It was believed by the framers of the Constitution that the veto power of the President would be seldom used. This was true until after the Civil War. Washington used the power only twice; John Adams, Jefferson, J.Q. Adams, Van Buren, Taylor, and Fillmore did not make use of it at all. During the first seventy-six years of our history under the Constitution the power was exercised only fifty-two times. Andrew Johnson was the first President to use it freely, vetoing as many acts as were vetoed by the first eight Presidents. The largest use of the veto power was by President Cleveland who, during his first term, exercised it three hundred and one times.[115] In conferring the veto power on the President the members of the Convention were actuated by the desire to strengthen a conservative branch of the government rather than by any desire to copy the English Constitution, or the constitutions of the American states. As a matter of fact, the veto power of the Crown was then obsolete, Hamilton himself remarking in the Convention that it had not been used since the Revolution of 1688,[116] while in all but two states the last vestige of it had been destroyed.[117] The position of the President was still further strengthened by discarding the executive council which then existed in every state as a check upon the governor and which was a prominent feature of the English government of that time. In England this council, forming the Ministry or Cabinet, had not, it is true, definitely assumed the form which characterizes it now; but it had deprived the King of all power to act except through ministers who were responsible and could be impeached by Parliament. This, of course, had greatly weakened the executive, a fact which fully explains why the framers of the Constitution rejected it and went back to the earlier English king whose veto power was unimpaired for their model.