WRIGHT— POWER TO MAKE POLITICAL DECISIONS. 359 



Quincy Adams, then Secretary of State, writes of a meeting of 

 President ^lonroe's cabinet, on January i, 1819.^® 



"As to impeachment, I was willing to take my share of risk of it for 

 this measure whenever the Executive should deem it proper. And, instead 

 of admitting the Senate or House of Representatives to any share in the act 

 of recognition, I would expressly avoid that form of doing it which would 

 require the concurrence of those bodies. It was, I had no doubt, by our 

 Constitution an act of the Executive authority. General Washington had 

 exercised it in recognizing the French Republic by the reception of Genet. 

 Mr. Madison had exercised it by declining several years to receive, and by 

 finally receiving Mr. Onis ; and in this instance I thought the Executive ought 

 carefully to preserve entire the authority given him by the Constitution, and 

 not weaken it by setting the precedent of making either House or Congress 

 a party to an act which it was his exclusive right and duty to perform. Mr. 

 Crawford said . . . that there was a difference between the recognition of a 

 change of government in a nation already acknowledged as sovereign, and 

 the recognition of a new nation itself. He did not, however, deny, but ad- 

 mitted, that the recognition was strictly within the powers of the Executive 

 alone, and I did not press the discussion further." 



The same position has been taken by j\Ir. Seward and other 

 Secretaries of State,-** by the Senate on several occasions^" and by 

 the Supreme Court.^^ 



" The Executive," said the latter. " having recognized the existence of a 

 state of war between Spain and her South American colonies, the courts of the 

 union are bound to consider as lawful those acts which war authorized and 

 which the new Governments in South America may direct against their 

 enemy." 



Although the President may seek the opinion of Congress before 

 recognition ; and doubtless should do so if the state or government 

 or war in question does not have a clear dc facto existence, yet the 

 law is that stated by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 

 1897:^- 



28 Memoirs of J. Q. Adams, 4: 205-206; Moore, Digest, i: 244. 

 20 Mr. Seward, Sec. of State, to Mr. Dayton, Minister to France, Apr. 7, 

 1864, Moore, Digest, i : 246. 



30 Memorandum on the method of " Recognition " of foreign govern- 

 ments and foreign states by the Government of the United States, 1789-1897, 

 Sen. Doc. No. 40, 54th Cong., 2d sess. ; memorandum upon the power to 

 recognize the independence of a new foreign state, Sen. Doc. No. 56, S4th 

 Cong., 2d sess. 



31 The Divina Pastora, 4 Wheat. 2>2; Moore, Digest, i: 247. 

 22 Sen. Doc. 56, 54th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 22. 



