But to the apparent surprise of everybody and to the consternation of the Democrats, Justice Davis was chosen by the Illinois legislature, on the 25th of January, the day after the bill passed the Senate, and the day before it passed the House, United States Senator, and a few days after the bill passed the House, he accepted the position, which act involved his resignation at an early day of his judicial office; and as he was now to leave the bench and go into the political branch of the Government, as a Democratic Senator, elected by the Democrats of the Illinois legislature, there appeared to him an evident impropriety in his acting on the Commission as a representative of the unpolitical branch of the Government, and especially as that member upon whom the weightiest responsibility would fall, and who would, therefore, be expected to act with greatest political impartiality, and with an eye single to public justice. Whether Justice Davis sought this election to the senatorship at this juncture or not, {288} in order to escape the great responsibility that was about to fall upon him, we do not know. He was not a particularly brave man. He was a big, fat man, a good liver, and loved his ease. Ordinarily men will not exchange the high and life-long office of a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States for a seat in the Senate. Unless he had his eye upon the Presidency of the United States, it would be very hard to explain his action in exchanging his high judicial position for the senatorship on any other ground than his desire to escape the terrible responsibility of deciding whether Tilden or Hayes should be President. It is even more difficult to account for the action of the Democrats in the legislature of Illinois. They certainly did not intend to harm the chances of Mr. Tilden by this act. The Republicans might have invented such a scheme for disposing of the Justice, but for Democrats to have been concerned in any such movement is incredible. It is probable that it was simply a blunder on their part. They did not appreciate the incompatibility between the position of a Democratic Senator-elect and membership on the Electoral Commission as a judicial representative. They thought that as the Justice would not take his seat in the Senate until after the 4th of March he would remain a member of the Supreme Court until then, and as such would be fully qualified for the place on the Commission. The legislature at Springfield had no such delicate and discriminating sense of official proprieties as obtained in Washington, and throughout the more fastidious East.