There was a marked divergence of views in the recommendations from the Judiciary Committee. The majority, Messrs. George S. Boutwell of Massachusetts, Francis Thomas of Maryland, Thomas Williams of Pennsylvania, William Lawrence of Ohio, and John C. Churchill of New York, reported a resolution directing that "Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, be impeached of high crimes and misdemeanors." Mr. Wilson of Iowa and Mr. Frederic Woodbridge of Vermont, submitted a minority report, with a resolution directing that "the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of the proposed impeachment of the President of the United States, and that the subject be laid upon the table." The two Democratic members of the committee, Mr. Marshall of Illinois and Mr. Eldridge of Wisconsin, while agreeing with the resolution submitted by Mr. Wilson, desired to express certain views from the Democratic stand-point. They therefore submitted a separate report, reviewing the entire proceeding in language more caustic than Mr. Wilson and Mr. Woodbridge had seen fit to employ.

The effect of Mr. Boutwell's report was seriously impaired by the fact that the chairman of the committee and another Republican member had refused to concur, and it was at once evident from the position in which this division left the question, that the House would not sustain an Impeachment upon the testimony submitted. By an arrangement to which only a few members objected, the discussion of the reports was confined to two speeches, one by Mr. Boutwell and one by Mr. Wilson. Mr. Boutwell's was delivered on the 5th and 6th of December, and Mr. Wilson's reply immediately after Mr. Boutwell had concluded on the second day. Both speeches were able and positive, holding the attention of members in a marked and exceptional degree. A large majority of the House desired the vote to be taken as soon as Mr. Wilson had concluded; but some dilatory motions kept off the decision until the succeeding day (December 7, 1867), when amid much excitement, and some display of angry feeling between members, the resolution calling for the impeachment of the President was defeated by an overwhelming majority,—ayes 57, noes 108.(2) The affirmative vote was composed entirely of Republicans, but a larger number of Republicans were included in the negative; so that apart from any action of the Democratic party the advocates of Impeachment were in the minority.

By this decisive vote the project of impeaching the President was in the public belief finally defeated. But those best acquainted with the earnestness of purpose and the determination of the leading men, who had persuaded themselves that the safety of the Republic depended upon the destruction of Johnson's official power, knew that the closest watch would be kept upon every action of the President, and if an apparently justifying cause could be found the project of his removal would be vigorously renewed. It is difficult to understand the intensity of conviction which had taken possession of certain minds on this subject—difficult to understand why the same causes and the same reasons which operated so powerfully on certain Republicans in favor of Impeachment, should prove so utterly inadequate to affect others. Why should Mr. Boutwell be so decidedly on one side and Mr. Dawes with equal firmness on the other? Why should General Schenck and William Lawrence vote for impeachment and General Garfield and John A. Bingham against it? Why should Thaddeus Stevens and Judge Kelley vote in the affirmative and the four Washburns in the negative?

Geographically there was a traceable division in the vote. In New England, usually so radical, only five members favored Impeachment. New York gave but two votes for it and Pennsylvania gave but six. The large majority of those who exhibited such an earnest desire to force the issue to extremes came from the West, but even in that section the Republicans who opposed it were nearly equal in number to those who favored it. The vote led to no little recrimination inside the ranks of the party—each side regarding the other as pursuing an unwise and unjustifiable course. The advocates of Impeachment were denounced as rash, hot-headed, sensational, bent on leading the party into an indefensible position; while its opponents were spoken of as faint-hearted, as truckling to the Administration, as afraid to strike the one blow imperatively demanded for the safety of the Republic. But outside of this quarrel of partisans the great mass of quiet citizens and more especially the manufacturing, commercial, and financial communities, were profoundly grateful that the country was not, as they now believed, to be disturbed by a violent effort to deprive the President of his great office.

The prophets of Peace were disappointed in their hopes and their predictions. A train of circumstances, not unnaturally growing out of the political situation, led in the ensuing month to the renewal of the scheme of Impeachment because of the President's attempt to appoint a new Secretary of War. The President himself narrates what he had done to secure the resignation of Mr. Stanton: "I had come to the conclusion that the time had arrived when it was proper for Mr. Stanton to retire from my Cabinet. The mutual confidence and general accord which should exist in such a relation had ceased. I supposed that Mr. Stanton was well advised that his continuance in the Cabinet was contrary to my wishes, for I had repeatedly given him to understand by every mode short of an express request that he should resign." On the fifth day of August (1867), the President addressed Mr. Stanton a brief note in these words: "Public considerations of a high character constrain me to say that your resignation as Secretary of War will be accepted." Mr. Stanton replied immediately, acknowledging the receipt of the letter and adding: "I have the honor to say that public considerations of a high character, which alone have induced me to continue at the head of this Department, constrain me not to resign the Secretaryship of War before the next meeting of Congress."

Not acting with angry haste, but reflecting for a week upon the situation resulting from Mr. Stanton's refusal to resign, the President on the 12th of August suspended him from the Secretaryship of War under the power conferred by the Tenure-of-office Act, and added in a note to him: "You will at once transfer to General Ulysses S. Grant, who has this day been authorized and empowered to act as Secretary of War ad interim, all records, books, papers and other public property now in your custody and charge." Mr. Stanton replied to the President: "Under a sense of public duty I am compelled to deny your right under the Constitution and laws of the United States, without the advice and consent of the Senate and without legal cause, to suspend me from the office of Secretary of War, or the exercise of any of the functions pertaining to the same; but inasmuch as the 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." It is evident that General Grant and his legal advisers saw no force in Mr. Stanton's denial of the President's power to suspend him from office. The General's acceptance of the Secretaryship of War was plain proof that he recognized the President's course as entirely lawful and Constitutional. General Grant's willingness to succeed Mr. Stanton was displeasing to a certain class of Republicans, who thought he was thereby strengthening the position of the President; but the judgement of the more considerate was that as Mr. Johnson had determined in any event to remove Stanton, it was wise in General Grant to accept the trust and thus prevent it from falling into mischievous and designing hands.

