It is also a question whether General Grant did not act hastily, and inconsiderately, not to say wrongfully, in yielding the post without dispute to Mr. Stanton. The President certainly understood General Grant to promise him to hold on to the office in case the Senate should not approve of Stanton's suspension, and thereby compel Stanton to have recourse to the courts to regain possession, and thus secure a judicial determination of the constitutionality of the Tenure-of-Office Act, or to give the office back to the President before the Senate reached its {165} determination, so that he might have opportunity to put it into the hands of a man who would be willing to incur this responsibility; and the President was able to back this understanding by the testimony of five members of his Cabinet. On the other hand, General Grant was just as sincere in his view that his remarks to the President on the subject did not amount to a promise, and if they did, he had fulfilled it when on the 11th of January, two days before the Senate acted, he indicated to the President his unwillingness to involve himself in a lawsuit to test the constitutionality of the Tenure-of-Office Act. It is true that when he spoke with the President, on the 11th, he did not offer to resign the office, and that it was understood that he would see the President again on the subject, and that he did not see the President, nor attempt to see him, before the Senate acted. But he explained this apparent failure to keep faith by saying that he was extremely busy during the two days between the 11th and the 13th, and that the Senate had acted much more hastily than he expected it would. There is little doubt that General Grant thought the Senate would acquiesce in Stanton's suspension, and was taken by surprise when it did not do so, and that until the action of the Senate on the 13th, he had never seriously considered that any opportunity or necessity for a judicial proceeding would arise. When, then, the alternative was suddenly presented to him of obeying the Tenure-of-Office Act, or disputing its constitutionality by forcibly holding possession of the War Office, he decided that it would be wrong for the General of the army to assume the attitude of defiance to Congress, whatever a civilian might consider his duty to be. He thought that such an act on his part would look like a contest between the civil and military powers of the Government, and he was unwilling to provoke it. {166} [Sidenote: The President's blunder in his attitude toward Grant.]