When Gideon Welles challenged him and asked if the latest Reconstruction law wasn’t “palpably unconstitutional and destructive of the government and of the Constitution itself . . . ?” Grant countered: “Who is to decide whether the law is unconstitutional?”12 The exchange went to the heart of the dispute that led to Johnson’s impeachment. However unwise the Tenure of Office Act, were not government officers obligated to heed it until the courts overturned it as unconstitutional? Grant thought so.
