As part of a flurry of increasingly radical Republican legislative activity in the last days of the Thirty-Ninth Congress, the legislature slipped a rider into the Army Appropiations Act that banned the President from dismissing the commander of the the United States Army, a position General U.S. Grant held at the time, without the "previous approval" of the U.S. Senate. The controversial measure was clearly aimed at President Johnson but he could not afford to veto an appropiations bill and was forced to accept this restraint on his role as commander-in-chief. The section was repealed in 1869 after Andrew Johnson had left office. (By John Osborne)
William MacDonald (ed.), Documentary Source Book of American History, 1606-1913 (New York: Macmillan Company, 1920), 507-508.
