Excerpt from Speeches of Hon. John M. Clayton, of Delaware, in the United States Senate, March 31, and April 1, 1856: In Reply to Senator Houston, of Texas, and Others, and in Defense of the Naval Board We discussed the question at length. You will find, by looking back to the history of that period, that Mr. Barton, of Missouri, introduced such resolutions as I have mentioned, and discussed them with great ability. You will find that, in every instance when the question was moved, the Democratic party, then called the Jackson party, unanimously voted down every resolution deny ing or calling for the reasons of executive remo vals. By referring to the debates of that day you will find that every debater on the Democratic or Jackson side of the Senate, denied utterly the power of the Senate to look behind the nomin ations and inquire into the causes of removal. Such, I repeat, was not my opinion. I say again, I endeavored at the time to vindicate the opposite position, but I was voted down. The party with which I was associated was always beaten upon that question. We were voted down at every succeeding session whenever the question was raised, throughout the whole of my congressional career; and there never was an instance in which it was decided that the Senate of the United States had authority to limit or control the removing power of the Executive. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.