Whether this unsatisfactory and ticklish state of the issue was the cause or not, nothing was done in consequence of these revelations of the Surratt trial. The President, indeed, plunged as he was in the struggle to get rid of Stanton, which finally led to his impeachment, and remembering his own remissness in not scrutinizing the papers before he signed the death-warrant, could have had but little inclination to provoke another conflict, on such precarious grounds, by attempting the removal of the incriminated subordinate of his rebellious Secretary. He kept possession of the record, however, long enough to subject it to a thorough inspection by himself and his advisers, for (as appears from the letter of the chief clerk already quoted) it was not returned to the Judge-Advocate-General's office until December, 1867.
The Judge-Advocate, on his part, remained likewise passive and displayed no eagerness for a vindication by a court of inquiry.
He pleads in 1873, as excuse for his non-action, that "it would have been the very madness of folly" for him "to expose his reputation to the perils of a judicial proceeding in which his enemy and slanderer would play the quadruple role of organizer of the court, accuser, witness and final judge." Forgetting the "history" he had told Mr. Pierrepont, and then withdrawn, in 1867, he actually claims that he "was not aware that any member of Mr. Johnson's Cabinet knew of his having seen and considered the recommendation," and that he "was kept in profound ignorance of" "this important information" "_through the instrumentality of Mr. Stanton_"!
But, were it credible that the Judge-Advocate "supposed," as he says, "that this information was confined to" the President and himself, (not even his master, Stanton, knowing anything of the petition), even in that case the "perils" of an investigation, which he affects to dread, were all on the side of his adversary. The necessity for the President of the United States, himself, to come forward as the one sole witness to his own accusation--especially when the charge involved an admission of his own delinquency, and was to be met by the loud and defiant denial of his arraigned subordinate--was enough, of itself, to deter the Chief Magistrate of a great nation from descending into so humiliating a combat.