George Washington
At the end of his second term, Washington retired for personal and political reasons, fatigued and disgusted with personal attacks, and to assure a truly contested presidential election could be held. He did not feel bound to a two-term limit, but his retirement ultimately set precedent. The two-term limit to the presidency was formalized with the 1951 adoption of the Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution. Washington is often credited with setting the principal of a two-term presidency, but it was Thomas Jefferson who first refused to run for a third term on political grounds.
Presidential Succession Act
A bill to transfer the succession from congressional officers to members of the Cabinet was introduced in the Senate by George Hoar in 1882. It was passed by the Senate the following year but failed in the House. Hoar laid out several reasons why the succession statute need to be changed. Among them, that the four-year term of a president elected in a special election might be out of sync with the Congressional election cycle, resulting in "confusion and trouble." He also pointed out the negative constitutional and practical implications of having the president pro tempore and the speaker in the line of succession. To buttresses this argument, he pointed out that since the federal government began operations 96 years earlier in 1789, six secretaries of state had gone on to be elected president, serving in that office for 36 of those 96 years. Reintroduced shortly after the death of Vice President Hendricks, Senator Hoar's bill was passed by the Senate after vigorous debate, in December 1885, and by the House one month later. It became law on January 19, 1886, with President Cleveland's signature.