Our Founding Fathers created a unique form of civil government with numerous checks on power to keep it in balance so that one group of people were less likely to dominate another. One of those checks and balances was the clause from Article 1, Section 3 of the original Constitution, which stated,
“The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof…”
The check and balance in this clause was that each State’s legislature, which is itself composed of representative of the different constituents of that State, would choose the Senators. This clause was a counter-balance to the popular election of US Representatives. The US Senate, as the more senior body, was created to temper the exuberance of the populace.
The originally prescribed appointment system worked well until railroad and industrial magnates began corrupting it in the 1870s. They used their immense wealth to bribe state legislators into appointing Senators that would do the will of those who made the bribes. This corruption led to partisan deadlock in State legislatures in which some States went without one or two Senators for many years. Between 1891 and 1905, there were 46 deadlocks that occurred among 20 States.
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