term of President Lincoln. Are these words, “during the term of the President," applicable to Mr. Stanton's case? That depends upon whether an expounder of this law judicially, who finds set down in it as a part of the descriptive words "during the term of the President," has any right to add, “and any other term for which he may afterward be elected." By what authority short of legislative power can those words be put into the statute so that 'during the term of the President" shall be held to mean "and any other term or terms for which the President may be elected"? I respectfully submit no such judicial interpretation can be put on the words.

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Then, if you please, take the next step. "During the term of the President by whom he was appointed." At the time when this order was issued for the removal of Mr. Stanton, was he holding "during the term of the President by whom he was appointed"? The honorable Managers say yes, because, as they say, Mr. Johnson is merely serving out the residue of Mr. Lincoln's term. But is that so under the provisions of the Constitution of the United States? I pray you to allow me to read two clauses which are applicable to this question. The first is the first section of the second article:

The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his office during the term of four years, and, together with the Vice-President, chosen for the same term, be elected, as follows.

There is a declaration that the President and the VicePresident is each respectively to hold his office for the term of four years; but that does not stand alone; here is its qualification:

In case of the removal of the President from office, or of his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice-President.

So that, although the President, like the Vice-President, is elected for a term of four years, and each is elected for the same term, the President is not to hold his office absolutely during four years. The limit of four years is not an absolute limit. Death is a limit. A "conditional limitation," as the lawyers call it, is imposed on his tenure of office. And when, according to this second passage which I have read, the President dies, his term of four years for which he was elected, and during which he was to hold, provided he should so long live, terminates, and the office devolves on the Vice-President. For what period of time? For the remainder of the term for which the Vice-President was elected. And there is no more propriety, under these provisions of the Constitution of the United States, in calling the time during which Mr. Johnson holds the office of President after it was devolved upon him a part of Mr. Lincoln's term than there would be propriety in saying that one sovereign who succeeded to another sovereign by death holds a part of his predecessor's term. The term assigned to Mr. Lincoln by the Constitution was conditionally assigned to him. It was to last four years if not sooner ended; but if sooner ended by his death, then the office was devolved on the Vice-President, and the term of the Vice-President to hold the office then began.

I submit, then, that upon this language of the act it is apparent that Mr. Stanton's case cannot be considered as within it. This law, however, as Senators very well know, had a purpose; there was a practical object in the view of Congress; and however clear it might seem that the language of the law when applied to Mr. Stanton's case would exclude that case, however clear that might seem on the mere words of the law, if the purpose of the law could be discerned, and that purpose plainly required a different interpretation, that different interpretation should be given. But, on the other hand, if the purpose in view was one

requiring that interpretation to which I have been drawing your attention, then it greatly strengthens the argument; because, not only the language of the act itself, but the practical object which the legislature had in view in using that language demands that interpretation.

Now, there can be no dispute concerning what that purpose was, as I suppose. Here is a peculiar class of officers singled out from all others and brought within this provision. Why is this? It is because the Constitution has provided that these principal officers in the several Executive Departments may be called upon by the President for advice "respecting" - for that is the language of the Constitution "their several duties" - not, as I read the Constitution, that he may call upon the Secretary of War for advice concerning questions arising in the Department of War. He may call upon him for advice concerning questions which are a part of the duty of the President, as well as questions which belong only to the Department of War. Allow me to read that clause of the Constitution, and see if this be not its true interpretation. The language of the Constitution is, that

He [the President] may require the opinion in writing of the principal officer in each of the Executive Departments upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective offices.

As I read it, relating to the duties of the offices of these principal officers, or relating to the duties of the President himself. At all events, such was the practical interpretation put upon the Constitution from the beginning of the Government; and every gentleman who listens to me who is familiar, as you all are, with the political history of the country, knows that from an early period of the Administration of General Washington his Secretaries were called upon for advice concerning matters not within their respective Departments, and so the practice has continued

from that time to this. This is one thing which distinguishes this class of officers from any other embraced within the body of the law.

But there is another. The Constitution undoubtedly contemplated that there should be Executive Departments created, the heads of which were to assist the President in the administration of the laws as well as by their advice. They were to be the hands and the voice of the President; and accordingly that has been so practiced from the beginning, and the legislation of Congress has been framed on this assumption in the organization of the Departments, and emphatically in the act which constituted the Department of War. That provides, as Senators well remember, in so many words, that the Secretary of War is to discharge such duties of a general description there given as shall be assigned to him by the President, and that he is to perform them under the President's instructions and directions.

Let me repeat, that the Secretary of War and the other Secretaries, the Postmaster-General and the AttorneyGeneral, are deemed to be the assistants of the President in the performance of his great duty to take care that the laws are faithfully executed; that they speak for and act for him. Now, do not these two views furnish the reasons why this class of officers was excepted out of the law? They were to be the advisers of the President; they were to be the immediate confidential assistants of the President, for whom he was to be responsible, but in whom he was expected to repose a great amount of trust and confidence; and therefore it was that this act has connected the tenure of office of these Secretaries to which it applies with the President by whom they were appointed. It says, in the description which the act gives of the future tenure of office of Secretaries, that a controlling regard is to be had to the fact that the Secretary whose tenure is to be regulated was appointed

by some particular President; and during the term of that President he shall continue to hold his office; but as for Secretaries who are in office, not appointed by the President, we have nothing to say; we leave them as they heretofore have been. I submit to Senators that this is the natural and, having regard to the character of these officers, the necessary conclusion, that the tenure of the office of a Secretary here described is a tenure during the term of service of the President by whom he was appointed; that it was not the intention of Congress to compel a President of the United States to continue in office a Secretary not appointed by himself.

We have, however, fortunately, not only the means of interpreting this law which I have alluded to, namely, the language of the act, the evident character and purpose of the act, but we have decisive evidence of what was intended and understood to be the meaning and effect of this law in each branch of Congress at the time when it was passed. In order to make this more apparent and its just weight more evident, allow me to state what is very familiar, no doubt, to Senators, but which I wish to recall to their minds, the history of this proviso, this exception.

The bill, as Senators will recollect, originally excluded these officers altogether. It made no attempt, indeed it rejected all attempts, to prescribe a tenure of office for them, as inappropriate to the necessities of the Government. So the bill went to the House of Representatives. It was there amended by putting the Secretaries on the same footing as all other civil officers appointed with the advice and consent of the Senate, and, thus amended, came back to this body. This body disagreed to the amendment. Thereupon a committee of conference was appointed, and that committee, on the part of the House, had for its chairman Hon. Mr. Schenck, of Ohio, and on the part of this body Hon. Mr. Williams, of Oregon, and Hon. Mr.