But, to lay no stress upon this consideration, it must be manifest to any one acquainted with the state of public feeling at the time, that the single, uncorroborated testimony of the maligned, distrusted Andrew Johnson, branded as a traitor by the triumphant republican party, on the eve of impeachment, a hostile army under his nominal command, Stanton harnessed on his back, unfriendly private secretaries pervading his apartments, and detectives in his bed-chamber; in support of such a "disloyal" charge, disclosing, as it was sure to be asserted, a latent remorse for the righteous fate of the she-assassin; would have been hailed in all military circles with derision. The popular, the eminently loyal, the politically sound Judge-Advocate, backed by Stanton, Bingham and Burnett, by his Bureau and his Court, by General Grant and the Army, had certainly nothing to fear.
But, though this hero of so many courts-martial appears to have had no mind for a dose of his own favorite remedy, he began, in his characteristic secret way, to collect testimony corroborative of his version of the confidential interview. He writes no letter to a single Cabinet officer. But, immediately after the close of the John H. Surratt trial (August 24, 1867), he writes to General Ekin reminding him of an interview, soon after the execution, in which he (Holt) mentioned that the President had seen the petition; and he obtains from that officer the information he sought. In January, 1868, he quietly procures from two clerks in his office, letters testifying to the condition of the record when it arrived from the Commission, when the Judge-Advocate took it to carry to the President, and when he brought it back. It is needless to say that, though these clerks state that the page, on which the petition was written, and the page, on which the latter portion of the death-warrant was written, are "directly face to face to each other;" they do not notice that, when the death-warrant was signed, the page, on which the petition was written, must have been, either under the other pages of the record, or upside down.
In this same month, the resolution of the Senate refusing to concur in the suspension of Stanton was adopted (January 13th, 1868). General Grant, the Secretary of War _ad interim_, in violation of his promise to the President, as alleged by the latter, thereupon surrendered the office to the favorite War-Minister, who thus forced himself back among the confidential advisers of the President.