CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



133 



the right of payment until the claim of the 

 sovereign is satisfied. 



" One important fact in connection with this 

 transaction is, that the President himself "was 

 the holder of these Tennessee State bonds, 

 issued for the benefit of this road, to the 

 amount of either nineteen thousand or thirty- 

 thousand dollars; and that of that money, 

 which upon the contract and by every prin- 

 ciple of law was due to the United States, he 

 received past interest for about four years. 

 A small matter, you may say ; a small matter, 

 the country may say ; but in a public trust he 

 had no right, in the first place, to make sale 

 of this property ; secondly, he had no right to 

 postpone payment ; and, above all, he had no 

 right to delay payment for the purpose of re- 

 ceiving to himself that which belonged to the 

 Government. Nor is it any excuse for him 

 that there were other holders, whether loyal 

 or rebel, who shared the benefits of this trans- 

 action. 



"Then there are connected with these proceed- 

 ings other public acts, such as the appointment 

 of provisional governors for North Carolina 

 and the other nine States without any author- 

 ity of law. Not only that, but he authorized 

 the payment of salaries without authority of 

 law. Not only that, he ordered payment from 

 the War Department of those salaries, not- 

 withstanding there had been no appropriation 

 by law, and notwithstanding the Constitution 

 of the United States says that no money shall 

 be drawn from the Treasury but in consequence 

 of an appropriation by law. 



" When you bring all these acts together ; 

 when you consider what he has said; when 

 you consider what he has done; when you 

 consider .that he has appropriated the public 

 property for the benefit of the rebels ; when 

 you consider that in every public act, as far as 

 we can learn, from May, 1865, to the present 

 time, all has tended to this great result, the 

 restoration of the rebels to power under and 

 in the Government of the country ; when you 

 consider all these things, can there be any 

 doubt as to his purpose, or doubt as to the 

 criminality of his purpose, and his responsibil- 

 ity under the Constitution ? 



"It may not be possible, by specific charge, 

 to arraign him for this great crime, but is he 

 therefore to escape ? These offences which I 

 have enumerated, which are impeachable and 

 I have enumerated but a part of them are the 

 acts, the individual acts, the subordinate crimes, 

 the tributary offences to the accomplishment 

 of the great object which he had in view. But 

 if, upon the body of the testimony, you are 

 satisfied of his purpose, and if you are satisfied 

 that these tributary offences were committed 

 as^the means of enabling him to accomplish 

 this great crime, will you hesitate to try him 

 and convict him upon those charges of which 

 he is manifestly guilty, even if they appear to 

 be of inferior importance, knowing that they 

 were in themselves misdemeanors, that they 



were tributary offences, and that in this way, 

 and in this way only, can you protect the 

 State against the final consummation of his 

 crime ? We have not yet seen the end of this 

 contest. 



" I am not disposed to enter into the region 

 of prophecy, but we can understand the logic 

 of propositions. The propositions which the 

 President has laid down in his last message, 

 and elsewhere, will lead to certain difficulty if 

 they are acted upon. Whether they will be 

 acted upon I cannot say. The first proposition 

 is, that under some circumstances an act of 

 Congress may be in his judgment so unconsti- 

 tutional that he will violate the law and utter- 

 ally disregard legislative authority. This is an 

 assumption of power which strikes at the 

 foundation of the Government. The Constitu- 

 tion authorizes Congress to pass bills. When 

 they have been passed, they are presented to 

 the President for his approval or objection. If 

 he objects to a bill for constitutional or other 

 reason, he returns it to the House in which it 

 originated; and then and there his power over 

 the subject is exhausted. If the House and 

 Senate by a two-thirds vote pass a bill, it be- 

 comes a law, and, until it is repealed by the 

 same authority or annulled by the Supreme 

 Court, the President has but one duty, and that 

 is to obey it ; and no consideration or opinion 

 of his as to its constitutionality will defend or 

 protect him in any degree. The opposite doc- 

 trine is fraught with evils of the most alarm- 

 ing character to the country. If the President 

 may refuse to execute or may violate a law 

 because he thinks it unconstitutional in a cer- 

 tain particular, another President may disre- 

 gard it for another reason ; and thus the Gov- 

 ernment becomes not a Government of laws, 

 but a Government of men. Every civil officer 

 has the same right in this respect as the Presi- 

 dent. If the latter has the right to disregard 

 a law because he thinks it unconstitutional, the 

 Secretary of the Treasury and every subordi- 

 nate have the same right. Is that doctrine to 

 prevail in this country ? 



"But coupled with that declaration is an- 

 other declaration, that the negroes of the South 

 have no right whatever to vote. Our whole 

 plan of reconstruction is based upon the doc- 

 trine that the loyal people of the South, black 

 and white, are to vote. Now, while there is 

 no evidence conclusively establishing the fact, 

 it is still undoubtedly true that thousands and 

 tens of thousands of white men in the States 

 recently in rebellion have abstained from par- 

 ticipation in the work of calling the conven- 

 tions, because they have been stimulated by 

 the conduct of the President to believe that 

 they will ultimately be able to secure govern- 

 ments from which the negro population will 

 be excluded. What is our condition to-day? 

 Governments are being set up in the ten States 

 largely by the black people, and without the 

 concurrence of the whites, that concurrence 

 being refused, to a large extent, through the 



