Casting off all political disguises and personal pretenses, the simple truth remains that the Tenure-of-office Law was enacted lest President Johnson should remove Republican office-holders too rapidly; and it was practically repealed lest President Grant should not remove Democratic office-holders rapidly enough.
While President Grant did not find himself in the least degree embarrassed by the Tenure-of-office Act as amended, he did not surrender his hostility to its existence in any form whatever.

In his first annual message (nine months after the legislation just narrated) he earnestly recommended its total repeal.

"It could not," said the President, "have been the intention of the framers of the Constitution, when providing that appointments made by the President should receive the consent of the Senate, that the latter should have the power to retain in office persons placed there by Federal appointment against the will of the President.

_The law is inconsistent with a faithful and efficient administration of the Government.

What faith can an Executive put in officials forced upon him, and those, too, whom he has suspended for reason ?_ How will such officials be likely to serve an Administration which they know does not trust them ?" The President was evidently of the opinion that the doubtful and contradictory construction of the Act as amended left the whole matter (as described by Mr.Niblack of Indiana when the Committee report was under consideration) "in a muddle;" with the inevitable result that certain parties would be deceived and misled by the peculiarly tortuous language which the Senate insisted upon introducing in the amendment.
The House had acted throughout in a straightforward manner, but the most lenient critic would be compelled to say that the course of the Senate was indirect and evasive.