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 unconstitutional that he will violate the law and utterly disregard legislative authority. This is an assumption of power which strikes at the foundation of the government. The Constitution 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 If the House and the Senate by a two-thirds, vote pass a bill, it becomes a law, and, until it is repealed by the same authority or annulled by the Supreme Court, the President has but one duty, and that is to obey it; and no consideration or opinion of his as to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 doctrine is fraught with evils of the most alarming character to the country. If the President may refuse to execute or may violate a law because he thinks it unconstitutional in a certain particular, another President may disregard it for another reason; and thus the government becomes not a government of laws, but a government of men. Every civil officer has the same right in this respect as the President. If the latter has the right to disregard a law because he thinks it unconstitutional, the Secretary of the Treasury and every subordinate have the same right. Is that doctrine to prevail in this country?

But coupled with that declaration is another declaration, that the negroes of the South have no right whatever to vote. Our whole plan of reconstruction is based upon the doctrine 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 participation in the work of calling the conventions, because they have been stimulated by the conduct of the President to

believe that they will ultimately be able to secure governments 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 influence of the President. Are we to leave this officer, if we judge him guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, in control of the army and navy, with his declaration upon the record that under certain circumstances he will not execute the laws? He has the control of the army. Do you not suppose that next November a single soldier at each polling-place in the Southern country, aided by the whites, could prevent the entire negro population from voting? And, if it is for the interest of the President to do so, have we any reason to anticipate a different course of conduct? At any rate, such is the logic of the propositions which he has presented to us. If that logic be followed, the next presidential election will be heralded by a civil war, or the next inauguration of a President of the United States will be the occasion for the renewal of fratricidal strife.

Mr. Speaker, we are at present involved in financial difficulties. I see no way of escape while Mr. Johnson is President of the United States. I assent to much of what he has in his message concerning the effects of the tenure-of-office act. From my experience in the internal revenue office, I reach the conclusion that it is substantially impossible to collect the taxes while the tenure-of-office act is in force; and I have no doubt that whenever a new administration is organized, of whatever party it may be, some of the essential provisions of that act will be changed. The reason, Mr. Speaker, of the present difficulty is due to the fact that the persons engaged in plundering the revenues of the country are more or less associated criminally with public officers. The character of those public officers can be substantially known in the internal revenue office and in the treasury department; but if the Secretary of the Treasury and the President, before they can remove officers against whom probable cause exists, are obliged to wait until they have evidence which will satisfy the Senate of their guilt, the very process of waiting for that evidence to be procured exhausts the public revenues. There is but one way of overcoming this difficulty. When the President, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, are in harmony, and the commissioner is

satisfied from the circumstances existing that an officer is in collusion with thieves, he can ask the President for the removal of that man: and then and there should exist the power of removal by a stroke of the pen. Neither the official nor his friends should know the reason thereof. Nothing so inspires officials with zeal in the discharge of their duties as to feel that if they are derelict their commissions may at any moment he taken from them.

But what is our position to-day? Can this House and the Senate, with the knowledge that they have of the President's purposes and of the character of the men who surround him, give him the necessary power? Do they not feel that, if he be allowed such power, these places will be given to worse men? Hence I say that with Mr. Johnson in office from this time until the fourth of March, 1869, there is no remedy for these grievances. These are considerations only why we should not hesitate to do that which justice authorizes us to do if we believe that the President has been guilty of impeachable offenses.

Mr. Speaker, all rests here. To this House is given under the Constitution the sole power of impeachment; and this power of impeachment furnishes the only means by which we can secure the execution of the laws. And those of our fellow-citizens who desire the administration of the law ought to sustain this House while it executes that great law which is in its hands and which is nowhere else, while it performs a high and solemn duty resting upon it by which that man who has been the chief violator of the law shall be removed, and without which there can be no execution of the law anywhere. Therefore the whole responsibility, whatever it may be, for the nonexecution of the laws of the country is, in the presence of these great facts, upon this House. If this House believes that the President has executed the laws of the country, that he has obeyed the provision of the Constitution to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, then it is our duty to sustain him, to lift up his hands, to strengthen his arms; but if we believe, as upon this record I think we cannot do otherwise than believe, that he has disregarded that great injunction of the Constitution to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, there is but one remedy. The remedy is with this House, and it is nowhere else. If we neglect or refuse to use our powers when the case arises demanding decisive action, the government ceases to be a government of laws and becomes a government of men.

JOHN C. BRECKENRIDGE

(1821-1875)

OHN CABELL BRECKENRIDGE was born in Kentucky in 1821.

After graduating at Transylvania University and studying law, he settled at Lexington. Using his power as an orator in the discussion of the slavery issue, he became popular as a radical opponent of the radical enemies of slavery. Elected VicePresident on the ticket with Buchanan in 1856, the events which culminated in the John Brown raid of 1859 increased his popularity, and in 1860 he was nominated for the presidency by one wing of the Democratic party. After the election of Lincoln, Kentucky sent Breckenridge to the United States Senate, from which he retired to become a major-general in the Confederate army. After the fall of the Confederacy he spent several years abroad, but finally returned to Kentucky. He died in 1875.

G

THE DRED SCOTT DECISION

(Delivered before the Kentucky Legislature, December 1859)

ENTLEMEN, I bow to the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States upon every question within its proper jurisdiction, whether it corresponds with my private opinion or not; only, I bow a trifle lower when it happens to do so, as the decision in this Dred Scott case does. I approve it in all its parts as a sound exposition of the law and constitutional rights. of the States, and citizens that inhabit them.

I was in the Congress of the United States when that Missouri line was repealed. I never would have voted for any bill organizing the Territory of Kansas as long as that odious stigma upon our institutions remained upon the statute book. I voted cheerfully for its repeal, and in doing that I cast no reflection upon the wise patriots who acquiesced in it at the time it was established. It was repealed, and we passed the act known as

the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. The Abolition, or quasi Abolition, party of the United States were constantly contending that it was the right of Congress to prohibit slavery in the common Territories of the Union. The Democratic party, aided by most of the gentlemen from the South, took the opposite view of the case. . . A considerable portion of the Northern Democracy held that slavery was in derogation of common right and could only exist by force of positive law. They contended that the Constitution did not furnish that law, and that the slaveholder could not go into the Territories with his slaves with the Constitution to authorize him in holding his slaves as property, or to protect him. The South generally, without distinction of party, held the opposite view. They held that the citizens of all the States may go with whatever was recognized by the Constitution as property, and enjoy it. That did not seem to be denied to any article of property except slaves. Accordingly, the bill contained the provision that any question in reference to slavery should be referred to the courts of the United States, and the understanding was that, whatever the judicial decision should be, it would be binding upon all parties, not only by virtue of the agreement, but under the obligation of the citizen, to respect the authority of the legally constituted courts of the country.

The view that we in the Southern States took of it was sustained-that in the Territories, the common property of the Union, pending their Territorial condition, neither Congress nor the Territorial government had the power to confiscate any description of property recognized in the States of the Union. The court drew no distinction between slaves and other property. It is true some foreign philanthropists and some foreign writers do undertake to draw this distinction, but these distinctions have nothing to do with our system of government. Our government rests not upon the speculations of philanthropic writers, but upon the plain understanding of a written constitution which determines it, and upon that alone. It is the result of positive law; therefore we are not to look to the analogy of the supposed law of nations, but to regard the Constitution itself, which is the written expression of the respective powers of the government and the rights of the States.

Well, that being the case, and it having been authoritatively determined by the very tribunal to which it was referred, that Congress had no power to exclude slavery from the Territories,