the cessation of his official functions. The proviso, therefore, gives
no tenure of office to any one of these officers who has been appointed
by a former President beyond one month after the accession of his
successor.

In the case of Mr. Stanton, the only appointment under which he
held the office of Secretary of War was that conferred upon him by my
immediate predecessor, with the advice and consent of the Senate. He has
never held from me any appointment as the head of the War Department.
Whatever right he had to hold the office was derived from that original
appointment and my own sufferance. The law was not intended to protect
such an incumbent of the War Department by taking from the President the
power to remove him. This, in my judgment, is perfectly clear, and the
law itself admits of no other just construction. We find in all that
portion of the first section which precedes the proviso that as to civil
officers generally the President is deprived of the power of removal,
and it is plain that if there had been no proviso that power would just
as clearly have been taken from him so far as it applies to the seven
heads of Departments. But for reasons which were no doubt satisfactory
to Congress these principal officers were specially provided for, and as
to them the express and only requirement is that the President who has
appointed them shall not without the advice and consent of the Senate
remove them from office. The consequence is that as to my Cabinet,
embracing the seven officers designated in the first section, the act
takes from me the power, without the concurrence of the Senate, to
remove any one of them that I have appointed, but it does not protect
such of them as I did not appoint, nor give to them any tenure of office
beyond my pleasure.

An examination of this act, then, shows that while in one part of the
section provision is made for officers generally, in another clause
there is a class of officers, designated by their official titles, who
are excepted from the general terms of the law, and in reference to whom
a clear distinction is made as to the general power of removal limited
in the first clause of the section.

This distinction is that as to such of these enumerated officers as hold
under the appointment of the President the power of removal can only be
exercised by him with the consent of the Senate, while as to those who
have not been appointed by him there is no like denial of his