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aware of his complicity, and that if the bonas remained in his keeping four and twenty hours his excellency would receive his passports.
His excellency made haste within the appointed time to place the papers where they could never again be of use to the insurrectionary party; and during the remainder of his mission he was careful not to dabble in the affairs of stranger nations; nor to foment as a foreign Minister troubles between other governments and that to which he was accredited.
After the English question was disposed of Fish determined to leave the Cabinet.
Grant's first term was approaching a close; the President had been re-elected, and the Secretary felt that he could with honor withdraw from the cares of state, having achieved a great diplomatic success and relieved his chief from the anxieties that pressed so heavily when the subordinate accepted office.
Grant was unwilling to part with his Secretary of State, but Fish persisted in his intention, and one day when they were alone together he handed the President his resignation in a closed letter.
This was just before a Cabinet meeting, and Grant took the letter but said nothing.
When the other members of the Cabinet entered, he asked each in turn for his budget, but omitted Fish, who according to etiquette should have been first addressed.
Then the President said: ‘I have a letter from the Secretary of State.
I suppose I know its contents, and I am very sorry to receive it.’
But he had a matter, he continued, upon which he desired to consult the other members of the Cabinet.
Fish accepted this as his own dismissal, and took his leave, not expecting to enter the Cabinet chamber again as Secretary of State.
But the next day he received a letter signed by every member of the Senate except three, urging him to remain in his position.
This was the business which the President desired to discuss with his ministers; and the dismissal, as Fish thought it at the time, was a
S. S. Scranton and Co., Hartford, 1887.
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