with my ideas of constitutional duty, and,
having determined upon a course which I deemed right and proper, was
anxious to learn the steps you would take should the possession of the
War Department be demanded by Mr. Stanton. Had your action been in
conformity to the understanding between us, I do not believe that the
embarrassment would have attained its present proportions or that the
probability of its repetition would have been so great.

I know that, with a view to an early termination of a state of affairs
so detrimental to the public interests, you voluntarily offered, both on
Wednesday, the 15th instant, and on the succeeding Sunday, to call upon
Mr. Stanton and urge upon him that the good of the service required his
resignation. I confess that I considered your proposal as a sort of
reparation for the failure on your part to act in accordance with an
understanding more than once repeated, which I thought had received your
full assent, and under which you could have returned to me the office
which I had conferred upon you, thus saving yourself from embarrassment
and leaving the responsibility where it properly belonged--with the
President, who is accountable for the faithful execution of the laws.

I have not yet been informed by you whether, as twice proposed by
yourself, you have called upon Mr. Stanton and made an effort to induce
him voluntarily to retire from the War Department.

You conclude your communication with a reference to our conversation at
the meeting of the Cabinet held on Tuesday, the 14th instant. In your
account of what then occurred you say that after the President had given
his version of our previous conversations you stated them substantially
as given in your letter; that you in no wise admitted the correctness of
his statement of them, "though, to soften the evident contradiction my
statement gave, I said (alluding to our first conversation on the
subject) the President might have understood me the way he said, namely,
that I had promised to resign if I did not resist the reinstatement.
I made no such promise."

My recollection of what then transpired is diametrically the reverse of
your narration. In the presence of the Cabinet I asked you--

First. If, in a conversation which took place shortly after your
appointment as Secretary of War _ad interim_, you did not agree either
to remain at the head of the War Department and abide any judicial
proceedings that might follow nonconcurre