A Couple of 19th Century Presidents die without VPs

In OTL the US has managed over 200 years without having to actually use the provisions for succession beyond a Vice President.

In some ways this is statistically surprising,.

There were several cases when it could have happened.

Madison (though he eventually lived to a ripe age) was not in good health. Both of his Vice Presidents dies in office.

I believe that Tyler was quite ill in 1844.

Booth had hoped that his friends would have murdered, amongst other people, Vice President Johnson.

Of course Johnson was one vote from conviction in the 1868 impeachment trial.

Chester Arthur became quite ill.

Cleveland's first Vice President died, he was later to very ill with cancer.


There may have been other instances
 

WyldCard4

Banned
Well the speaker for the house would have gained the presidency.
Does anyone know who gains his (or her) seat in the senate if that happens?
 
The presidency would not have fallen upon the Speaker of the House. The President > Vice President > Speaker of the House succession wasn't established until the Truman administration in 1947. Before 1885, the next rung down from the VP was the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, and then the Speaker. And that was it, IIRC: the succession line was only four people long.

For maximum chaos, the key moments would have been in the 1880s, when both a presidential and a vice-presidential death between congressional terms left the line completely empty. Luckily, the two deaths didn't happen at the same time (Garfield died in 1881, VP Hendricks died four years later), but that was probably the closest we ever got.

After those near-misses, the original succession act was revised, cutting out both the President Pro Tempore and the Speaker of the House entirely, and replacing them with the president's cabinet (the Secretary of State was first, beyond that, I'm not sure). And that remained in effect until the aforementioned revision in the late 1940s.
 
When either The Speaker does gain the Presidency, after the 1947 Succession Act, or the Pres Pro Tempore before it, most scholars agree, though, that after being sworn in, he would have to resign his seat in the house of origin, given Constitutional prohibitions on holding office in two branches of government simultaneously. His seat is then openly contested in a special election/appointed according to Article 1, Section 2, Clause 4 of the US Constitution and depending on the relevant state's own laws.

In the 19th Century, I don't think this would change much: ie I don't think there would be calls for a 22nd Ammendment like device to appoint a VP. There might be a more general question of inheritance style succession for the President. When John Tyler became President and subsquently vetoed more laws than all previous Presidents combined (leading to his expulsion from the Whig Party), many members of Congress said that Tyler did not have full executive authority, since he was only "Acting President." It's rather hard to say what Congress might have chosen as a remedy, however. Stipulating the House of Representatives elect a new President can be difficult in an emergency and in a situation where representatives travel for quite some time to meet in Washington. Similarly, ordaining a special Presidential election to begin a new Presidential term present all the challenges of spontaneously organizing an unprepared for election on a contiental scale.

In the deadlock, the prestige of the office of the Presidency is undermined and Congress attains a bit more influence in the national psyche. This may lead to an earlier default to the Speaker of the House, rather than the Pres Pro Tempore, as well, since the Speaker tends to be a bit more a policy maker and the Pres Pro Tempore is oft-time only an honorific.
 
From 1792 to 1885 or 1886 The law succession ran VP, President Pro Tem of the Senate then Spealer.

As stated it seemed to call for a special election (for a full term) if there was much more than a year to run of a President's term.

In the 1880s they changed it to a Cabinet line of successin.

This was changed to the Speaker, Senate PRo Tem President, and a cabinet line from 1947.

I think that had the succession provisions beyond a VP been used the laws might have changed.
 
Top