James Monroe actually said...

"Sensible of what I owed to my country, I felt strongly the obligation of observing the utmost impartiality in selecting those officers who were to be retained."

"We see, on the contrary, that every corps of the Army and staff was to be reorganized, and most of them reduced in officers and men, and that in arranging the officers from the old to the new corps fu..."

"In executing this law I had no personal object to accomplish or feeling to gratify--no one to retain, no one to remove."

"If the law imposed such restraint, it would in that case be void."