Question: Why were Senators originally selected by state legislatures?

Focusing on the Constitutional -

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof ....
(U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 3, Clause 1)

Senate originally represented the States

by George Sweeney

The Constitution originally specified that Senators would be elected by the individual state's legislatures. This was done in order to protect the rights and interest of each individual state.

The new government under the Constitution was established as a federation of states as well a republic. The Founders intended the states to act as part of the system of checks and balances.

This was changed with the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913. The reason for changing the way the senators were selected were explained in this amendment's ratification: 1. the bi chambered legislatures were often unable to agree on a selection when the two chambers were dominated by different parties, 2. scandals of bribery and corruption, 3. a popular feeling that the Senate was a “millionaires club,” and 4. the convection that the “solution to the problems of democracy was more democracy.”

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A Thought from President John Adams:

By Don Conkey

“The virtue which has been infused into the Constitution of the United States…was no other than…those abstract principles which had been first proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence – namely the self-evident truths of the natural and unalienable rights of man…and the sovereignty of the people, always subordinate to the rule of right and wrong, and always responsible to the Supreme Ruler of the universe for the rightful exercise of that power. This was the platform upon which the Constitution of the United States had been erected.”

Some look at the Declaration of Independence as the “Articles of Incorporation” for the Constitution that was, as Adams declared, the platform for the Constitution.

source: Skousen’s 5000 Year Leap

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