The President blundered very seriously when he did not accept the explanation from General Grant and drop the matter. The General was friendly in his feelings toward the President, and when Stanton repossessed himself of the War Office in his cavalier way, without seeking any understanding with Grant, and sent the General a rude summons to wait upon him, the General was very naturally and properly indignant with Stanton. The way was here open for the President to make a close friend of General Grant, by simply appreciating Grant's point of view in surrendering the War Office, and saying nothing more about it. But the President was not a prudent man when crossed in his purposes. He generally thought that the motives of all men who differed with him were bad. He showed in this trait his common origin and his vulgar breeding. He thought that Grant had deceived him and made a scapegoat of him, and he resolved to have it out with him. He did not seem to understand at all that in an issue of veracity between General Grant and himself, the country would believe Grant, no matter who told the truth, and who the lie. The utter impossibility of coming out winner in a contest with a national hero, no matter what the merits of the case might be, does not seem to have occurred to him at all. And so he plunged into that unfortunate controversy with General Grant in the public prints, which made Grant his enemy for life, at a time when he needed most his friendship, and might have had it by the exercise of a little common prudence. [Sidenote: The result of the controversy between the President and General Grant.] The outcome of this whole course of crimination and recrimination was that the country came to the belief that the President first tried to force the responsibility of a violation of the Tenure-of-Office Act upon the popular General of the army, and then, when the {167} General foiled him in his purpose, undertook to impugn his honor and his integrity, and destroy his character before the public. An impartial study of the facts and the correspondence will not sustain any such view now, but in the state of feeling then prevailing, no such impartial study was possible. The President ought to have known this, and to have controlled his indignation until a more propitious time. [Sidenote: Grant's disobedience toward the President.]