CROOK, Sara Brandes
A not-so-distant mirror : the 17th Amendment and congressional change - New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, December 1997
The selection of U.S. senators by state legislators occurred for the last time in November 1912. Just a few months later, on May 31, 1913, the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution went into effect. It brought down the curtain on indirect elections by altering Article 1, Section 3, such that subsequent Senate vacancies were filled via direct popular elections. Indirect senatorial elections had always been controversial. At the Constitutional Convention the procedure eventually passed 10-0 (Madison [1840] 1987, 87), but Alexander Hamilton, Elbridge Gerry, James Madison, and especially James Wilson all expressed reservations. Wilson's advocacy of direct elections was taken up by others over the decades and began to gain great momentum in the late 1880s (see Swift 1996, 176). In the first session of the 52d Congress (1891) alone, the House received seven memorials from state legislatures, 54 petitions from interest groups, and 25 proposed resolutions from members of Congress advocating direct popular election of senators (Riker 1955, 467). In fact, in each session of Congress between 1893 and 1911, the House passed a popular election amendment only to see it fail in the other chamber, where sitting senators had a vested interest in preserving a method of selection that had been good to them (Perrin 1910).
A not-so-distant mirror : the 17th Amendment and congressional change - New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, December 1997
The selection of U.S. senators by state legislators occurred for the last time in November 1912. Just a few months later, on May 31, 1913, the 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution went into effect. It brought down the curtain on indirect elections by altering Article 1, Section 3, such that subsequent Senate vacancies were filled via direct popular elections. Indirect senatorial elections had always been controversial. At the Constitutional Convention the procedure eventually passed 10-0 (Madison [1840] 1987, 87), but Alexander Hamilton, Elbridge Gerry, James Madison, and especially James Wilson all expressed reservations. Wilson's advocacy of direct elections was taken up by others over the decades and began to gain great momentum in the late 1880s (see Swift 1996, 176). In the first session of the 52d Congress (1891) alone, the House received seven memorials from state legislatures, 54 petitions from interest groups, and 25 proposed resolutions from members of Congress advocating direct popular election of senators (Riker 1955, 467). In fact, in each session of Congress between 1893 and 1911, the House passed a popular election amendment only to see it fail in the other chamber, where sitting senators had a vested interest in preserving a method of selection that had been good to them (Perrin 1910).
