The College of Electors is elected only to elect the President; that done, its work is over.

Congress, consisting of members elected from each state, and the Senate, consisting of representatives from each state, need not contain a majority of the President's party, and the President is in no way responsible to Congress as the British Prime Minister is to the House of Commons.

The relation of the State Governments to the Federal Government has presented the chief difficulty to democracy in America.
The Whigs, or Republicans, as they came to be called, stood for a strong Federal Government; the Democrats were jealous for the rights of State Governments.

The issue was not decided till the Civil War of 1861-1865, when the southern slave-holding States, seeing slavery threatened, announced their secession from the United States.

Abraham Lincoln, the newly-elected President, declared that the Government could not allow secession, and insisted that the war was to save the union.