No act of Congress can limit, suspend, or confine this constitutional duty.  I am not aware of the existence of any act of Congress which assumes thus to limit or restrict the exercise of the functions of the Executive.  Were there such acts, I should nevertheless recognize the superior authority of the Constitution, and should exercise the powers required thereby of the President.

The act to which reference is made in the resolution of the House relates to the establishing of the seat of Government and the providing of suitable buildings and removal thereto of the offices attached to the Government, etc.  It was not understood at its date and by General Washington to confine the President in the discharge of his duties and powers to actual presence at the seat of Government.  On the 30th of March, 1791, shortly after the passage of the act referred to, General Washington issued an Executive proclamation having reference to the subject of this very act from Georgetown, a place remote from Philadelphia, which then was the seat of Government, where the act referred to directed that “all offices attached to the seat of Government” should for the time remain.

That none of his successors have entertained the idea that their executive offices could be performed only at the seat of Government is evidenced by the hundreds upon hundreds of such acts performed by my predecessors in unbroken line from Washington to Lincoln, a memorandum of the general nature and character of some of which acts is submitted herewith; and no question has ever been raised as to the validity of those acts or as to the right and propriety of the Executive to exercise the powers of his office in any part of the United States.

U.S.  GRANT.

Memorandum of absences of the Presidents of the United States from the national capital during each of the several Administrations, and of public and executive acts performed during the time of such absences.

President Washington was frequently absent from the capital; he appears to have been thus absent at least one hundred and eighty-one days during his term.

During his several absences he discharged official and executive duties; among them—­

In March, 1791, he issued a proclamation, dated at Georgetown, in reference to running the boundary for the territory of the permanent seat of the Government.

From Mount Vernon he signed an official letter to the Emperor of Morocco, and from the same place the commission of Oliver Wolcott as Comptroller of the Treasury and the proclamation respecting the whisky insurrection in Pennsylvania; also various sea letters, the proclamation of the treaty of 1795 between the United States and Spain, the Executive order of August 4, 1792, relative to the duties on distilled spirits, etc.

When at Germantown he signed the commission of John Breckenridge as attorney of the United States for Kentucky, and that of engineer of the United States Mint.