The House undertook to adjourn the session, but the Senate refused to do so without action on the bill for the protection of human rights at the South. While things were in this condition, I was summoned one morning into the President's room at the Capitol, where I found President Grant, his Cabinet, several of the leading Senators, including Mr. Conkling, I think Mr. Edmunds, Mr. Howe of Wisconsin, and I believe General Wilson, Judge Shellabarger of Ohio, and one or two other members of the House. All the persons who were there were favorable to the proposed legislation, I believe. President Grant said that he had been asked to send in a message urging Congress to pass a law giving him larger powers for the suppression of violence at the South; but he had sent for us to explain the reason why he was unwilling to do it. He thought that the country would look with great disapprobation upon a request to enlarge the powers of the President, and especially to suspend the writ of _habeas corpus_ in time of peace, and that he felt especially unwilling to subject himself to that criticism as he had not come to that office from civil life, but had been a soldier, and it might be supposed he favored military methods of government. Several of the gentlemen present expressed rather guardedly their dissent from this view, but Grant seemed to remain firm. I kept silent, as became a person young in public life, until Mr. Howe and Judge Shellabarger whispered together, and then came to me and said: "Mr. Hoar, you may perhaps, be able to have some influence on him. Won't you say something?" I then made a little speech to the President, in which I said that there was no question of the existence of these disorders and crimes; that they would be likely to be increased, and not diminished, especially as the elections in the Southern States approached. He could not allow them to continue. He would be compelled, in my judgment, to interpose and go to the verge of his authority, or to leave to their fate those people whom we were bound by every consideration of honor to protect. I asked him if he did not think it would be better, instead of exercising a doubtful authority of his own, acquired without legislative sanction, to obtain the necessary authority from Congress in advance. I thought it much less likely to be imputed to him that he was acting in the manner of a soldier and not of a statesman if he were careful to ask in advance the direction of the law-making power, and the people understood he was unwilling, even if he had the authority, to act without the sanction of Congress. This view produced an instant change of mind. Grant took a pen, wrote a brief message with great rapidity, read it aloud to the persons who were assembled, and sent it in that very day without the change of a word. It is a clear and excellent statement. The result was that the Republican opposition to the measure in the House was withdrawn, the two Houses