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fore, cannot be regarded as an effort to defeat the laws of Congress."

These letters were made public after Sheridan's removal. Johnson was praised in the South for his discomfiture of Grant and Grant was criticized in the North for the feebleness of his stand against Johnson. He might have drawn a lesson from the incident that he was less fit for controversy than command.

Johnson, on December 12, 1867, just three weeks after Congress met again after a long recess, sent a message telling all about Stanton's suspension, fortified with documents and containing interesting revelations in regard to Stanton's own attitude toward the Tenure of Office Act. For an example:

"Every member of my Cabinet advised me that the proposed law was unconstitutional. All spoke without doubt or reservation, but Mr. Stanton's condemnation of the law was the most elaborate and emphatic. . . . I was so much struck with the full mastery of the question manifested by Mr. Stanton ... that I requested him to prepare the veto upon this Tenure of Office Bill. This he declined on the ground of physical disability, ... but stated his readiness to furnish what aid might be required in the preparation of materials for the paper."

Talk about impeachment rumbled in the air. During the preceding winter several resolutions had been

presented in the House, had been considered by committees, and as late as February 15 had been disapproved.

Then in a week, committee and House reversed themselves. On February 22, 1868, just two years from the day Johnson made his ill-fated speech from the White House steps, the Reconstruction Committee unanimously reported a resolution of impeachment, and two days later the resolution was adopted by the House, 128 to 47, the negative votes all Democrats. What had happened to bring about so swift a change?

The Senate had duly considered Johnson's reasons for suspending Stanton and resolved that they were insufficient. This was late in the afternoon of January 13, the Senate having had the question under consideration since January 11. On the morning of the 14th, Grant went to the office of the Secretary of War, locked and bolted the door on the outside, turned the key over to the Adjutant-General, and at once sent a formal letter to the President, by the hand of General Comstock, saying that he had been notified of the action of the Senate and that by the terms of the law his own functions as Secretary of War ceased with the reception of the notice. Stanton was once more in possession.

With customary incivility almost his first act was

to send a messenger to Grant's office with word that he "wanted to see him." Had it not been before the days of electricity, he would no doubt have pressed a buzzer, as happened afterwards with other secretaries and other generals. Both Grant and Sherman four months before his removal had found Stanton's arrogance insufferable, and Grant at one time had concluded that either he or Stanton must resign.1

1 "In 1866, 1867, and 1868, General Grant talked to me freely several times of his differences with Secretary Stanton. His most emphatic declaration on that subject, and of his own intended action in consequence, appears from the records to have been made after Stanton's return to the war office in January, 1868, when his conduct was even more offensive to Grant than it had been before Stanton's suspension in August, 1867, and when Grant and Sherman were trying to get Stanton out of the war office. At the time of General Grant's visit to Richmond, Virginia, as one of the Peabody Trustees, he said to me that the conduct of Mr. Stanton had become intolerable to him, and, after asking my opinion, declared in emphatic terms his intention to demand either the removal of Stanton or the acceptance of his own resignation. But the bitter personal controversy which immediately followed between Grant and Johnson, the second attempt to remove Stanton in February, 1868, and the consequent impeachment of the President, totally eclipsed the more distant and lesser controversy between Grant and Stanton, and doubtless prevented Grant from taking the action in respect to Stanton's removal which he informed me at Richmond he intended to take." (Schofield, Fortysix Years in the Army, pp. 412-13.)

CHAPTER XXIX

A QUESTION OF VERACITY-THE IMPEACHMENT PROCEEDINGS · ELECTION AS PRESIDENT

JOHNSON was furious. That day a bitter, far-reaching dispute began, involving the good faith and truthfulness of Grant and the veracity of Johnson. It severed all relations between the two. Johnson contended that the Tenure of Office Act was unconstitutional, and that in any event, by the manner of its phrasing, it did not apply to Stanton or any other of Lincoln's appointees. He wanted to test it in the courts, and he declared that Grant agreed to "return the office to my possession in time to enable me to appoint a successor before final action by the Senate upon Mr. Stanton's suspension, or would remain as its head awaiting a decision of the question by judicial proceedings."

Grant denied that he had made such an agreement. He admitted that some time after assuming the duties of Secretary, when the President asked his views as to the course which Stanton must pursue to gain possession of the office in case the Senate should not concur in his suspension, he had replied in substance that Stanton would have to appeal to the courts to reinstate him. "Finding that the President was de

sirous of keeping Mr. Stanton out of office, whether sustained in the suspension or not, I stated that I had not looked particularly into the Tenure of Office Bill, but that what I had stated was a general principle and if I should change my mind in this particular case I would inform him of the fact. Subsequently, on reading the Tenure of Office Bill closely, I found that I could not without violation of the law refuse to vacate the office of Secretary of War the moment Mr. Stanton was reinstated by the Senate,1 even though the President should order me to retain it, which he never did. Taking this view of the subject and learning on Saturday, the 11th instant, that the Senate had taken up the subject of Mr. Stanton's suspension, after some conversation with Lieutenant-General Sherman and some members of my staff, in which I stated that the law left me no discretion as to my action should Mr. Stanton be reinstated, and that I intended to inform the President, I went to the President for the sole purpose of making this decision known and did so make it known. In doing this I

1 Sec. 5 That if any person shall, contrary to the provision of this Act, accept any appointment to or employment in any office, or shall hold or exercise any such office or employment, he shall be deemed, and is hereby declared to be, guilty of a high misdemeanor, and, upon trial and conviction thereof, he shall be punished therefor by a fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars or by imprisonment not exceeding five years, or both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.

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