e general
commanding the armies of the United States has been appointed _ad
interim_, and has notified me that he has accepted the appointment,
I have no alternative but to submit, under protest, to superior
force."

In 1866, 1867, and 1868 General Grant talked to me freely several
times of his differences with Secretary Stanton. His most emphatic
declaration on that subject, and of his own intended action in
consequence, appears from the records to have been made after
Stanton's return to the War Office in January, 1868, when his
conduct was even more offensive to Grant than it had been before
Stanton's suspension in August, 1867, and when Grant and Sherman
were trying to get Stanton out of the War Office.( 6) At the time
of General Grant's visit to Richmond, Va., as one of the Peabody
trustees, he said to me that the conduct of Mr. Stanton had become
intolerable to him, and, after asking my opinion, declared in
emphatic terms his intention to demand either the removal of Stanton
or the acceptance of his own resignation. But the bitter personal
controversy which immediately followed between Grant and Johnson,
the second attempt to remove Stanton in February, 1868, and the
consequent impeachment of the President, totally eclipsed the more
distant and lesser controversy between Grant and Stanton, and,
doubtless, prevented Grant from taking the action in respect to
Stanton's removal which he informed me in Richmond he intended to
take.( 7)

GRANT AS SECRETARY OF WAR _AD INTERIM_

Of the impeachment and trial of President Johnson it is not my
province to write. My special knowledge relates only to its first
cause, above referred to, and its termination, both intimately
connected with the history of the War Department, the necessities
of which department, real or supposed, constituted the only vital
issue involved in the impeachment trial. The following memorandum,
made by me at the time, and now published with the consent of Mr.
Evarts, explains the circumstances under which I became Secretary
of War in 1868, and the connection of that event with the termination
of the impeachment trial:

"Memorandum
"May, 1868

"In compliance with a written request from Mr. W. M. Evarts, dated
Tuesday, April 21, 1868, 2 P. M., I called upon that gentleman in
his room at Willard's Hotel, Washington, a few minutes before three
o'clock P. M. of the same day.

"Mr. Evarts introduced conve