Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 / From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860

by James Gillespie Blaine

From all the circumstances of the case, it is not difficult therefore to understand why the quarrel between the President and General Grant should be viewed with substantial satisfaction by the Republicans of the country. The National Convention of the party of 1868 had already been called, and it might be awkward for its members, while denouncing President Johnson in the platform, to be reminded that the candidate of their party was on terms of personal friendship with him, and had been so throughout his administration. Such a fact would embarrass the canvass in many ways, and would dull the edge of partisan weapons already forged for the contest. General Grant as a Presidential candidate was likely to draw heavily on the Democratic voters of the Northern States, and Republicans felt assured that his quarrel with Johnson would cause no loss even in that direction. In every point of view, therefore, the political situation was satisfactory to the Republicans—the last possible suggestion of discontent with General Grant's expected nomination for the Presidency having been banished from the ranks of the party.

By the Senate's refusal to concur in the suspension of Secretary Stanton, a confidential adviser under the Constitution was forced upon the President against his earnest and repeated protest. This action appears the more extraordinary, because when the Tenure-of-office Bill was pending before the Senate, the expression of opinion on the part of the majority was against any attempt to compel the President to retain an unwelcome adviser. In fact the Senate voted by a large majority to except Cabinet officers from the operation of the law. The expressions of opinion by individual senators were very pointed on this question.

—Mr. Edmunds said it was "right and just that the Chief Executive of the Nation in selecting these named Secretaries, who, by law and by the practice of the country, and officers analogous to whom, by the practice of all other countries, are the confidential advisers of the Executive respecting the administration of all his Departments, should be persons who are personally agreeable to him and in whom he can place entire confidence and reliance; and whenever it should seem to him that the state of relations between him and any of them had become so as to render this relation of confidence and trust and personal esteem inharmonious, he should in such case be allowed to dispense with the services of that officer in vacation and have some other person act in his stead."

—Mr. Williams of Oregon sustained the position of Mr. Edmunds, but added: "I do not regard the exception as of any great practical consequence, because I suppose if the President and any head of Department should disagree so as to make their relations unpleasant, and the President should signify a desire that that head of Department should retire from the Cabinet, that would follow without any positive act of removal on the part of the President. . . . It has seemed to me that if we revolutionize the practice of the Government in all other respects, we might let this power remain in the hands of the President of the United States; that we should not strip him of this power, which is one that it seems to me is necessary and reasonable that he should exercise."

—Mr. Fessenden said: "A man who is the head of a Department naturally wants the control of that Department. He wants to control all his subordinates. . . . In my judgment, in order to the good and proper administration of all the Departments, it is necessary that that power should exist in the head of it, and quite as necessary that the power should exist in the President with reference to the few men who are placed about him to share his counsel and to be his friends and agents."

—Mr. Sherman said: "If a Cabinet officer should attempt to hold his office for a moment beyond the time when he retains the entire confidence of the President, I would not vote to retain him, nor would I compel the President to have about him in these high positions a man whom he did not entirely trust both personally and politically. It would be unwise to require him to administer the Government without agents of his own choosing. . . . And if I supposed that either of these gentlemen was so wanting in manhood, in honor, as to hold his place after the politest intimation from the President of the United States that his services were no longer needed, I certainly, as a senator, would consent to his removal at any time, and so would we all."

Still more significant and conclusive was the action of both Senate and House on the final passage of the Tenure-of-office Act. That action was based upon the report of a conference committee, of which Mr. Sherman was chairman on the part of the Senate, and General Schenck on the part of the House. It will be remembered that the Senate had insisted that officers of the Cabinet should be excepted from the operation of the Tenure-of-office Act, and the House had insisted that they should not be excepted. A compromise was made by the conference committee, the result of which was thus explained to the Senate by Mr. Sherman: "In this case the committee of conference —I agreed to it, I confess, with some reluctance—came to the conclusion to qualify to some extent the power of removal over a Cabinet minister. We provide that a Cabinet minister shall hold his office, not for a fixed term, not until the Senate shall consent to his removal, but as long as the power that appoints him holds the office." General Schenck, representing the original House amendment, said: "A compromise was made, by which a further amendment is added to this portion of the bill, so that the term of office of the heads of Departments shall expire with the term of the President who appointed them, allowing these heads of Departments one month longer." These were the well-considered explanations made to their respective branches by the chairmen of the committees that composed the conference. It was upon this uncontradicted, unqualified, universally admitted construction of the Bill that the House and Senate enacted it into a law.

It must not be forgotten that if the Senate had consented to the removal of Mr. Stanton, as was confidently anticipated from the expressions of opinion above quoted, no new Secretary could have been installed without the Senate's explicit consent, and that meanwhile the War Department would remain under the control of General Grant, in whose prudent and upright discharge of duty every senator had perfect confidence. The complaint of the President's friends, therefore, was that senators, while perfectly able to exclude from the control of the War Department a man in whom they had no confidence, demanded that the President should retain at the head of that Department an officer in whom he had no confidence. Hence it was that for the first time in the history of the United States, an officer distasteful to the President and personally distrusted and disliked by him was forced upon him as one of his confidential advisers in the administration of the Government. In the prima facie statement of this case the Senate was in the wrong. Upon the record of its votes and the expression of opinion by its own members, the Senate was in the wrong. The history of every preceding Administration and of every subsequent Administration of the Federal Government proves that the Senate was in the wrong.

The situation in which the President was left by this action was anomalous and embarrassing. One of the most important Departments of the Government—especially important at that era—was left under the control of a man with whom he did not even hold personal relations. If this could be done in one Department it could with equal justice be done in all, and the extraordinary spectacle would be presented of each Executive Department under the control of an officer, who in matters of personal feeling and in public policy was deadly hostile to the President of the United States. Even those who insisted most warmly upon Mr. Stanton's being retained in his position, must have seen that such a course would contradict the theory of the National Constitution and be in direct contravention of the practice of the Federal Government. Every one could see that these circumstances had brought about an unnatural situation—a situation that must in some way be relieved. It presented a condition of affairs for which there was no precedent, and the wisest could not foresee to what end it might lead.

The issue was brought to a head by the President, who informed the senate on the 21st of February (1868), that in the exercise of the power and authority vested in him by the Constitution of the United States, he had that day removed Mr. Stanton from office and designated the Adjutant-General of the Army—Lorenzo Thomas—as Secretary of War ad interim. The communication was received with great astonishment by the Senate and with loud expressions of indignation against the President. With short debate and with little delay the Senate passed a resolution declaring "that under the Constitution and laws of the United States, the President has no power to remove the Secretary of War and to designate any other officer to perform the duties of that office ad interim." The Senate could do nothing more than express and record this opinion, but it did that promptly, resentfully, almost passionately.