to Congress
and to the nation my great satisfaction at the adoption of a measure
that affords an orderly means of decision of a gravely exciting
question.

While the history of our country in its earlier periods shows that
the President of the Senate has counted the votes and declared their
standing, our whole history shows that in no instance of doubt or
dispute has he exercised the power of deciding, and that the two Houses
of Congress have disposed of all such doubts and disputes, although in
no instance hitherto have they been such that their decision could
essentially have affected the result.

For the first time the Government of the United States is now brought to
meet the question as one vital to the result, and this under conditions
not the best calculated to produce an agreement or to induce calm
feeling in the several branches of the Government or among the people
of the country. In a case where, as now, the result is involved,
it is the highest duty of the lawmaking power to provide in advance a
constitutional, orderly, and just method of executing the Constitution
in this most interesting and critical of its provisions. The doing so,
far from being a compromise of right, is an enforcement of right and
an execution of powers conferred by the Constitution on Congress.

I think that this orderly method has been secured by the bill, which,
appealing to the Constitution and the law as the guide in ascertaining
rights, provides a means of deciding questions of single returns through
the direct action of Congress, and in respect to double returns by
a tribunal of inquiry, whose decisions stand unless both Houses of
Congress shall concur in determining otherwise, thus securing a definite
disposition of all questi