To the mind of any unprejudiced constitutional lawyer, at the present day, this act must appear as a gross {129} usurpation by Congress of the President's military powers conferred upon him by the Constitution. The Constitution makes the President the Commander-in-Chief of the army and navy, and gives Congress no power whatsoever over the methods or channels by, and through, which he may issue his military commands. Neither does the Constitution give Congress any power to assign any of the officers or troops of the army to any particular position. These are all functions of the commandership-in-chief, and, unless expressly granted by the Constitution to some other department of the Government, belong to the President. It was not only a usurpation by Congress to pass such an act, but it was a mean thing to do it as a section of an appropriation bill; and there is no escaping the suspicion that it had a sinister purpose, namely, to entrap the President in the commission of what Congress had made a high misdemeanor, and open the way for his impeachment and expulsion from office. The President signed this bill, however, in order to save the appropriations for the support of the army, although he protested strongly against the seizure of his constitutional powers by the Congress. [Sidenote: The supplementary Reconstruction bill.] On the same day that the vetoes of the Reconstruction bill and the Tenure-of-Office bill were sent to Congress, this body passed a bill supplementary to the first measure. It was in the nature of an administrative measure for the purpose of carrying out the new plan of Reconstruction. It ordered the commanding generals of the respective districts to cause a registration to be made before September 1st next following of all male citizens of the United States, twenty-one years of age and over, resident in each county or parish in the "State" or "States" included in their respective districts, who were qualified as {130} prescribed by the Reconstruction Act to vote for delegates to a constitutional convention, and who had taken an oath asserting citizenship and residence, and freedom from disfranchisement on account of participation in rebellion or the commission of felony, and had sworn that they had never engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or given aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States after having been members of Congress or of a "State" legislature, or officers of the United States or of a "State" of the Union, and that they would henceforth faithfully support the Constitution and obey the laws of the United States and encourage others to do so.