On 2 Dec. 1803, the Senate remained in session until late in the evening debating the proposed Twelfth Amendment. The speech delivered by Uriah tracy that afternoon was printed in pamphlet form and widely circulated as the most convincing statement of the Federalist position. He included the argument that there was no need for the amendment and that it would lead “to the selection of a less important, and more unfit person” as vice president (Mr. Tracy’s Speech in the Senate of the United States, Friday, December 2, 1803 [n.p., 1803; Shaw-Shoemaker description begins Ralph R. Shaw and Richard H. Shoemaker, comps., American Bibliography: A Preliminary Checklist for 1801-1819, New York, 1958-63, 22 vols. description ends , No. 5387]; Kuroda, Origins of the Twelfth Amendment description begins Tadahisa Kuroda, The Origins of the Twelfth Amendment: The Electoral College in the Early Republic, 1787-1804, Westport, Conn., 1994 description ends , 140-1; Annals description begins Annals of the Congress of the United States: The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States … Compiled from Authentic Materials, Washington, D.C., Gales & Seaton, 1834-56, 42 vols. All editions are undependable and pagination varies from one printing to another. The first two volumes of the set cited here have “Compiled … by Joseph Gales, Senior” on the title page and bear the caption “Gales & Seatons History” on verso and “of Debates in Congress” on recto pages. The remaining volumes bear the caption “History of Congress” on both recto and verso pages. Those using the first two volumes with the latter caption will need to employ the date of the debate or the indexes of debates and speakers. description ends , 13:159-80).

casus omissus: “case omitted” (Bryan A. Garner, Black’s Law Dictionary, 8th ed. [St. Paul, Minn., 2004], 232).

more grammatical manner: McKean referred to the passage that reads: “and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President” (MS in DNA: RG 11, RA). In the House debate on 7 Dec., Simeon Baldwin, who would soon become a Connecticut Supreme Court justice, argued that it was unclear whether the words “not exceeding three” referred to persons or numbers. The phrase precluded a number greater than three, but did it not imply “that the House might, if they chose, confine the election to two”? Roger Griswold favored striking the words out altogether. Caesar A. Rodney, John Randolph, and Thomas Sandford were among the Republicans who offered their thoughts on the construction: they saw no problem with it as rendered. Listening to the debate in the gallery of the House, Senator Timothy Pickering found the phrase unintelligible and reported it as such to his correspondents (Kuroda, Origins of the Twelfth Amendment description begins Tadahisa Kuroda, The Origins of the Twelfth Amendment: The Electoral College in the Early Republic, 1787-1804, Westport, Conn., 1994 description ends , 148, 214n; Annals description begins Annals of the Congress of the United States: The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States … Compiled from Authentic Materials, Washington, D.C., Gales & Seaton, 1834-56, 42 vols. All editions are undependable and pagination varies from one printing to another. The first two volumes of the set cited here have “Compiled … by Joseph Gales, Senior” on the title page and bear the caption “Gales & Seatons History” on verso and “of Debates in Congress” on recto pages. The remaining volumes bear the caption “History of Congress” on both recto and verso pages. Those using the first two volumes with the latter caption will need to employ the date of the debate or the indexes of debates and speakers. description ends , 13:678-81).