It will not be denied, I suppose, that the President may suspend a
public officer in the entire absence of any papers or documents to
aid his official judgment and discretion; and I am quite prepared to
avow that the cases are not few in which suspensions from office have
depended more upon oral representations made to me by citizens of known
good repute and by members of the House of Representatives and Senators
of the United States than upon any letters and documents presented for
my examination. I have not felt justified in suspecting the veracity,
integrity, and patriotism of Senators, or ignoring their
representations, because they were not in party affiliation with the
majority of their associates; and I recall a few suspensions which bear
the approval of individual members identified politically with the
majority in the Senate.
While, therefore, I am constrained to deny the right of the Senate to
the papers and documents described, so far as the right to the same is
based upon the claim that they are in any view of the subject official,
I am also led unequivocally to dispute the right of the Senate by the
aid of any documents whatever, or in any way save through the judicial
process of trial on impeachment, to review or reverse the acts of the
Executive in the suspension, during the recess of the Senate, of Federal
officials.
I believe the power to remove or suspend such officials is vested in the
President alone by the Constitution, which in express terms provides
that "the executive power shall be vested in a President of the United
States of America," and that "he shall take care that the laws be
faithfully executed.
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