This monstrous measure went to the President on the same day with the Reconstruction bill, the 20th of February. It is not to be wondered at
The President's
vetoes of these bills.
The vetoes of these bills were sent to Congress on the same day, March 2d. To the publicist and historian of this day they are masterpieces of political logic, constitutional interpretation, and official style. If not written by Mr. Seward, they must have been edited and revised by him. These documents showed most convincingly, both from constitutional provisions, opinions of contemporaries, statutes of Congress, judicial decisions, and the uniform practices of the Government, that Congress had no power to establish or re-establish martial law anywhere in the country, except when and where war or armed rebellion existed as a fact, a condition which did not then exist anywhere in the length and breadth of the land; and that Congress had no power to force the President to retain agents and subordinates in office against his judgment and will. No good political scientist and no sound constitutional lawyer will, at this day, disagree with the contention of the President upon these two points, and it is very difficult to understand how the great leaders of the Republican party could, at that day, have differed with him.
Undoubtedly, in some of the baser minds among them, the determination to create Republican party "States" in the South was a very weighty
Republican motives
in Reconstruction.
As this contest developed it dwarfed, to say the least, all other considerations. Even as late as when the Reconstruction bill was
Congressional
encroachment
on the President's
military prerogatives.
To the mind of any unprejudiced constitutional lawyer, at the present day, this act must appear as a gross usurpation by Congress of the President's military powers conferred upon him by the Constitution. The Constitution makes the President the Commander-in-Chief of the army and navy, and gives Congress no power whatsoever over the methods or channels by, and through, which he may issue his military commands. Neither does the Constitution give Congress any power to assign any of the officers or troops of the army to any particular position. These are all functions of the commandership-in-chief, and, unless expressly granted by the Constitution to some other department of the Government, belong to the President.
It was not only a usurpation by Congress to pass such an act, but it was a mean thing to do it as a section of an appropriation bill; and there is no escaping the suspicion that it had a sinister purpose, namely, to entrap the President in the commission of what Congress had made a high misdemeanor, and open the way for his impeachment and expulsion from office. The President signed this bill, however, in order to save the appropriations for the support of the army, although he protested strongly against the seizure of his constitutional powers by the Congress.