less than the number of removals made by President Grant in seven
weeks, in 1869.

In obedience to the statute of 1869, President Cleveland sent in
all the recess appointments within thirty days after the opening
of the session. They were referred to various committees
according to the long established custom of the Senate, but the
Senate moved so slowly that three months after the opening of the
session, only seventeen nominations had been considered, fifteen
of which the Senate confirmed.

Meanwhile, the Senate had raised an issue which the President met
with a force and a directness probably unexpected. Among the
recess appointments was one to the office of District Attorney
for the Southern District of Alabama, in place of an officer who
had been suspended in July 1885, but whose term of office
expired by limitation on December 20, 1885. Therefore, at the
time the Senate took up the case, the Tenure of Office Act did
not apply to it, and the only question actually open was whether
the acting officer should be confirmed or rejected. Nevertheless,
the disposition to assert control over executive action was so
strong that the Senate drifted into a constitutional struggle
over a case that did not then involve the question of the
President's discretionary power of removal from office, which was
really the point at issue.

On December 26, 1885, the Judiciary Committee notified the
Attorney-General to transmit "all papers and information in the
possession of the Department" regarding both the nomination and
"the suspension and proposed removal from office" of the former