y of December, the sales amounted to something more than
$53,000,000, and the proceeds to something over $70,000,000. The
difference in the amount realized from the sale of gold and the amount
paid for bonds purchased was met by the excess of receipts over the
expenditures of the Government during that period.

As having some connection, and perhaps an important connection, with
what is to be said hereafter touching General Grant's action in the
days of September, when the speculation was going on, I think it proper
to make a statement of my relations to the President. I had declined
the office of Secretary of the Treasury, and on the morning of my
nomination to the Senate I wrote a letter to Mr. Washburne, through
whom the invitation of the President that I should accept the office
was made, requesting him and urging him to say to the President that
I was unwilling to accept the place. My nomination was sent to the
Senate and confirmed, and as there seemed to be no alternative for me,
I entered upon the duties of the office. Due in part to these
circumstances, as I think, the President accepted the idea that the
management of the Treasury Department was in my hands, and from first
to last, during the four years that I was in his Cabinet, his acts and
his conversation proceeded upon that idea. Moreover, he was influenced
by a military view that an officer who was charged with the conduct of
a business, or of a undertaking, should be left free to act, that he
should be made responsible, and that, in case of failure, the
consequences should rest upon him. It happened, and as a plan on my
part, that neither the President nor the Cabinet was made responsible
for what was done in the Treasury Department. Hence it was that I
presented to the Cabinet but two questions. One of these was of no
considerable consequence. The other related to the political effect
that might follow a loan that I contemplated making upon certain terms
in the year 1872, when the Presidential contest was pending. In the
line of these views, it happened that I announced my purpose to
purchase bonds in May, 1869, without conference either with the
Cabinet or with the President. When the announcement was made, there
was a slight advance in bonds. In order that the business interests
of the country might not be influenced by an apprehension that changes
might take place in the policy of the Department, I announced (as
stated in Chapter XXXIII)