General Grant said he still adhered to the same construction of the law, but said if he should change his opinion he would give you seasonable notice of it, so that you should in any case be placed in the same position in regard to the War Department that you were while General Grant held it ad interim.  I did not understand General Grant as denying nor as explicitly admitting these statements in the form and full extent to which you made them.  His admission of them was rather indirect and circumstantial, though I did not understand it to be an evasive one.  He said that, reasoning from what occurred in the case of the police in Maryland, which he regarded as a parallel one, he was of opinion, and so assured you, that it would be his right and duty under your instructions to hold the War Office after the Senate should disapprove of Mr. Stanton’s suspension until the question should be decided upon by the courts; that he remained until very recently of that opinion, and that on the Saturday before the Cabinet meeting a conversation was held between yourself and him in which the subject was generally discussed.

General Grant’s statement was that in that conversation he had stated to you the legal difficulties which might arise, involving fine and imprisonment, under the civil-tenure bill, and that he did not care to subject himself to those penalties; that you replied to this remark that you regarded the civil-tenure bill as unconstitutional and did not think its penalties were to be feared, or that you would voluntarily assume them; and you insisted that General Grant should either retain the office until relieved by yourself, according to what you claimed was the original understanding between yourself and him, or, by seasonable notice of change of purpose on his part, put you in the same situation which you would be if he adhered.  You claimed that General Grant finally said in that Saturday’s conversation that you understood his views, and his proceedings thereafter would be consistent with what had been so understood.  General Grant did not controvert, nor can I say that he admitted, this last statement.  Certainly General Grant did not at any time in the Cabinet meeting insist that he had in the Saturday’s conversation, either distinctly or finally, advised you of his determination to retire from the charge of the War Department otherwise than under your own subsequent direction.  He acquiesced in your statement that the Saturday’s conversation ended with an expectation that there would be a subsequent conference on the subject, which he, as well as yourself, supposed could seasonably take place on Monday.  You then alluded to the fact that General Grant did not call upon you on Monday, as you had expected from that conversation.  General Grant admitted that it was his expectation or purpose to call upon you on Monday.  General Grant assigned reasons for the omission.  He said he was in conference with General Sherman; that there were many little matters