[Footnote 51:  See p. 615.]

General Grant to the President.

HEADQUARTERS ARMY OF THE UNITED STATES,

Washington, D.C., February 3, 1868.

His Excellency A. JOHNSON,

President of the United States.

SIR:  I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your communication of the 31st ultimo,[52] in answer to mine of the 28th ultimo[53].  After a careful reading and comparison of it with the article in the National Intelligencer of the 15th ultimo and the article over the initials J.B.S. in the New York World of the 27th ultimo, purporting to be based upon your statement and that of the members of your Cabinet therein named, I find it to be but a reiteration, only somewhat more in detail, of the “many and gross misrepresentations” contained in these articles, and which my statement of the facts set forth in my letter of the 28th ultimo[53] was intended to correct; and I here reassert the correctness of my statements in that letter, anything in yours in reply to it to the contrary notwithstanding.

I confess my surprise that the Cabinet officers referred to should so greatly misapprehend the facts in the matter of admissions alleged to have been made by me at the Cabinet meeting of the 14th ultimo as to suffer their names to be made the basis of the charges in the newspaper article referred to, or agree in the accuracy, as you affirm they do, of your account of what occurred at that meeting.

You know that we parted on Saturday, the 11th ultimo, without any promise on my part, either express or implied, to the effect that I would hold on to the office of Secretary of War ad interim against the action of the Senate, or, declining to do so myself, would surrender it to you before such action was had, or that I would see you again at any fixed time on the subject.

The performance of the promises alleged by you to have been made by me would have involved a resistance to law and an inconsistency with the whole history of my connection with the suspension of Mr. Stanton.

From our conversations and my written protest of August 1, 1867, against the removal of Mr. Stanton, you must have known that my greatest objection to his removal or suspension was the fear that someone would be appointed in his stead who would, by opposition to the laws relating to the restoration of the Southern States to their proper relations to the Government, embarrass the Army in the performance of duties especially imposed upon it by these laws; and it was to prevent such an appointment that I accepted 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 opposition to law, or, not doing so myself, surrendering it to one who would, as the statement and assumptions in your communication plainly indicate was sought.  And it was to avoid this same danger, as well as to relieve you from the personal embarrassment in which Mr. Stanton’s reinstatement would place you, that I urged the appointment of Governor Cox, believing that it would be agreeable to you and also to Mr. Stanton, satisfied as I was that it was the good of the country, and not the office, the latter desired.