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Nixon dined early with his family, who until the night before had steadfastly opposed his quitting; now there was a feeling of glum acceptance that could really not be relieved by attempts at cheerfulness. At 7:30 p.m. Nixon left the White House for a meeting with five congressional leaders in the Executive Office Building next door. For perhaps the first time in his presidency, he asked his Secret Service men not to follow him on this the last night he would occupy the historic house and its grounds. The Secret Service men complied, but to ensure his protection nonetheless, they locked all doors to the White House for 23 minutes, leaving some 100 reporters and 200 staff members temporarily incarcerated inside, wondering what was going on.
At his meeting with congressional leaders, Nixon announced what all of them already knew—that he was resigning. "I'm sure none of you will be surprised at what I'm going to say tonight," he told them. "We can't put the country through this [impeachment]. If I had my way, I'd fight it through to the end. [But] there's much higher considerations than that." He then told them of his plans to leave for California the next day and remarked, "I don't know when I'll come back to Washington—if ever." After that he seemed at a loss for words and wondered aloud if his suit fit properly for the TV address. "It looks like I've lost weight," he complained. Finally, deciding that the suit did in fact fit properly, he made his farewells: "I'll say goodbye to you, my good and dear friends." The congressional leaders could only say, in their turn, that they were sorry. "It was kind of pitiful," one of them said afterward.
Thirty minutes later, Nixon walked slowly back to the White House for a meeting in the Cabinet Room with 46 members of Congress whom he considered his friends—among them Senators Barry Goldwater and John Stennis and Representatives George Mahon (Texas), Les Arends (Illinois) and Joe Waggonner (Louisiana). There were tears on both sides, and as he looked across the polished Cabinet table, Nixon said: "Well, this is the last meeting that I'll share in this Cabinet Room . . . I just hope you don't feel that I let you down." No one told him that he had, and as his eyes welled with tears, he disappeared through a side door.
His usual cool restraint had returned when he faced the television cameras half an hour later in the Oval Office. At Nixon's request, the crew of technicians was kept to a bare minimum; no aides, friends or family members were in the room to share his disgrace. There were no precedents at all in American history—and no exact precedents in world history, the resignation of West Germany's Chancellor Willy Brandt being perhaps the closest recent parallel—for the sort of speech that Nixon, a head of state departing under a cloud, was about to make.