652 



PUBLIC DOCUMENTS. 



^ And now, Mr. President, where my honor as a sol- 

 dier and integrity as a man have been so violently 

 assailed, pardon me for saying that I can but regard 

 this whole matter, from the beginning to the end, as 

 an attempt to involve me in the resistance of law for 

 which you hesitated to assume the responsibility in 

 orders, and thus to destroy my character before the 

 country. I am, in a measure, confirmed in this con- 

 clusion by your recent orders directing me to disobey 

 orders from the Secretary of War my superior and 

 your subordinate without having countermanded 

 his authority to issue the orders I am to disobey. 



With assurance, Mr. President, that nothing less 

 than a vindication of my personal honor and charac- 

 ter could have induced this correspondence on my 

 part, I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your 

 obedient servant, U. S. GRANT, General. 



His Excellency A. JOHNSON, 



President of the United States. 



To the House of Eept 



In compliance with the resolution adopted yester- 

 day by the House of Representatives, requesting any 

 further correspondence the President " may have had 

 with General U. S. Grant, in addition to that hereto- 

 fore submitted, on the subject of the recent vacation 

 by the latter of the War Office," I transmit herewith 

 a copy of a communication addressed to General Grant 

 on the 10th instant, together with a copy of the ac- 

 companying papers. 



ANDEEW JOHNSON. 



WASHINGTON, D. C., February 11, 1868. 



EXECUTIVE MANSION, February 10, 1868. 



GENERAL : The extraordinary character of your let- 

 ter of the 3d instant would seem to preclude any reply 

 on my part, but the manner in which publicity has 

 been given to the correspondence of which that let- 

 ter forms a part, and the grave questions which are 

 involved, induce me to take this mode of giving, as a 

 proper sequel to the communications which nave 

 passed between us, the statements of the five mem- 

 bers of the Cabinet who were present on the occasion 

 of our conversation on the 14th ultimo. Copies of 

 the letters which they have addressed to me upon 

 the subject are accordingly herewith enclqsed. 



You speak of my letter of the 31st ultimo as a reit- 

 eration of the "many and gross misrepresentations" 

 contained in certain newspaper articles, and reas- 

 sert the correctness of the statements contained in 

 your communication of the 28th ultimo, adding and 

 here I give your own words " any thing in yours in 

 reply to it to the contrary notwithstanding." 



When a controversy upon matters of fact reaches 

 the point to which this has been brought, further 

 assertion or denial between the immediate parties 

 should cease, especially where, upon either side, it 

 loses the character of the respectful discussion which 

 is required by the relations in which the parties stand 

 to each other, and degenerates in tone and temper. 

 In such a case, if there is nothing to rely upon but 

 the opposing statements, conclusions must be drawn 

 from those statements alone, and from whatever in- 

 trinsic probabilities they aiford in favor of or against 

 either of the parties. I should not shrink from this 

 test in this controversy ; but, fortunately, it is not left 

 to this test alone. There were five Cabinet officers 

 present at the conversation, the detail of which, in 

 my letter of the 28th ultimo, you allow yourself to 

 say, contains " many and gross misrepresentations." 

 These gentlemen heard that conversation, and have 

 read my statement. They speak for themselves, and 

 I leave the proof without a word of comment. 



I deem it proper, before concluding this communi- 

 cation, to notice some of the statements contained in 

 your letter. 



You say that a performance of the promises alleged 

 to have been made by you to the President " would 

 have involved a resistance to law and an inconsist- 

 ency with the whole history of my connection with 



the suspension of Mr. Stanton." You then state that 

 you had fears the President would, on the removal 

 of Mr. Stanton, appoint some one in his place who 

 would embarrass the Army in carrying out the recon- 

 struction acts, and add : 



" It was to prevent such appointment that I ac- 

 cepted the office of Secretary of War ad interim, and 

 not for the purpose of enabling you to get rid of Mr. 

 Stanton by my withholding it from him in opposi- 

 tion to law, or, not doing so myself, surrendering it 

 to one who would, as the statements and assump- 

 tions in your communication plainly indicate was 

 sought." 



First of all, you here admit that, from the very 

 beginning of what you term " the whole history " of 

 your connection with Mr. Stanton' s suspension, you 

 intended to circumvent the President. It was to carry 

 out that intent that you accepted the appointment. 

 This was in your mind at the time of your accept- 

 ance. It was not, then, in obedience to the order of 

 your superior, as has heretofore been supposed, that 

 you assumed the duties of the office. You knew it 

 was the President's purpose to prevent Mr. Stanton 

 from resuming the office of Secretary of War, and 

 you intended to defeat that purpose. You accepted 

 the office, not in the interest of the President, but of 

 Mr. Stanton. If this purpose, so entertained by you, 

 had been confined to yourself; if, when accepting the 

 office, you had done so with a mental reservation to 

 frustrate the President, it would have been a tacit 

 deception. In the ethics of some persons such a 

 course is allowable ; but you cannot stand even upon 

 that questionable ground. The " history " of your 

 connection with this transaction, as written by your- 

 self, places you in a different predicament, and shows 

 that you not only concealed you? design from the 

 President, but induced him to suppose that you would 

 carry out his purpose to keep Mr. Stanton out of 

 office by retaining it yourself after an attempted 

 restoration by the Senate, so as to require Mr. Stan- 

 ton to establish his right by judicial decision. 



I now give that part of this " history," as written 

 by yourself in your letter of the 28th ultimo : 



" 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." 



Now, at that time, as you admit in your letter of 

 the 3d instant, you held the office for the very ob- 

 ject of defeating an appeal to the courts. In that 

 letter you say that in accepting the office one motive 

 was to prevent the President from appointing some 

 other person who would retain possession, and thus 

 make judicial proceedings necessary. You knew the 

 President was unwilling to trust the office with any 

 one who would not, by holding it, compel Mr. Stan- 

 ton to resort to the courts. You perfectly understood 

 that hi this interview, " some time" after you accepted 

 the office, the President, not content with your silence, 

 desired an expression of your views, and you an- 

 swered him that, Mr. Stanton " would have to appeal 

 to the courts." If the President had reposed confi- 

 dence before he knew your views, and that confidence 

 had been violated, it might have been said he made 

 a mistake ; but a violation of confidence reposed after 

 that conversation was no mistake of his nor of yours. 

 It is the fact only that needs be stated, that at the 

 date of this conversation you did not intend to hold 

 the office with the purpose of forcing Mr. Stanton 

 into court, but did hold it then,_ and had accepted it 

 to prevent that course from being carried out. In 

 other words, you said to the President, " that is the 

 proper course," and you said to yourself, "I have 

 accepted this office, and now hold it, to defeat that 

 course." The excuse you make in a subsequent par- 



