States. General Grant denied this with much warmth, declaring
in a letter addressed to the President that the latter had made "many
and gross misrepresentations concerning this subject." It was
doubtless in the beginning a perfectly honest misapprehension between
the two. General Grant had on a certain occasion remarked that "Mr.
Stanton would have to appeal to the courts to re-instate him," and the
President, hastily perhaps, but not unnaturally, assumed that by this
language General Grant meant that he would himself aid in bringing the
matter to judicial arbitrament. But the President ought to have seen
and realized that such a step would be altogether foreign to the duty
of the Commander of the Army, and that with General Grant's habitual
prudence he never could have intended to provoke a controversy
with Congress, and get himself entangled in the meshes of the
Tenure-of-office Law. The wrath of both men was fully aroused, and
the controversy closed by leaving them enemies for life--unreconciled,
irreconcilable.

The severance of friendly relations between the President and General
Grant was not distasteful to the Republicans of the country. Indeed
it had been earnestly desired by them. Many of those who were looking
forward to General Grant's nomination as the Republican candidate
for the Presidency in 1868, had been restless lest he might become
too much identified with the President, and thus be held in some
degree accountable for his policy. General Grant's report on the
condition of the South in 1865 had displeased Republicans as much as
it had pleased the President. He had created still further uneasiness
in Republican ranks by accompanying the President in 1866 on his famous
journey to Chicago, when he "swung around the circle." His acceptance
of the War Office in 1867 as the successor to Mr. Stanton was naturally
interpreted by many as a signal mark of confidence in the President.
It was said by General Grant's nearest friends that in his position as
the Commander of the Army he was bound in courtesy to comply with the
President's requests; but others maintained that as these requests all
lay outside his official duties, and were in fact political in their
nature, he might decline to respond to them if he chose. It was in
fact known to a few persons that General Grant had declined (though
requested by the President) to accompany Minister Lewis D. Campbell to
Mexico and hold an interview with the o