The act entitled “An act making appropriations for the support of the Army for the year ending June 30, 1868, and for other purposes” contains provisions to which I must call attention.  Those provisions are contained in the second section, which in certain cases virtually deprives the President of his constitutional functions as Commander in Chief of the Army, and in the sixth section, which denies to ten States of this Union their constitutional right to protect themselves in any emergency by means of their own militia.  Those provisions are out of place in an appropriation act.  I am compelled to defeat these necessary appropriations if I withhold my signature to the act.  Pressed by these considerations, I feel constrained to return the bill with my signature, but to accompany it with my protest against the sections which I have indicated.

ANDREW JOHNSON.

VETO MESSAGES.

WASHINGTON, January 5, 1867.

To the Senate of the United States: 

I have received and considered a bill entitled “An act to regulate the elective franchise in the District of Columbia,” passed by the Senate on the 13th of December and by the House of Representatives on the succeeding day.  It was presented for my approval on the 26th ultimo—­six days after the adjournment of Congress—­and is now returned with my objections to the Senate, in which House it originated.

Measures having been introduced at the commencement of the first session of the present Congress for the extension of the elective franchise to persons of color in the District of Columbia, steps were taken by the corporate authorities of Washington and Georgetown to ascertain and make known the opinion of the people of the two cities upon a subject so immediately affecting their welfare as a community.  The question was submitted to the people at special elections held in the month of December, 1865, when the qualified voters of Washington and Georgetown, with great unanimity of sentiment, expressed themselves opposed to the contemplated legislation.  In Washington, in a vote of 6,556—­the largest, with but two exceptions, ever polled in that city—­only thirty-five ballots were cast for negro suffrage, while in Georgetown, in an aggregate of 813 votes—­a number considerably in excess of the average vote at the four preceding annual elections—­but one was given in favor of the proposed extension of the elective franchise.  As these elections seem to have been conducted with entire fairness, the result must be accepted as a truthful expression of the opinion of the people of the District upon the question which evoked it.  Possessing, as an organized community, the same popular right as the inhabitants of a State or Territory to make known their will upon matters which affect their social and political condition, they could have selected no more appropriate mode of memorializing Congress upon the subject of this bill than through the suffrages of their qualified voters.