Case 4: Votes That Checked Power
1Welcome. The framers of the Constitution feared a national government as weak as the one under the Articles of Confederation, but they also feared putting too much power in one place. Their plan had two parts. Federalism divides power between the national government and the states. Separation of powers divides national power among three branches, and checks and balances let each branch limit the others. The objects in this case show these ideas at work.
2Artifact A: A printed copy of the Constitution, 1787. Its first three articles each open with a different grant of power: "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States"; "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America"; and "The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court" and in lower courts that Congress creates.
3Artifact B: The Tenth Amendment, ratified in 1791: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
4Artifact C: A tally sheet from the Senate's vote on the Jay Treaty with Great Britain, 1795. The President makes treaties, but a treaty takes effect only if two-thirds of the senators present approve it.
5Artifact D: A Senate journal page, December 1795. President George Washington chose John Rutledge to be Chief Justice. Rutledge began serving while the Senate was out of session, but when the senators returned, they voted on his nomination, and he soon left the Court.
6Artifact E: A newspaper report on McCulloch v. Maryland, 1819. Maryland had placed a tax on a branch of the Bank of the United States, a bank created by Congress. Chief Justice John Marshall wrote the Supreme Court's decision. Congress had the power to create the bank, the Court ruled, and a state could not tax it. "The power to tax involves the power to destroy," Marshall wrote.
7Artifact F: A printed copy of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which declared that most people born in the United States, including people who had been enslaved, were citizens with equal rights under the law. President Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill. Each house of Congress then voted on it again.
8Artifact G: A ticket to the Senate trial of President Johnson, 1868. The House of Representatives had impeached Johnson, or formally charged him. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase presided over the trial in the Senate. Removing a President from office takes a guilty vote from two-thirds of the senators present.