"I was not able to send my letter yesterday, and now add a word. I had an interview with the President yesterday. I ran over the case of Van Ness pretty freely. He replied at considerable length, _ascribing the delay in his removal to the improper manner in which it had been demanded_. He did not _say_, but implied that he had never intended not to remove him; made no defence or argument on the question of its propriety; merely excused the delay. Mr. Butler, he said, had written to him that it would do no harm to retain him until the year expired, if it were immediately announced that a particular man would then be appointed. He complained bitterly of the attempts to intimidate and coerce him--talking magnificently about being himself President and the _locum tenen_ for nobody; said that in his own time, perhaps Monday, perhaps afterwards, Van Ness should be removed, but swore with that terrible oath, "if the heavens and the earth come together," by which Ritchie and Green and Barton had successively warned me he might refuse if a mischance word of mine should chafe his angry mood, that he would not appoint Coddington. He should select a man, he said, who would be received with applause throughout the State; on his own judgment, whom he knew and had served with. Who that man was he did not say and I did not inquire, though I did express myself with some freedom as to what the man should do. Probably the question may now be deemed settled; for you remember he employed the same planetary concussion to illustrate the fixed irrevocable fate by which Marcy was to represent New York in the Cabinet. His solemn form of fiat, I suppose, answers as the "By the Eternal" of the younger Hickory, and, being partly of earth and partly of heaven, is undoubtedly of an improved quality of imaginary thunder. Still it did not shake my nerves, as a lady's displeasure might. I took it quietly, and talked occasionally as I had a chance, not so fully on all points as I wished, or mean, if an opportunity comes unsought; but, although I was conscious of having exposed myself to a part of a very respectable performance for the benefit of the rebellious Butler, Dix, and O'Sullivan, in which, perhaps, I might lose a little when it came to be privately repeated to the Cabinet and confidants, I thought that, nevertheless, I should not be justified in converting farce into tragedy. So I behaved well and was myself well treated. I inquired what was the 'intimidation' and 'coercion' referred to, and I believe was not very definitely answered. The only specification I got was letters from three--not more, he said, than three persons, whose names, he said, he would not tell me--who might never know about it themselves, whom he could not answer without getting into a correspondence inconsistent with his dignity, who might not be aware of the expressions they had incautiously and rashly used. Your letter to Bancroft was distinctly alluded to as, among other offences, alleging