simply occupying the position pro forma to prevent President Johnson from appointing anybody else thereto previous to the meeting of Congress, and Congress supported Stanton.

In the meantime hostilities had been opened from other directions. Judge Black conceived the idea of inducing the State of Georgia to appear before the United States Supreme Court and ask for a writ restraining Stanton and the commander of the military district of which that commonwealth formed a part from executing the reconstruction acts. On April 16, 1867, Stanton was subpoenaed to answer why such a writ should not issue. The question was argued on its merits and the Court held, unanimously, that no such writ should issue,* the Court having no jurisdiction over "political rights, rights of State sovereignty, or political jurisdiction of executive officers."

Almost simultaneously with the Georgia case a petition came up from Mississippi also asking the United States to restrain President Johnson or any other officer from carrying the reconstruction acts into effect. The Court did not receive the paper, holding that motions and writs directed against the President could not be entertained. However, in the case of William McCardle of Mississippi, the President's attorneys found a clearer field.

McCardle, in his newspaper, opposed reconstruction and libeled General E. O. C. Ord, military commander of the district. Ord arrested McCardle, who sought from the United States District Judge a writ of habeas corpus for his release, which was denied. An appeal was taken to the United States Supreme Court at the December term, 1867, when the entire issue of reconstruction, the right of the nation to live, was put upon trial, with several of President Johnson's advisers acting also as McCardle's lawyers.

Stanton alone was left to defend the loyal people and their Government. To do this he engaged Matthew H. Carpenter of Wisconsin, who, taking rooms in the War Department, was constantly advised by him in the preparation of the brief. At the conclusion

*See Georgia vs. Stanton, 6 Wallace, 63.

In a letter to his wife, Carpenter wrote: "I got my big brief into the hands of the Government printer this morning. Stanton ordered one thousand to be printed. I went by his direction to confer with William M. Meredith, who, he says, is the biggest lawyer he ever knew. I read my brief to him and he said he had not a single suggestion to make; that it was unanswerable on every point. That pleased Stanton as much as it did

of the argument, to which he was a grave and intensely interested listener, Stanton threw his arms about Carpenter, exclaiming fervently: "You have saved us, you have saved us!"

While the case was under advisement by the justices, the provision of the reconstruction act permitting appeals was wiped out by Congress, and McCardle was remanded to prison. That was the last suit of the kind Stanton was called upon to defend. Thereafter Congress was supreme in reconstruction matters, and carried them out almost literally along the lines laid down in the project Stanton conceived, prepared, and handed to Lincoln on the day preceding the assassination.

me, which I confess was considerable. Stanton sent for me this morning and said: 'You may as well understand that you are in for the whole fight. Take a room in the Department and be at home.' He then delivered to me the key to No. 29 and a check for $5,000 as a retainer."

CHAPTER LIX.

ANSWERS THE PRESIDENT.

On the 12th of December, 1867, President Johnson sent a message informing the Senate, which had just convened, that he had suspended Stanton in August and appointed Grant as secretary of war ad interim. As soon as this message was printed, Stanton sent an answer to the Senate, setting the first precedent in our history of a cabinet officer officially controverting the chief executive before the high advisory body of the United States Senate.

As reasons for the suspension, Johnson alleged that Stanton, when advised in August that his resignation would be accepted, made a "defiant" reply; that he counseled the President to veto the tenure-of-office act but, when the bill was passed over the President's veto and became a law, insisted on compliance with its provisions; that he was the author of the President's policy of reconstruction which he now opposed and that he did not exculpate the President from responsibility for the New Orleans riot (of July, 1867).

Stanton's answer was complete, summoning the entire record in the controversy and showing that the President's trail was crooked from beginning to end. It is not printed here in extenso because the preceding and following chapters bring out (in connection with and illustrated by the peculiar circumstances surrounding them) all the essential facts stated by Stanton.

As to the second charge, he said in part:

My alleged opposition to the bill regulating the tenure of civil offices presents the singular complaint of agreement in one instance with Mr. Johnson. I did oppose the tenure-of-office bill; so did he. But when it became a law by a two-thirds vote over the veto objections, it was his duty and mine, as executive officers, to respect and obey it.

