William A. Crafts, Life of Ulysses S. Grant: His Boyhood, Campaigns, and Services, Military and Civil.

[148] the action of the Senate as itself a reinstatement of the secretary, and notifying the President of the fact, vacated the office. Mr. Johnson, baffled and angry, made known through some of his favorite correspondents of the press, his own schemes to thwart the will of Congress, in which he made it appear that General Grant had been a willing and active participant, but had finally been guilty of falsehood and deception, and had allowed Mr. Stanton to resume the war office in violation of his express promises. The substance of the statement was, in brief, that General Grant had promised the President that he would either hold on to the office of Secretary of War and resist the reinstatement of Mr. Stanton by the Senate, or, if he should change his mind and prefer not to be a party to the controversy, would resign, and thus enable the President to appoint some one who would be his tool; that on the Saturday previous to Stanton's reinstatement Grant virtually repeated this promise, and also promised to see the President on the following Monday, but failed to do so; and that at a cabinet meeting, being asked if he had not made such promises and broken them, he admitted that he had! The newspaper account, of course, did not fail to color the picture to Grant's disadvantage.

This story was published to gratify the vulgar hatred of Mr. Johnson, and with the hope of alarming the Republican party, and so damaging the general's reputation that the people would not accept him as a candidate for the Presidency. It was intended also to divert attention from Mr. Johnson's own guilty purposes. So mean a game was never before played by an occupant