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 questions of dispute, in whatever aspect they may
arise. With or without this law, as all of the States have voted, and
as a tie vote is impossible, it must be that one of the two candidates
has been elected; and it would be deplorable to witness an irregular
controversy as to which of the two should receive or which should
continue to hold the office. In all periods of history controversies
have arisen as to the succession or choice of the chiefs of states, and
no party or citizens loving their country and its free institutions can
sacrifice too much of mere feeling in preserving through the upright
course of law their country from the smallest danger to its peace on
such an occasion; and it can not be impressed too firmly in the hearts
of all the people that true liberty and real progress can exist only
through a cheerful adherence to constitutional law.
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