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 hereafter be 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 appointed and one month thereafter, subject to removal by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.

This respondent was also aware that this act was understood and intended to be an expression of the opinion of the Congress by which that act was passed that the power to remove executive officers for cause might by law be taken from the President and vested in him and the Senate jointly; and although this respondent had arrived at and still retained the opinion above expressed, and verily believed, as he still believes, that the said first section of the last-mentioned act was and is wholly inoperative and void by reason of its conflict with the Constitution of the United States, yet, inasmuch as the same had been enacted by the constitutional majority in each of the two Houses of that Congress, this respondent considered it to be proper to examine and decide whether the particular case of the said Stanton, on which it was this respondent’s duty to act, was within or without the terms of that first section of the act, or, if within it, whether the President had not the power, according to the terms of the act, to remove the said Stanton from the office of Secretary for the Department of War; and having, in his capacity of President of the United States, so examined and considered, did form the opinion that the case of the said Stanton and his tenure of office were not affected by the first section of the last-named act.

And this respondent, further answering, says that although a case thus existed which, in his judgment, as President of the United States, called for the exercise of the executive power to remove the said Stanton from the office of Secretary for the Department of War; and although this respondent was of opinion, as is above shown, that under the Constitution of the United States the power to remove the said Stanton from the said office was vested in the President of the United States; and although this respondent was also of the opinion, as is above shown, that the case of the said Stanton was not affected by the first section of the last-named act; and although each of the said opinions had been formed by this respondent upon an actual case, requiring him, in his capacity of President of the United States, to come to some judgment and determination thereon, yet this respondent,