stated very properly, that that power to remove, which he held to be a clear power, might be so abused as to furnish a just cause for impeaching the President; but in after times a removal for such a purpose as Mr. Madison intimated would be a just ground for an impeachment was held to be no ground for impeachment at all, or not ground of censure. The most striking cases that have occurred during our existence as a nation were those that occurred, or one particularly which occurred, during the presidency of General Jackson. The Senator will remember that under the charter of the Bank of the United States the public moneys of the United States were to remain on deposit with that institution unless they were removed by the Secretary of the Treasury. I thought then, and think now, that it was the purpose of Congress in passing that charter to take from the President the power in that case to interfere with the duty which the section imposed upon the Secretary of the Treasury; but the President decided otherwise, and he actually removed the incumbent [Louis McLane]. The Senate will see that that case presented the strongest one that can be imagined upon which to bring before Congress and bring before the courts of the country the question of the President's power to remove. The bank had an interest so deep that her safety depended upon the reversal of that authority. The public moneys being withdrawn from her vaults, the credit of the institution almost at once fell, or everybody saw that it must fall in a very short time, as in the end it did.1

SENATOR HOWE.-Did not the Senate concur in that change? SENATOR JOHNSON.-No, sir; or, rather, it concurred in the way I am about to state. The bank, therefore, had a remedy, a clear remedy, provided she had a case, and she had a clear case if the President had no authority to force a removal of the deposits by the Secretary. She might have refused to pay over the deposits, and that would have brought the question immediately before the tribunals. There was no military law in force then, and the only way in which the moneys could have been recovered from the bank by the Government would have been by a suit, and, if there was under the charter a contract between the bank and the Government which entitled the bank to hold on to the deposits until they were removed under the authority conferred upon the Secretary of the Treasury, it would have been a complete defence to the removal which was actually ordered, provided it was true, and had been so adjudged, that the President had no control over the deposits; 1 'See Volume XIII, chapter IV.

but the bank acquiesced, and I have every reason to believe that they took counsel of the ablest lawyers in the country.

The President removed the Secretary of the Treasury during the recess, and he appointed his then Attorney-General [Roger B. Taney]. Mr. Taney was nominated to the Senate and rejected; and, if I had been in the Senate, I should have voted to reject him, upon the ground that, according to the opinion I held at that time and still hold, the President of the United States was guilty in that instance of a usurpation, of a violation of what I believed to be a contract between the Government and the bank in ordering himself his Secretary of the Treasury to remove the deposits, and, having removed him because he failed to comply with the order, appointing anyone to carry that out, or to act upon his own opinion of the propriety of that removal.

SENATOR HOWE.-I ask if the statute creating the office of Secretary of the Treasury does not make the term dependent upon the pleasure of the President.

SENATOR JOHNSON.-That is so; but, if my friend will turn to the debates, he will find that it was said in a report made by Mr. McDuffie in the other House, and I think in a speech made by Mr. Adams, and in several of the speeches made upon the floor of the Senate upon the question, that, notwithstanding that the character of the bank constituted the Secretary of the Treasury the agent of Congress, and took him, therefore, out of the removing power of the President, Congress had the authority to place the public funds wherever they thought proper, and in the exercise of that admitted power they had placed the funds in the hands of the Bank of the United States, and had, with a view to secure themselves against loss, authorized the Secretary of the Treasury as their officer, not the officer of the President, if he should discover at any time that there was any danger of the Government losing the deposits to remove them.

I thought then that the President had no authority whatever over the subject, and that the ground assumed by McDuffie and others, and particularly in the debate in the Senate, was the sound one, that the Secretary of the Treasury was selected merely by virtue of his office as the most convenient and reliable person that Congress could select to watch over the funds of the Government, so as to see that at no time they should be endangered by the misconduct of the bank.

From that time until the last session the authority of the President to remove has never been questioned. The abuse of that authority is an entirely distinct question. The President is

not above Congress or above the people during his continuance in office. He is as liable to impeachment as any other officer. The only limitation upon the power of impeachment is that he shall be impeached only for high crimes and misdemeanors. If he commits a high crime or a misdemeanor in the sense in which those terms are used in the Constitution, the other branch of Congress may bring his case before the Senate in form of an impeachment, and this body has to act upon it.

The question whether the President has the power which he exercises in relation to removals from office or the power which he exercises in relation to the reappointment of officers who have been rejected by the Senate is one question. Whether he abuses either power is quite another question. And the question whether that abuse, if it be an abuse, is a high crime or a high misdemeanor is another question also upon which sooner or later, perhaps, if we are to be visited by such an affliction, the Senate may have to pass.

