Grant

discreetly to Colonel N. P. Chipman in the War Department, warning him to “quietly and secretly organize all our boys that can assemble at a given signal . . . ready to protect the Congress of the U.S.”99 For many in Washington, the great mystery was how Grant would act in such a crisis. President Johnson

Rusling asked Grant if he was sure he was correct. “No, I am not,” Grant shot back, “but in war anything is better than indecision. We must decide. If I am wrong we shall soon find it out, and can do the other thing. But not to decide wastes both time and money and may ruin everything.”

Grant found the experience so unsettling, he later confided, that it entered into his decision to spurn the president’s offer to escort him to Ford’s Theatre the next evening.

Grant “deliberately clambered on top of the embankment in plain view of the sharpshooters, and directed the men in moving and placing the guns,” observed one journalist. “The bullets zipped through the air by dozens, but strangely none of them touched his person or his clothing. He paid no attention to appeals or expostulations . . . and smoked qui

THOUGH TRANQUILLITY DESCENDED BRIEFLY on Washington after Andrew Johnson’s acquittal, he disappointed Republicans who imagined he would prove more pliant on Reconstruction.