PUBLIC DOCUMENTS. 



649 



direction of the President unless such order is known 

 by the General commanding the Armies of the Uni- 

 ted States to have been authorized by the Executive. 



ANDKEW JOHNSON. 

 January 29, 1868. 



HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF THE UNITED STATES, ) 

 WASHINGTON, D. C., January 28, 1868. j 

 Sjjnx : ,Chv the "24th instant I requested you to give 

 me in writing the instructions which you had pre- 

 viously given me verbally, not to obey any order from 

 Hon. E. M. Stanton, Secretary of War, unless I knew 

 that it came from yourself. To this written request, 

 I received a message that has left doubt in my mind 

 of your intentions. To prevent any possible misun- 

 derstanding, therefore. I renew the request that you 

 will give me written instructions, and till they are 



received will suspend action on your verbal ones. 



compelled to ask these instructions in writing 



I am 



in consequence of the many and gross misrepresenta- 

 tions, affecting my personal honor, circulated through 

 the press for the Hist fortnight, purporting to come 

 from the Presiden* of conversations which occurred 

 either with the President privately in his office or in 

 Cabinet meeting. What is written admits of no mis- 

 understanding. 



In view of the misrepresentations referred to, it 

 will be well to state the facts in the case. 



Some time after I assumed the duties of Secretary 

 of War ad interim the President asked me my views 

 as to the course Mr. Stanton would have to pursue, 

 in case the Senate should not concur in his suspen- 

 sion, to obtain possession of his office. My reply was, 

 in substance, that Mr. Stanton would have to appeal 

 to the courts- to reinstate him, illustrating my posi- 

 tion by citing the ground I had taken in the case of 

 the Baltimore police commissioners. 



In that case I did not doubt the technical right of 

 Governor Swann to remove the old commissioners 

 and to appoint their successors. As the old com- 

 missioners refused to give up, however, I contended 

 that no resource was left but to appeal to the courts. 



Finding that the President was desirous of keeping 

 Mr. Stanton out of office, whether sustained in the 

 suspension or not, I stated that I had not looked par- 

 ticularly 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 viola- 

 tion of the law, refuse to vacate the office of Secretary 

 of War the moment Mr. Stanton was reinstated by the 

 Senate ; 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 llth 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 fulfilled the promise 

 made in our last preceding conversation on the sub- 

 ject. 



The President, however, instead of accepting my 

 view of the requirements of the " Tenure-of-Office 

 Bill," contended that he had suspended Mr. Stanton 

 under the authority given by the Constitution, and 

 that the same authority did not preclude him from 

 reporting, as an act of courtesy, his reasons for the 

 suspension to the Senate ; that, having appointed me 

 under the authority given by the Constitution, and 

 not under any act of Congress, I could not be gov- 

 erned by the act. I stated that the law was binding 

 on me, constitutional or not, until set aside by the 

 proper tribunal. 



An hour or more was consumed, each reiterating 



his views on this subject, until, getting late, the Presi- 

 dent said he would see mo again. 



I did not agree to call again on Monday nor at any 

 other definite time, nor was I sent for by the Presi- 

 dent until the following Tuesday. 



From the llth to the Cabinet meeting on the 14th 

 instant, a doubt never entered my mind about the 

 President's fully understanding my position, namely, 

 that, if the Senate refused to concur m the suspension 

 of Mr. Stanton, my powers as Secretary of War ad 

 interim would cease, and Mr. Stanton' s right to resume 

 at once the functions of his office would under the law 

 be indisputable ; and I acted accordingly. With Mr. 

 Stanton I had no communication, direct or indirect, 

 on the subject of his reinstatement, during his suspen- 

 sion. I knew it had been recommended to the Presi- 

 dent to send in the name of Governor Cox, of Ohio, for 

 Secretary of War, and thus save all embarrassment 

 a proposition that I sincerely hoped he would enter- 

 tain favorably General Sherman seeing the Presi- 

 dent, ^ at my particular request, to urge this, on the 

 13th instant. 



On Tuesday (the day Mr. Stanton reentered the 

 office of the Secretary of War) General Coinstock, 

 who had carried my official letter announcing that 

 with Mr. Stanton' s reinstatement by the Senate I had 

 ceased to be Secretary of War ad interim, and who saw 

 the President open and- read the communication, 

 brought back to me from the President a message 

 that he wanted to see me that day at the Cabinet 

 meeting, after I had made known the fact that I was 

 no longer Secretary of War ad interim. 



At this meeting, after opening it as though I were 

 a member of the Cabinet, when reminded of the noti- 

 fication already given him that I was no longer Secre- 

 tary of War ad ^nterim, the President gave a version 

 of the conversations alluded to already. In this state- 

 ment it was asserted that in both conversations I had 

 agreed to hold on to the office of Secretary of War 

 until displaced by the courts, or resign, so as to place 

 the President where he would have been had I never 

 accepted the office. After hearing the President 

 through, I stated our conversations substantially as 

 given in this letter. I will add that my conversation 

 before the Cabinet embraced other matter not perti- 

 nent here, and is therefore left out. 



I in nowise admitted the correctness of the Presi- 

 dent's statement of our conversations, though, to 

 soften the evident contradiction my statement gave, 

 I said (alluding to our first conversation on the sub- 

 the President might have understood me the 



way he said, namely, that I had promised to resign 

 if I did not resist the reinstatement. I made no such 

 promise. I have the honor to be, etc., etc., 



U. S. GEANT, General. 

 His Excellency A. JOHNSON, 



President of .the United States. 



HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF THE UNITED STATES, ) 

 WASHINGTON, January 30, 1868. f 



SIR : I have the honor to acknowledge the return 

 of my note of the 24th instant, with your indorsement 

 thereon that I am not to obey any order from the 

 War Department, assumed to be issued by the direc- 

 tion of the President, unless such order is known by 

 me to have been authorized by the Executive ; and 

 in reply thereto to say that I am informed by the 

 Secretary of War that he has not received from the 

 Executive any order or instructions limiting or im- 

 pairing his authority to issue orders to the Army as 

 has heretofore been his practice under the law and 

 the customs of the Department. While this author- 

 ity to the War Department is not countermanded, it 

 will be satisfactory evidence to me that any orders 

 issued from the War Department by direction of the 

 President are authorized by the Executive. 



I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your 

 obedient servant, U. S. GKANT, General. 



His Excellency A. JOHNSON, 



President of the United States. 



