POLITICAL NOTES: Two-Thirds Out

When North Carolina's Attorney General Romulus Mitchell Saunders rose in the first Democratic National Convention and argued successfully that it would have "a more imposing effect" if candidates were nominated by two-thirds of the delegates instead of by a mere majority, he started something over which Democrats have been wrangling for 104 years. Romulus Saunders was simply doing a job for Boss Andrew Jackson, who thereby made sure that John Caldwell Calhoun did not get the Vice-Presidential nomination away from Martin Van Buren. The first beneficiary of the two-thirds rule became...

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