US Presidency
1868

It is the fact only that needs be stated, that at the date of this conversation you did not intend to hold the office with the purpose of forcing Mr. Stanton into court, but did hold it then and had accepted it to prevent that course from being carried out. In other words, you said to the President, That is the proper course, and you said to yourself, I have accepted this office, and now hold it to defeat that course. The excuse you make in a subsequent paragraph of that letter of the 28th ultimo, that afterwards you changed your views as to what would be a proper course, has nothing to do with the point now under consideration. The point is that before you changed your views you had secretly determined to do the very thing which at last you did surrender the office to Mr. Stanton. You may have changed your views as to the law, but you certainly did not change your views as to the course you had marked out for yourself from the beginning.