Gathering to Count the Electoral College Votes

Background: On February 12, 1845, the U.S. Congress met to officially count the electoral college votes that would make James K. Polk the nation’s eleventh president and George M. Dallas the vice president. In a practice common among nineteenth-century newspapers, the Richmond Enquirer reprinted the coverage provided by another newspaper, the National Intelligencer, which was based in Washington, D.C., and had sent a reporter to cover the event. The article describes the spectators, many of them women, who were relegated to a seating area separate from the men (and not large enough to hold them all). It also gives the proceedings an air of high drama and ceremony, celebrating American democracy as superior to European monarchy.

Opening of the Electoral Votes.

. . . “The spectacle was earnestly contemplated by an [audience] as large as the limits of the galleries could by possibility contain. The Ladies, never the last to catch a prevailing enthusiasm, or to gaze with interest on solemn public acts, had been pouring along every avenue, and climbing the endless multitude of steps by which they reach the narrow space allotted to them, for hours before; but the gallery called theirs could by no means contain all who struggled for seat or standing-room within its precincts; and those who arrived too late for these privileged places were fain to content themselves with the two nearest wings of the gentlemen’s gallery, into which they seemed to have overflowed on either side. The residue of this gallery, which runs round the whole semicircular boundary of the hall, was piled up in dark masses with eager, orderly, and attentive observers of what was transacting in the space below. Considering the multitude assembled, an astonishing silence pervaded the hall, when Mr. Mangum, President of the Senate, rose and said that 'the Senate and House of Representatives had met, according to the Constitution for the purpose of counting the votes given by the electors of the Several States for President and Vice President of the United States and then, taking from the papers before him one of the scaled packages, broke the seals, opened it, and said: ‘I present to you, gentlemen Tellers, the votes of the Electors of the State of Maine, that they may be counted.’” 

Mr. Walker then opened all the seals, in the order of States—and the Tellers announced the vote of each State—and when the counting was concluded, and duplicate lists were made out, which were found to agree, they were handed to the President of the Senate, who read the lists and then announced the general result, first for the President, and then for the Vice President. The Senate then rose, and retired from the Hall in the order in which they entered. 

The scene, though distinguished by its simplicity, was imposing in its moral character. It was stripped of all the splendors of royalty. It was attended by no magnificent ceremonials—like those which usher in the ascension of an hereditary Monarch. But it was a man of the people, taken by themselves, from their own ranks, to execute the powers of the Government, which the People of the sovereign States have created and preserved. It was the official and public annunciation of the will of a great people, upon the election of two of the first officers in the Republic.

We again congratulate the People, that their choice has fallen upon James K. Polk—a man, who was taken from their own bosom, in the midst of retirement, like Cincinnatus at the plough, without any solicitation on his part; without any ambitious aspirations; recommended by no Clique; supported by neither the seduction of gold, nor by the power of' the sword—but resting upon his own Republican principles, and selected by the People to carry out their wishes.—May his administration terminate as brightly as it opens—conducing alike to his own glory, and the happiness of our common country!

Source: Richmond Enquirer, February 15, 1845, pg. 1