The senators apparently wished to gratify General Grant and promote their own purposes by rendering the removal of President Johnson's appointees easy, and at the same time avoid the inconsistency involved in the repeal of a law for whose enactment they had so strenuously contended only two years before.
The first modification of the original Act, as embodied in the Senate amendment, was to relieve the President altogether from the necessity of filing charges against an officer whom he desired to suspend.

In the second place, all provisions of the original law authorizing the Senate to pass specific judgment on the propriety of the suspension and declaring that if the Senate did not approve the President's act the person suspended should "forthwith" resume his office, were now abandoned.

The President was left at liberty to suspend any officer without assigning a cause, and to nominate his successor.

If the nomination should be rejected, another might be made, and another, and another, until the Senate should confirm.

If the Senate should stubbornly reject all the nominations and the session of Congress end without a confirmation, then, in that remote and highly improbably event, the suspended officer, according to the proposed law, should be restored to his place.