Neither did the Tenure-of-Office Act of 1867 repeal the Act of 1795 in regard to first vacancies happening among the Secretaries of Departments by other causes than those provided for in the Act of 1863, either expressly or by implication, since these first vacancies were expressly excepted from the operation of the Act of 1867, by the proviso attached to the first article. And even if it should be held that the Act of 1867 did repeal that of 1795 entirely, yet, in that it did not forbid the President to make ad interim appointments in the cases where a Secretary's term expired, or a Secretary was lawfully removed by him, the President's designation of Thomas could not be considered as a violation of law but only as an act without warrant of law, the very kind of an act committed by Mr. Lincoln in his appointment of Skinner as Postmaster-General ad interim in 1862, and committed by other Presidents in other cases.
The managers made much of the argument that the President had recognized the validity of the Tenure-of-Office Act in suspending Stanton the preceding August, and reporting his suspension to the Senate, and in notifying the Secretary of the Treasury of the suspension, as provided in the Act, and asserted that he was therefore estopped from denying its constitutionality. But while it can be easily shown that these acts of the President did not at all militate against his claim that other parts of the statute were unconstitutional, still this was not at all necessary to the President's defence, under the view here advanced of the relations between the Acts of 1867, 1863, and 1795. It made no difference, under this view, whether the Act of 1867 was, or was not, constitutional and valid. In either case the President had violated no law, either constitutional or statutory.
The fact is that Mr. Stanton and those who abetted him were the violators of law. Every official act which he committed after receiving
Mr. Stanton's
violation of law.
It is now known that during the trial some of these men expressed to one of the President's counsel the belief that Mr. Johnson could not be
The nomination of
General Schofield to
be Secretary of War.