In my judgment, the President does go beyond the power conferred upon him when he reappoints a party whose nomination has been presented to the Senate and rejected, provided the case stands there and stands there alone. If he thinks proper to reappoint such a person, I think it is his duty to inform the Senate, when he sends that nominee in a second time for approval, what were the peculiar circumstances whicl: caused him to disregard the opinion of the Senate. Any newly discovered facts, any evidence which he supposes would operate upon the judgment of the Senate, not in their possession at the time they voted upon the nomination in the first instance, he may produce; but to disregard the opinion of the Senate upon the exact case on which the Senate acted, in my judgment, is a clear abuse which must be remedied in some way or other, and the only way to remedy it is to reject those who may be nominated again.

JOHN B. HENDERSON [Mo.] and JOHN SHERMAN [0.].-And he may reappoint again.

SENATOR JOHNSON.-I know it, and it is for that reason that I said to him, and said to his Attorney-General at the last session, that cannot be justified by me or by the Senate, and certainly will not be by me, because that would be to avoid altogether the authority of the Senate; and, if he in the case supposed persevered in nominating and appointing again after one or more rejections, it would be, in my judgment, a very serious question whether that of itself would not constitute a ground for impeachment. If Mr. Madison was right in saying that

an abuse of the power of removal was a subject for an impeachment, a fortiori is the abuse of the power of appointment in a case in which, if it is submitted to, the whole authority of the Senate becomes a nullity and is set at defiance.

Now, a word upon the particular amendment offered by my friend from Wisconsin. I shall vote against the bill whether that amendment succeeds or not; but the effect of that amendment on the Government would be pretty much the same as the proposition which John C. Calhoun more than once advocated, and the late Senator Robert M. T. Hunter on this floor advocated, of a dual President. It was said, and said with a force that must be obvious to us all, that the Executive, to be at all competent to the duties of such an office, must be a unit. There can be no divided executive. The proposition fell. It hardly received a vote.

Now, what is to be the result of the amendment suggested by my friend from Wisconsin? The President-you cannot get clear of that obligation; you cannot take from him that duty, and he cannot absolve himself from that duty-is to see that the laws are faithfully executed. How is he to do it? He cannot do it alone. This is a great Government of ours. Its transactions are not the ordinary transactions of a common countinghouse. They extend not only over all our limits, but they go beyond the limits. We have negotiations with the rest of the world and transactions with the rest of the world, and we are likely to be called into a conflict, as we may discharge our duty properly or not toward the other nations of the world, at any moment.

Suppose he has a Secretary of State whom he does not trust, either because of some suspicion of want of integrity or a belief that he is incompetent to the duties, or a belief founded upon good evidence that he is for pursuing a foreign policy that will entangle us with other nations, and perhaps involve us in war and affect our commercial marine; what is he to do with him? Leave him in, says the honorable member; suspend him. What then? What is to become of the negotiations in the meantime? What will foreign nations say? "We have been negotiating with the United States upon the assumption that they had a policy; we have acted in good faith; we can only know the President; we know that under the Constitution the Secretary of State is but his mouthpiece; we know, and we have been taught to believe, that it is in his power to shape the foreign relations of the country; and now, when his secretary 1See Volume V, page 423.

has been shaping them, and he discovers that he is about, by the shape which he has caused them to assume, to involve us in trouble, he turns him out, and the whole negotiation is to begin again. And when he sends to the Senate his reasons for the suspension under this bill, as he will be obliged to do, and the Senate declares that they are unsatisfactory, this suspended officer becomes again the Secretary of State. What is the effect of that upon the President so far as the negotiation of which I have spoken is concerned? He ceases to have any control of it; he is a mere cipher; you might as well not have him. The organ, then, with foreign nations will be a Secretary of State of the Senate of the United States, and not the Secretary of State appointed to be an adviser of the President, and to carry out the policy which the President may think proper and may suppose should be adopted as between ourselves and foreign nations.

The observations which I have thus cursorily submitted to the Senate are equally applicable to any of the other departments. Take the office of the Attorney-General. The President finds he has made a mistake; he has appointed a man to that office who has proven his incompetency. What is he to do? Suspend the Attorney-General? Whom is he to get to take

the place? I do not believe any man could be found fit for the place who would take the office which he is to hold only during the suspension of the previous incumbent, which may be for but three or four weeks, for the miserable consideration of the proportion of the salary of the office that he would get during those few weeks. Then what will the President do? He cannot get a competent officer under the provisions of this bill if my friend's amendment prevails. Then the public suffers, suffers sadly. Everything is placed in confusion. Nobody knows officially what the rights of the United States are; nobody knows officially what are the interests of the United States, and how they are about being sacrificed.

Then what becomes of the President? Why, in relation to that officer as well as in relation to the Secretary of State in the case supposed, he is made a cipher.

SENATOR FESSENDEN.-As the Senate is now.

SENATOR JOHNSON.-That is all wrong. I am not for making ciphers of any department of the Government, and, for the reasons which I stated just now, as far as concerns the reappointment of rejected officers, I am against it, because that is a practice which makes ciphers of us, and I am for claiming the whole of the power which the Constitution confers upon the