altogether upon the theory of the
Constitution from which I am obliged to dissent, I have not thought
it necessary to examine them with a view to make them an occasion of
distinct and special objections.

Experience, I think, has shown that it is the easiest, as it is
also the most attractive, of studies to frame constitutions for the
self-government of free states and nations. But I think experience has
equally shown that it is the most difficult of all political labors to
preserve and maintain such free constitutions of self-government when
once happily established. I know no other way in which they can be
preserved and maintained except by a constant adherence to them through
the various vicissitudes of national existence, with such adaptations
as may become necessary, always to be effected, however, through the
agencies and in the forms prescribed in the original constitutions
themselves.

Whenever administration fails or seems to fail in securing any of the
great ends for which republican government is established, the proper
course seems to be to renew the original spirit and forms of the
Constitution itself.

ANDREW JOHNSON.

WASHINGTON, _March 2, 1867_.

_To the House of Representatives_:

I have examined the bill "to provide for the more efficient government
of the rebel States" with the care and anxiety which its transcendent
importance is calculated to awaken. I am unable to give it my assent,
for reasons so grave that I hope a statement of them may have some
influence on the minds of the patriotic and enlightened men with whom
the decision must ultimately rest.

The bill places all the people of the ten States therein named under the
absolute domination of military rulers; and the preamble undertakes to
give the reason upon which the measure is based and the ground upon
which it is justified. It declares that there exists in those States no
legal governments and no adequate protection for life or property, and
asserts the necessity of enforcing peace and good order within their
limits. Is this true as matter of fact?

It is not denied that the States in question have each of them
an actual government, with all the powers--executive, judicial, and
legislative--which properly belong to a free state. They are organized
like the other States of the Union, and, like them, they make,
administer, and execute the laws which concern their domestic affairs.
An existing _de facto_ government, exercising