I have the honor to be, sir, with great respect, your obedient servant,

O.H.  BROWNING.

DEPARTMENT OF STATE,

Washington, February 6, 1868.

The PRESIDENT.

SIR:  The meeting to which you refer in your letter was a regular Cabinet meeting.  While the members were assembling, and before the President had entered the council chamber, General Grant on coming in said to me that he was in attendance there, not as a member of the Cabinet, but upon invitation, and I replied by the inquiry whether there was a change in the War Department.  After the President had taken his seat, business went on in the usual way of hearing matters submitted by the several Secretaries.  When the time came for the Secretary of War, General Grant said that he was now there, not as Secretary of War, but upon the President’s invitation; that he had retired from the War Department.  A slight difference then appeared about the supposed invitation, General Grant saying that the officer who had borne his letter to the President that morning announcing his retirement from the War Department had told him that the President desired to see him at the Cabinet, to which the President answered that when General Grant’s communication was delivered to him the President simply replied that he supposed General Grant would be very soon at the Cabinet meeting.  I regarded the conversation thus begun as an incidental one.  It went on quite informally, and consisted of a statement on your part of your views in regard to the understanding of the tenure upon which General Grant had assented to hold the War Department ad interim and of his replies by way of answer and explanation.  It was respectful and courteous on both sides.  Being in this conversational form, its details could only have been preserved by verbatim report.  So far as I know, no such report was made at the time.  I can give only the general effect of the conversation.  Certainly you stated that, although you had reported the reasons for Mr. Stanton’s suspension to the Senate, you nevertheless held that he would not be entitled to resume the office of Secretary of War even if the Senate should disapprove of his suspension, and that you had proposed to have the question tested by judicial process, to be applied to the person who should be the incumbent of the Department under your designation of Secretary of War ad interim in the place of Mr. Stanton.  You contended that this was well understood between yourself and General Grant; that when he entered the War Department as Secretary ad interim he expressed his concurrence in a belief that the question of Mr. Stanton’s restoration would be a question for the courts; that in a subsequent conversation with General Grant you had adverted to the understanding thus had, and that General Grant expressed his concurrence in it; that at some conversation which had been previously held