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Stanton volunteers to defend.
There is no provision in this law which compels any officer coming
within its provisions to remain in office. It forbids removals--not
resignations. Mr. Stanton was perfectly free to resign at any moment,
either upon his own motion or in compliance with a request or an order.
It was a matter of choice or of taste. There was nothing compulsory in
the nature of legal obligation. Nor does he put his action upon that
imperative ground. He says he acts under a "sense of public duty," not
of legal obligation, compelling him to hold on and leaving him no
choice. The public duty which is upon him arises from the respect which
he owes to the Constitution and the laws, violated in his own case.
He is therefore compelled by this sense of public duty to vindicate
violated law and to stand as its champion.
This was not the first occasion in which Mr. Stanton, in discharge of
a public duty, was called upon to consider the provisions of that law.
That tenure-of-office law did not pass without notice.


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