Adam Badeau, Grant in peace: from Appomattox to Mount McGregor, a personal memoir

---

[523] complicated by their past relations, especially in the very positions which cabinet ministers would hold. Had both Seward and Stanton been more personally intimate with Grant, or had their fitness for their posts been still more marked, I doubt whether he would have sought an association with either of them when he became President. But this implied no failure to appreciate their ability or services.

It is possible that in his new position, Grant forgot, for a while, his old superior; and he may have seemed in the press of public cares, and amid the importance of the highest public duties, even to neglect the faithful patriot who had done and suffered so much for the cause with which Grant had triumphed; but when it was told him that Stanton was ill and depressed in body and mind, I know that he was both shocked and grieved. I was in Washington at the time, and on duty at the Executive Mansion. A seat on the Supreme Court bench was vacant, and Grant was aware that this had long been an object of Stanton's legitimate ambition. He went at once, President though he was, to Stanton's house, and offered the sick man the position, and the broken statesman was greatly touched and gratified by the recognition of his services from him who was now the representative of the Republic. The interview took place in the same room where Grant had once told the Secretary that he was to supersede him.

But the great War Minister was worn out in the service of his country. His efforts and labors had told on him as much as if they had occurred in the field; the offer was grateful to him, but it came too late, or only in time to soothe his dying hours. He never sat on the bench to which he had been elevated, and within a week Grant went to the same house to Stanton's funeral.

When one remembers the great men whom that great era developed, the positions they occupied, the achievements they performed, the ambitions they cherished, and how almost