The
Executive, therefore, has no authority in the matter, beyond that
of seeing that the laws are duly complied with; and whatever
power he assumes, whether by proclamation or by instructions
given to the provisional governors, civil or military, is simply
a usurpation of the power of Congress, which it rests with
Congress to condone or not, as it may see fit. Executive
proclamations, excluding a larger or a smaller portion of the
electoral or territorial people from the exercise of the elective
franchise in reorganizing the State, and executive efforts to
throw the State into the hands of one political party or another,
are an unwarrantable assumption of power, for the President, in
relation to reconstruction, acts only under the peace powers of
the constitution, and simply as the first executive officer of
the Union. His business is to execute the laws, not to make
them. His legislative authority is confined to his qualified
veto on the acts of Congress, and to the recommendation to
Congress of such measures as he believes are needed by the
country.
In reconstructing a disorganized State, neither Congress nor the
Executive has any power that either has not in time of peace.
The Executive, as commander-in-chief of the army, may ex
necessitate, pace it ad interim under a military governor, but he
cannot appoint even a provisional civil governor till Congress
has created the office and given him authority to fill it; far
less can be legally give instructions to the civil governor as to
the mode or manner of reconstructing the disorganized State, or
decide who may or may not vote in the preliminary reorganization.
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