ty to do political work and especially in
Southern States, they frequently were not only inordinately active in
questionable political work, but sought to do party service by secret
and sinister manipulation of colored votes, and by other practices
inviting avoidable and dangerous collisions between the white and
colored population."*

* Cleveland, "Presidential Problems," pp. 42-43.

The Administration began its career in March, 1885. The Senate did not
convene until December. Meanwhile, removals and appointments went on
in the public service, the total for ten months being six hundred and
forty-three which was thirty-seven less than the number of removals made
by President Grant in seven weeks, in 1869.

In obedience to the statute of 1869, President Cleveland sent in all the
recess appointments within thirty days after the opening of the
session. They were referred to various committees according to the long
established custom of the Senate, but the Senate moved so slowly
that three months after the opening of the session, only seventeen
nominations had been considered, fifteen of which the Senate confirmed.

Meanwhile, the Senate had raised an issue which the President met with
a force and a directness probably unexpected. Among the recess
appointments was one to the office of District Attorney for the Southern
District of Alabama, in place of an officer who had been suspended in
July 1885, but whose term of office expired by limitation on December
20, 1885. Therefore, at the time the Senate took up the case, the Tenure
of Office Act did not apply to it, and the only question actually
open was whether the acting officer should be confirmed or rejected.
Nevertheless, the disposition to assert control over executive action
was so strong that the Senate drifted into a constitutional struggle
over a case that did not then involve the question of the President's
discretionary power of removal from office, which was really the point
at issue.

On December 26, 1885, the Judiciary Committee notified the
Attorney-General to transmit "all papers and information in the
possession of the Department" regarding both the nomination and "the
suspension and proposed removal from office" of the former incumbent. On
January 11, 1886, the Attorney-General sent to the Committee the papers
bearing upon the nomination, but withheld those touching the removal
on the ground that he had "received no direction from the President