My disapproval of the measure when it was but a bill, and especially to that part which retained members of the cabinet, was no secret in or out of the cabinet. When the bill was before Congress, I advised against its passage. It was publicly advocated in the debates in Congress as necessary to protect the Secretary of War against Mr. Johnson's hostility. But while thankful for the confidence this evinced, I asked no protection; Mr. Bing

ham was requested to ask my friends to have the provision stricken out; and after the bill passed, I hoped it would be reconsidered and fail after veto and would cheerfully have stated my objections in the form of a veto, had time and health permitted.

As Congress, in spite of Mr. Johnson's opposition and mine, reserved the right of final judgment on the removal or suspension of an officer, it was no misconduct to protest against the violation of the tenure act in my person, unless it be wrong to conform to a law disapproved before its passage. This seems to be Mr. Johnson's view, and forms an aggravation of my offense.

To the charge that he now opposed the reconstruction policy of which he himself was the author, Stanton's answer was crushing. He showed how Johnson, stealing and slightly patching up the preliminary plan prepared by Stanton for Lincoln just before the assassination, claimed the entire project as his own; and then when he had so radically changed the plan that the country rose up in indignant protest against it, he cried out that the child which he had previously claimed was not his own after all, but Stanton's.

He showed how the testimony he had given before the committees of Congress that investigated reconstruction had been falsified by Johnson, who suppressed the part declaring "my opinion is that the whole subject of reconstruction * * is subject to the con

trolling power of Congress," and averred anew:

I always maintained the paramount power of Congress over reconstruction, and when he set up his claim to absolute and exclusive control, this conflict of executive power against the authority of Congress produced differences between Mr. Johnson and the Secretary of War, who stood alone after the resignation of the Secretary of the Interior, Postmaster-General, and Attorney-General, against Mr. Johnson's claim of supremacy.

He then concluded:

It is true that in this case personal considerations would have led me long ago to sever my relations with Mr. Johnson. But under authority from Congress, and Mr. Lincoln's order, I had as secretary of war put over a million of men into the field, and I was unwilling to abandon the victory they had won, or to see the "lost cause" restored over the graves of nearly four hundred thousand soldiers, or to witness four millions of freedmen subjected, for want of legal protection, to outrages against their lives, persons, and property, and their race in danger of being returned to some newly-invented bondage.

For these reasons I have resolved to bear all and suffer all while contending against such results. Hence the indirect modes of displacing me failed of their purpose; and I am thankful that, standing alone as I did, for

twelve months, giving the President faithfully and frankly my best judgment on the grave questions in agitation, I had the endurance and fortitude to bear with tranquil patience the modes employed to induce me to surrender my post.

If I have rendered any service to the country, or done anything to maintain its peace, it was by standing resolutely at my post fearlessly to give Mr. Johnson good advice. Supported by the highest considerations of public duty, the tenacity of my purpose was proof against all indirect modes to displace me.

But in all these differences of opinion respecting Mr. Johnson's reconstruction policy, during a period of two years, while for a part of the time he, by his confession, was employing every mode to induce my resignation short of express request, it is not complained that my bearing was disrespectful, or other than was due from the head of a Department to the chief executive.

Heretofore I have foreborne to reply to accusations, content with the consciousness of adhering to duty, and unwilling to seek the good opinions of men otherwise than by the faithful performance of the tasks devolved upon me; and I am influenced to answer these charges, not by their weight, for they have none, but in deference to the Senate of the United States.

After considering the letter from which the foregoing is extracted, the Senate refused to recognize the suspension of Stanton and the appointment of Grant. The vote, taken late in the evening, was unanimous among the Republican senators. John W. Forney, secretary of the Senate, drove in great haste to inform Stanton, gleefully, that he had been reinstated, and later sent messengers, with the official information, to Grant and the White House.

Next morning early, before Johnson or his agents could act, Stanton entered the War Office and resumed his duties as secretary of war.