Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume Two).djvu/89

Rh his judgment are proper and within his power to carry into operation the within directions of the President.”

Under this order six or eight companies in New York and on the way to join regiments in the South were detained at Fort McHenry, and a regiment in Washington was under orders to be ready to move upon notice.

On the second day of November the President qualified his demands in a letter to Secretary Stanton and limited the expression of anxiety to the city of Baltimore. It is certain that General Grant and Secretary Stanton did not share the President’s apprehensions, and the day of election passed without serious disturbance.

In the Philadelphia Ledger of October 12, 1866, there appeared a series of questions which were accompanied by the statement or the suggestion that the President had submitted them to the Attorney-General for an official opinion. The questions related to the constitutional validity of the Thirty-ninth Congress, and upon the ground that all the States were not represented although hostilities had ceased.

From the testimony of Henry M. Flint, a newspaper correspondent, it appears that the President had no knowledge of the questions until the publications in the Ledger. Flint’s account of the affair may be thus summarized. For himself and without conference with the President, he reached the conclusion that the Thirty-ninth Congress was an illegal body and he had reached the conclusion also that the President entertained the same opinion. Thereupon he assumed that the President would take the opinion of the Attorney-General. Having advanced thus far, he next proceeded to write the questions that he imagined the President would prepare and submit to the Attorney-General.

These questions he transmitted to a brother correspondent in New York—Mr. F. A. Abbott—under cover of a letter