.

If there were no other objection than this to the proposed legislation it would be sufficient.

While I hold the chief executive authority of the United States, while the obligations rests upon me to see that all laws are faithfully executed, I can never willingly surrender that trust or the powers given for its execution.
I can never give my assent to be made responsible for the faithful execution of laws, and at the same time surrender that trust and the powers which accompany it to any other executive officer, high or low, or to any number of executive officers." Many of those who kept closest watch of the controversy between the President and Congress saw in the foregoing words something ominous.
In their apprehensions of evil they construed it as a threat that the President would exercise his power as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy with which he was fully invested by the Constitution, to change the assignment of military officers at will.

Should he stubbornly or capriciously assert this power he might seriously embarrass the entire administration of the Reconstruction Acts in the approaching registrations and elections in the Southern States.

A change of officers at a single point might frustrate all the preparations for the reconstruction of a State, and a general change might produce chaos in the South and possibly develop a spirit of violence of which no man could measure the effect.