By the provisions of the Tenure-of-office Law the President was under obligation to communicate the suspension to the Senate, with his reasons therefor, within twenty days after its next meeting. He did this in his message of the 12th of December (1867), in which he reviewed with much care the relations between himself and the Secretary of War. He certainly exhibited to an impartial judge, uninfluenced by personal or party motives, strong proof of the utter impossibility of Mr. Stanton and himself working together harmoniously in the administration of the Government. If the President of the United States has the right to Constitutional advisers who are personally agreeable to him and who share his personal confidence, then surely Mr. Johnson gave unanswerable proof that Mr. Stanton should not remain a member of his Cabinet. But the Senate was not influenced either by the general considerations affecting the case or by the special reasons submitted by the President. The question was not finally decided by the Senate until the 13th of January (1868), when by a party vote it was declared that "having considered the evidence and reasons given by the President in his report of December 12, 1867, for the suspension of Edwin M. Stanton from the office of Secretary of War, the Senate does not concur in such suspension." The Secretary of the Senate was instructed to send an official copy of the resolution to the President, to Mr. Stanton, and to General Grant.

Upon receipt of the resolution of the Senate, General Grant at once locked the door of the Secretary's office, handed the key to the Adjutant-General, left the War-Department building and resumed his post at Army Headquarters on the opposite side of the street. Secretary Stanton soon after took possession of his old office, as quietly and unceremoniously as if he had left it but an hour before. Perhaps with some desire to emphasize the change of situation, he dispatched a messenger to Headquarters to say in the phrase of the ranking position that "the Secretary desires to see General Grant." General Grant did not like the way in which Mr. Stanton had resumed control of the War Office. He did not think that he had been treated with the same courtesy which he had shown to Mr. Stanton when he succeeded him the preceding August. In fact, he had not expected, nor did he desire, the restoration of Mr. Stanton, and but for differences that arose between him and the President might have used his influence against Mr. Stanton's remaining. He had indeed warmly seconded a suggestion of General Sherman (who was then in Washington), made the day after Mr. Stanton's restoration, that the President should immediately nominate Governor Cox of Ohio for Secretary of War.

The President did not accept the suggestion respecting the name of Governor Cox. His chief purpose was to get rid of Mr. Stanton, and he did not believe the Senate would consent in any event to his removal. He expressed surprise that General Grant did not hold the office until the question of Mr. Stanton's Constitutional right to resume it could be judicially tested. A heated controversy ensued a fortnight later on this point, leading to the exchange of angry letters between the President and General Grant. Mr. Johnson alleged that the fair understanding was that General Grant should, by retaining his portfolio, aid in bringing the case before the Supreme Court of the United States. General Grant denied this with much warmth, declaring in a letter addressed to the President that the latter had made "many and gross misrepresentations concerning this subject." It was doubtless in the beginning a perfectly honest misapprehension between the two. General Grant had on a certain occasion remarked that "Mr. Stanton would have to appeal to the courts to re-instate him," and the President, hastily perhaps, but not unnaturally, assumed that by this language General Grant meant that he would himself aid in bringing the matter to judicial arbitrament. But the President ought to have seen and realized that such a step would be altogether foreign to the duty of the Commander of the Army, and that with General Grant's habitual prudence he never could have intended to provoke a controversy with Congress, and get himself entangled in the meshes of the Tenure-of-office Law. The wrath of both men was fully aroused, and the controversy closed by leaving them enemies for life—unreconciled, irreconcilable.

The severance of friendly relations between the President and General Grant was not distasteful to the Republicans of the country. Indeed it had been earnestly desired by them. Many of those who were looking forward to General Grant's nomination as the Republican candidate for the Presidency in 1868, had been restless lest he might become too much identified with the President, and thus be held in some degree accountable for his policy. General Grant's report on the condition of the South in 1865 had displeased Republicans as much as it had pleased the President. He had created still further uneasiness in Republican ranks by accompanying the President in 1866 on his famous journey to Chicago, when he "swung around the circle." His acceptance of the War Office in 1867 as the successor to Mr. Stanton was naturally interpreted by many as a signal mark of confidence in the President. It was said by General Grant's nearest friends that in his position as the Commander of the Army he was bound in courtesy to comply with the President's requests; but others maintained that as these requests all lay outside his official duties, and were in fact political in their nature, he might decline to respond to them if he chose. It was in fact known to a few persons that General Grant had declined (though requested by the President) to accompany Minister Lewis D. Campbell to Mexico and hold an interview with the officials of the Juarez Government, in the autumn of 1866. The President, however, did not insist on General Grant's compliance with his request, and at the suggestion of the latter readily substituted Lieutenant-General Sherman, who went upon the mission, with results—according to his own narrative—more laughable than valuable. General Grant always believed that Mr. Seward had originated the suggestion, and had desired him to go upon the mission from some motives of his own not made fully apparent. The incident did not interfere with the kindly relations between the President and General Grant, as was shown by General Grant's acceptance of the War Office ten months after the Mexican Mission had come to its profitless conclusion.