In response I have the honor to transmit herewith a report from the acting superintendent of conscription giving the information called for by the Senate, and stating the reasons which have caused the delay in replying to the resolution.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

JAMES A. SEDDON,

Secretary of War.

RICHMOND, VA., February 1, 1865.

Hon. J. A. SEDDON:

MY DEAR SIR: You are too well acquainted with the reasons which have delayed my answer to your letter of the 18th ultimo* to need any explanation on the subject, and must be too well assured of my warm personal regard and official confidence to render necessary any expression of the regret I feel at being deprived of your aid and counsel at this critical juncture in our affairs.

I have hoped that further reflection would induce a change in your views, but as this has not been the case I am not at liberty to question the reasons for your decision. It is a matter exclusively for your private judgment whether you should be controlled by an expression of opinion on the part of the Virginia delegation in Congress that it would be advisable to "reorganize my Cabinet by relieving all the present heads of departments. " I have no choice but to acquiesce in your conclusion that you cannot longer fill your present position without impaired usefulness, nor without doing violence to your own feelings.

I cannot, however, recognize the propriety of your decision, because I cannot admit the existence of a power or right in the legislative department of the Government or in any part or branch of it to control the continuance in office of those "principal officers in each of the executive departments," whose choice the Constitution has vested in the Chief Magistrate; whose advice in writing he is empowered to required, and whose tenure of office is exceptional, being made to depend expressly on "the pleasure of the President. " The relations between the President and the heads of the executive departments are, from these, of the closest and most intimate character; they imply mutual confidence and esteem and a general concurrence of opinion on administrative policy, and it is not a constitutional function of the legislative department to interfere with these relations; nor can it be assumed that a change of the heads of departments would alrative policy of the Government without also assuming as true the injurious supposition that the President has permitted them to pursue a policy at variance with his own, and has thus failed to do his own duty as chief of the executive department.

The notion that under our form of government an expression by the legislative of want of confidence in the executive department is an appropriate exercise of constitutional power and should cause a change in the Cabinet is quite unfounded, and it is not difficult to see that it arises from a false analogy, that most fertile source of error. In Great Britain a vote of the House of Commons expressing a want of confidence in the ministry has a controlling influence because the Parliament governs. With us it is the reverse. The two cases are so distinct as to be opposite rather than parallel to each other. In Great

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*Not found.

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