ies of my unprecedented position not to know all that is
intended to be conveyed in the reproach cast upon a President without
a party. But I found myself placed in this most responsible station
by no usurpation or contrivance of my own. I was called to it, under
Providence, by the supreme law of the land and the deliberately declared
will of the people. It is by these that I have been clothed with the
high powers which they have seen fit to confide to their Chief Executive
and been charged with the solemn responsibility under which those powers
are to be exercised. It is to them that I hold myself answerable as a
moral agent for a free and conscientious discharge of the duties which
they have imposed upon me. It is not as an individual merely that I am
now called upon to resist the encroachments of unconstitutional power.
I represent the executive authority of the people of the United States,
and it is in their name, whose mere agent and servant I am, and whose
will declared in their fundamental law I dare not, even were I inclined,
to disobey, that I protest against every attempt to break down the
undoubted constitutional power of this department without a solemn
amendment of that fundamental law.

I am determined to uphold the Constitution in this as in other
respects to the utmost of my ability and in defiance of all personal
consequences. What may happen to an individual is of little importance,
but the Constitution of the country, or any one of its great and clear
principles and provisions, is too sacred to be surrendered under any
circumstances whatever by those who are charged with its protection and
defense. Least of all should he be held guiltless who, placed at the
head of one of the great departments of the Government, should shrink
from the exercise of its unquestionable authority on the most important
occasions and should consent without a struggle to efface all the
barriers so carefully erected by the people to control and circumscribe
the powers confided to their various agents. It may be desirable, as the
majority of the House of Representatives has declared it is, that no
such checks upon the will of the Legislature should be suffered to
continue. This is a matter for the people and States to decide, but
until they shall have decided it I shall feel myself bound to execute,
without fear or favor, the law as it has been written by our
predecessors.

I protest against this whole proceeding of the House