666 



PUBLIC DOCUMENTS. 



requesting the President "to communicate to the 

 S&nate copies of all orders, instructions, circular let- 

 ters, or letters of advice, issued to the respective mil- 

 itary officers assigned to the command of the several 

 military districts under the act passed March 2, 1867, 

 entitled ' An act to provide for the more efficient gov- 

 ernment of the rebel States,' and -the act supplemen- 

 tary thereto, passed March 23, 1867 ; also copies of 

 all opinions given to him by the Attorney-General of 

 the United States touching' the construction and in- 

 terpretation of said acts, and of all correspondence 

 relating to the operation, construction, or execution 

 of said acts that may have taken place between him- 

 self and any of said commanders, or between him and 

 the General o_f the Army, or between the latter and 

 any of the said commanders touching the same sub- 

 jects; also copies of all orders issued by any of said 

 commanders in carrying out the provisions of said 

 acts, or either of them; also that he inform the Sen- 

 ate what progress has been made in the matter of re- 

 gistration under said acts, and whether the sum of 

 money heretofore appropriated for carrying them 

 out is probably sufficient." 



In answer to that portion of the resolution which 

 inquires whether the sum of money heretofore appro- 

 priated for carrying these acts into effect is probably 

 sufficient, reference is made to the accompanying 

 report of the Secretary of War. It will be seen from 

 that report that the appropriation of $500,000 made 

 in the act approved March 30, 1867, for the purpose 

 of carrying into effect an "act to provide for the 

 more efficient government of the rebel States," 

 passed March 2, 1867, and the act supplementary 

 thereto, passed March 23, 1867, has already been ex- 

 pended by the commanders of the several military 

 districts; and that in addition the sum of $1,648,277 

 is required for present purposes. 



It is exceedingly difficult at the present time to 

 estimate the probable expense of carrying into full 

 effect the two acts of March last and the bill which 

 passed the two Houses of Congress on the 13th in- 

 stant. If the existing governments of ten States of 

 the Union are to be deposed, and the entire ma- 

 chinery is to be placed under the exclusive control 

 and authority of the respective district commanders, 

 all the expenditures incident to the administration 

 of such governments must necessarily be incurred 

 by the Federal Government. It is believed that, in 

 addition to the $2,100,000 already expended or esti- 

 mated for, the sum which would be required for this 

 purpose would not be less than $14,000,000 the ag- 

 gregate amount expended prior to the rebellion in 

 the administration of their respective governments 

 by the ten States embraced in the provisions of these 

 acts. 



This sum would no doubt be considerably aug- 

 mented if the machinery of these States is to be op- 

 erated by the Federal Government, and would be 

 largely increased if the United States, by abolishing 

 the existing State governments, should become re- 

 sponsible for liabilities incurred by them before the 

 rebellion in laudable efforts to develop their re- 

 sources, and in no wise created for insurrectionary or 

 revolutionary purposes. The debts of these States, 

 thus legitimately incurred, when accurately ascer- 

 tained, will, it is believed, approximate a hundred 

 million dollars ; and they are held not only by our 

 own citizens, among whom are residents of portions 

 of the country which have ever remained loyal to the 

 Union, but by persons who are the subjects of foreign 

 governments. It is worthy the consideration of Con- 

 gress and the country whether, if the Federal Gov- 

 ernment by its action were to assume such obliga- 

 tions, so large an addition to our public expenditures 

 would not seriously impair the credit of the nation ; 

 or, on the other tiand, whether the refusal of Con- 

 ress to guarantee the payment of the debts of these 

 States, after having displaced or abolished their State 

 governments, would not be viewed as a violation of 

 good faith, and a repudiation by the national Legis- 



lature of liabilities which these States had justly and 

 legally incurred. ANDREW JOHNSON. 



WASHINGTON, D. C., July 15, 1867. 



Veto of tlie Supplementary Reconstruction Bill, 



July 19, 1867. 

 To the House of Representatives 



of tJie United States : 



I return herewith the bill entitled "An act supple- 

 mentary to an act entitled ' An act to provide for the 

 more efficient government of the rebel States,' passed 

 on the 2d day of March, 1867, and the act supplemen- 

 tary thereto, passed on the 23d day of March, 1867," 

 and will state, as briefly as possible, some of the rea- 

 sons which prevent me from giving it my approval. 



This is one of a series of measures passed by Con- 

 gress during the last four months on the subject of 

 reconstruction. The message returning the act of 

 the 2d of March last states at length my objections to 

 the passage of that measure. They apply equally 

 well to the bill now before me, and I am content 

 merely to refer to them, and to reiterate my convic- 

 tion that they are sound and unanswerable. 



There arc some points peculiar to this bill which I 

 will proceed at once to consider. 



The first section proposes to declare "the true in- 

 tent and meaning in some particulars of the two 

 prior acts upon this subject. It is declared that the 

 intent of those acts was : 



First, that the existing governments in the ten 

 "rebel States " "were not legal State governments ;" 

 and, 



Second, " that thereafter said governments, if con- 

 tinued, were to be continued subject, in all respects, 

 to the military commanders of the respective dis- 

 tricts, and to the paramount authority of Congress." 



Congress may, by a declaratory act, fix upon a 

 prior act a construction altogether at variance with 

 its apparent meaning, and from the time, at least, 

 when such construction is fixed, the original act will 

 be construed to mean exactly what it is stated to 

 mean by the declaratory statute. There will be, 

 then, from the time this bill may become a law, no 

 doubt, no question as to the relation in which the 

 "existing governments" in those States, called in 

 the original act "the provisional governments," 

 stand toward the military authority. As those rela- 

 tions stood before the declaratory act, these "gov- 

 ernments," it is true, were made subject to absolute 

 military authority in many important respects, but 

 not in all,, the language of the act being, "subject to 

 the military authority o.f the United States, as here- 

 inafter prescribed." By the sixth section of the ori- 

 ginal act, these governments were made "in all re- 

 spects subject to the paramount authority of the 

 United States." 



Now, by this declaratory act it appears that Con- 

 gress did not, by the original act, intend to limit the 

 military authority to any particulars or subjects 

 therein "prescribed," but meant to niake it univer- 

 sal. Thus over all these ten States this military gov- 

 ernment is now declared to have unlimited authority. 

 It is no longer confined to the preservation of the 

 public peace, the administration of criminal law, the 

 registration of voters, and the superintendence of 

 elections; but "in all respects" is asserted to be 

 paramount to the existing civil governments. 



It is impossible to conceive any state of society 

 more intolerable than this, and yet it is to this con- 

 dition that twelve million American citizens are re- 

 duced by the Congress of the United States. Over 

 every foot of the immense territory occupied by these 

 American citizens the Constitution of the United 

 States is theoretically in full operation. It binds all 

 the people there, and should protect them, yet they 

 are denied every one of its sacred guarantees. 



Of what avail will it be to any one of these South- 

 ern people, when seized by a file of soldiers, to ask for 



