olding of
elections for constitutional conventions. Republican leaders therefore
felt not only justified in the precautions they had taken to keep the
power of Congress alive, but esteemed it peculiarly fortunate that
they could so promptly prevent the evil effects which might otherwise
flow from the unfriendly constructions of the Attorney-General. The
principal business of the July session was to provide a second
supplementary Act which effectually remedied all the objections and
obstructions which Mr. Stanbery's acute legal knowledge had suggested.
The bill passed both branches by the 13th of July and reached the
President on the 14th--meeting at his hands the same fate that its
predecessors had incurred. On the 19th he vetoed it--rehearsing the
objections he had repeatedly stated on the same issues.

The President complained that within less than a year Congress had
attempted to strip the Executive Department of the Government of some
of its essential powers. "The military commander," said he, "is, as to
the power of appointment, made to take the place of the President, and
the General of the Army the place of the Senate, and any attempt on
the part of the President to assert his own Constitutional power may,
under pretense of law, be met by official insubordination. It is to
be feared that these military officers, looking to the authority given
by these laws, rather than to the letter of the Constitution, will
recognize no authority but the commander of the district or the General
of the Army. . . . If there were no other objection than this to the
proposed legislation it would be sufficient. While I hold the chief
executive authority of the United States, while the obligations rests
upon me to see that all laws are faithfully executed, I can never
willingly surrender that trust or the powers given for its execution.
I can never give my assent to be made responsible for the faithful
execution of laws, and at the same time surrender that trust and the
powers which accompany it to any other executive officer, high or low,
or to any number of executive officers."

Many of those who kept closest watch of the controversy between the
President and Congress saw in the foregoing words something ominous.
In their apprehensions of evil they construed it as a threat that the
President would exercise his power as Commander-in-Chief of the Army
and Navy with which he was fully invested by the Constitution, to
change the