So armed I had no difficulty in securing audience. I found General Grant to be a man of simple, upright mind, unspoiled by fame, careless of formalities and the frills of official place, in no way nervous about his dignity—just a plain, honest American citizen, accustomed to go straight to the marrow of every subject discussed, without equivocation or reserve and apparently without concern for anything except truth and justice.
He received me cordially and dismissed everybody else from the room while we talked. He offered me a cigar and we had our conference without formality.
In presenting my credentials, I was moved by his own frankness of manner to tell him that I was an ex-Confederate soldier and not a Republican in politics. I was anxious not to sail under false colors, and he expressed himself approvingly of my sentiment, assuring me that my personal views in politics could make no difference in my status on this occasion.
After I had asked him a good many questions about the matter in hand, he smilingly asked:
"Why don't you put the suggestions so vaguely mentioned in these letters, into a direct question, so that I may answer it?"
It had seemed to me an impossible impudence to ask the President of the United States whether or not his administration was deliberately protecting crime for the sake of political advantage, but at his suggestion I formulated the question, hurriedly putting it in writing for the sake of accuracy in reporting it afterwards. He answered it promptly and directly, adding:
"I wish you would come to me again a week from today. I may then have a more conclusive answer to give you. Come at any rate."
When the interview was published, my good friend, Dr. St. Clair McKelway, then young in the service on the Brooklyn Eagle which has since brought fame to him and extraordinary influence to the newspaper which he still conducts, said to me at a chance meeting: "I think your putting of that question to General Grant was the coolest and most colossal piece of impudence I ever heard of."
So it would have been, if I had done the thing of my own motion or otherwise without General Grant's suggestion, a thing of which, of course, no hint was given in the published interview.