“On the 5th day of August, 1867, Mr. Stanton, the Secretary of War, sent for me, and in the presence of General Grant asked me who was in charge of the Bureau in your absence. I informed him Colonel Winthrop. He requested I should send him over to him, which I did. The Colonel returned and asked me for the findings and sentence of the conspiracy trial, telling me he had to take it to the President. On taking the portion of the record referred to from the bundle, I found, from the frequent handling of it, several of the last leaves had torn loose from the ribbon fastening, and to secure them I put the eyelet in one corner of it.”
The Judge-Advocate-General, though in court on Saturday getting back the record and retelling its history, was absent, it would appear, from his office on Monday, or was considered absent by Stanton, who it also appears was still Secretary of War and in communication with Johnson. It was thought best to employ a deputy to carry the papers to the President. Holt, probably, had no stomach for another “confidential interview,” with the identical record in his hand.
Let Andrew Johnson himself tell what followed. The statement is from his published reply to Holt in 1873, and was made with no reference to, and apparently with no recollection of, the foregoing incidents of the John H. Surratt trial:
“Having heard that the petition had been attached to the record, I sent for the papers on the 5th day of August, 1867, with a view of examining, for the first time, the recommendation in the case of Mrs. Surratt.
“A careful scrutiny convinced me that it was not with the record when submitted for my approval, and that I had neither before seen nor read it.”
It may have been only a coincidence, but on this very day, Monday, August 5th, 1867, and necessarily after the sending for the record, because that was done through the Secretary of War, the following interesting missive was dispatched by the President to that member of his Cabinet:
“Sir: Public considerations of a high character constrain me to say that your resignation as Secretary of War will be accepted.”
Stanton immediately replied:
“Public considerations of a high character constrain me not to resign before the next meeting of Congress.”
And, on the 12th, he was suspended from office.