The law governing the President's case was perfectly clear to anyone who could divest himself of political prejudice and of personal hostility. It was briefly this. By an Act of the First Congress, of the date of August 7th, 1789, Congress interpreted the Constitution as giving the President the power to remove any officer of the United States, except judges of the United States courts, at his discretion, as an incident of his sole executive responsibility, and in an especial sense recognized this constitutional power as belonging to the President in the case of the heads of the governmental departments, the members of the Cabinet, as they afterwards came to be called, since these persons stood, and must stand, in a peculiarly confidential relation to the President, as his official advisers. This interpretation of the Constitution as to the President's power of removal and the practice built upon it remained untouched by the Congress until the 2d of March, 1867, when, as we have seen, Congress enacted, "that every person holding any civil office to which he has been appointed by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, and every person who shall be hereafter appointed to any such office, and shall become duly qualified to act therein, is and shall be entitled to hold such office until a successor shall have been in like manner appointed and duly qualified, except as herein otherwise provided: Provided, That the Secretaries of State, of the Treasury, of War, of the Navy, and of the Interior, the Postmaster-General, and the Attorney-General, shall hold their offices respectively for and during the term of the President by whom they may have been {185} appointed, and one month thereafter, subject to removal by and with the advice and consent of the Senate." It will be remembered that in the Tenure-of-Office bill as it originated in the Senate the members of the Cabinet were entirely excepted from its operation; that the House in passing the bill included them; that the Senate would not agree to their inclusion; that the bill was then sent to a conference committee; that this committee invented the compromise contained in the proviso; that this proviso was understood to give to each President the power to choose his own Cabinet officers once during his term, and therefore to remove any Cabinet officer not originally appointed by him, but holding under a commission from a former President, and remaining in office only by the sufferance of the existing President; that this was especially the true meaning of the proviso in regard to those Cabinet officers then in office, but who had been appointed and commissioned by Mr. Lincoln during his first term to hold during the pleasure of the President; and that it was upon this explanation of the meaning of the proviso that the Senate voted the resolution of the conference committee.