That part of the first section which precedes the proviso declares that every person holding a civil office to which he has been or may be appointed by and with the advice and consent of the Senate shall hold such office until a successor shall have been in like manner appointed.  It purports to take from the Executive, during the fixed time established for the tenure of the office, the independent power of removal, and to require for such removal the concurrent action of the President and the Senate.

The proviso that follows proceeds to fix the term of office of the seven heads of Departments, whose tenure never had been defined before, by prescribing that they “shall hold their offices, respectively, for and during the term of the President by whom they may have been appointed and for one month thereafter, subject to removal by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.”

Thus, as to these enumerated officers, the proviso takes from the President the power of removal except with the advice and consent of the Senate.  By its terms, however, before he can be deprived of the power to displace them it must appear that he himself has appointed them.  It is only in that case that they have any tenure of office or any independent right to hold during the term of the President and for one month after the cessation of his official functions.  The proviso, therefore, gives no tenure of office to any one of these officers who has been appointed by a former President beyond one month after the accession of his successor.

In the case of Mr. Stanton, the only appointment under which he held the office of Secretary of War was that conferred upon him by my immediate predecessor, with the advice and consent of the Senate.  He has never held from me any appointment as the head of the War Department.  Whatever right he had to hold the office was derived from that original appointment and my own sufferance.  The law was not intended to protect such an incumbent of the War Department by taking from the President the power to remove him.  This, in my judgment, is perfectly clear, and the law itself admits of no other just construction.  We find in all that portion of the first section which precedes the proviso that as to civil officers generally the President is deprived of the power of removal, and it is plain that if there had been no proviso that power would just as clearly have been taken from him so far as it applies to the seven heads of Departments.  But for reasons which were no doubt satisfactory to Congress these principal officers were specially provided for, and as to them the express and only requirement is that the President who has appointed them shall not without the advice and consent of the Senate remove them from office.  The consequence is that as to my Cabinet, embracing the seven officers designated in the first section, the act takes from me the power, without the concurrence of the Senate, to remove any one of them that I have appointed, but it does not protect such of them as I did not appoint, nor give to them any tenure of office beyond my pleasure.