Two years after the law of 1867 was passed, and within less than
five weeks after the inauguration of a President in political accord
with both branches of Congress, the sections of the act regulating
suspensions from office during the recess of the Senate were entirely
repealed, and in their place were substituted provisions which, instead
of limiting the causes of suspension to misconduct, crime, disability,
or disqualification, expressly permitted such suspension by the
President "in his discretion," and completely abandoned the requirement
obliging him to report to the Senate "the evidence and reasons" for his
action.
With these modifications and with all branches of the Government in
political harmony, and in the absence of partisan incentive to captious
obstruction, the law as it was left by the amendment of 1869 was much
less destructive of Executive discretion. And yet the great general and
patriotic citizen who on the 4th day of March, 1869, assumed the duties
of Chief Executive, and for whose freer administration of his high
office the most hateful restraints of the law of 1867 were, on the 5th
day of April, 1869, removed, mindful of his obligation to defend and
protect every prerogative of his great trust, and apprehensive of the
injury threatened the public service in the continued operation of these
statutes even in their modified form, in his first message to Congress
advised their repeal and set forth their unconstitutional character and
hurtful tendency in the following language:
It may be well to mention here the embarrassment possible to arise from
leaving on the statute books the so-called "tenure-of-office acts," and
to earnestly recommend their total repeal.
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