I imagine a President so forgetful of the proper respect and dignity which belong to his office as to submit to such intrusion.  I will not do Mr. Stanton the wrong to suppose that he entertained any idea of offering to act as one of my constitutional advisers after that note was written.  There was an interval of a week between that date and the order of suspension, during which two Cabinet meetings were held.  Mr. Stanton did not present himself at either, nor was he expected.

On the 12th of August Mr. Stanton was notified of his suspension and that General Grant had been authorized to take charge of the Department.  In his answer to this notification, of the same date, Mr. Stanton expresses himself as follows: 

Under a sense of public duty I am compelled to deny your right under the Constitution and laws of the United States, without the advice and consent of the Senate and without any legal cause, to suspend me from office as Secretary of War or the exercise of any or all functions pertaining to the same, or without such advice and consent to compel me to transfer to any person the records, books, papers, and public property in my custody as Secretary.

But inasmuch as the General Commanding the armies of the United States has been appointed ad interim, and has notified me that he has accepted the appointment, I have no alternative but to submit, under protest, to superior force.

It will not escape attention that in his note of August 5 Mr. Stanton stated that he had been constrained to continue in the office, even before he was requested to resign, by considerations of a high public character.  In this note of August 12 a new and different sense of public duty compels him to deny the President’s right to suspend him from office without the consent of the Senate.  This last is the public duty of resisting an act contrary to law, and he charges the President with violation of the law in ordering his suspension.

Mr. Stanton refers generally to the Constitution and laws of the “United States,” and says that a sense of public duty “under” these compels him to deny the right of the President to suspend him from office.  As to his sense of duty under the Constitution, that will be considered in the sequel.  As to his sense of duty under “the laws of the United States,” he certainly can not refer to the law which creates the War Department, for that expressly confers upon the President the unlimited right to remove the head of the Department.  The only other law bearing upon the question is the tenure-of-office act, passed by Congress over the Presidential veto March 2, 1867.  This is the law which, under a sense of public duty, Mr. Stanton volunteers to defend.