Stanton
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Stanton’s political star was rising; he impressed listeners with his frequent speeches and continually delighted Judge Tappan as a partner, friend, and political legman.2 During the campaign Stanton hewed to the radical Democratic line of antipathy to paper money, accusing the financial interests of oppressing the people. Whig opponents blamed Democratic ignorance in matters of finance for causing the panic. Despite the intensity of the Whig campaign, the Democrats held together and retained control of the state legislature.
Shortly after the election, however, cleavage threatened them again. Democratic Governor Wilson Shannon, who had been elected in 1838 on an anti-bank platform, recommended mere limitation of bank powers rather than the stringent general banking law favored by Tappan and Stanton. When Shannon in 1840 gained renomination for governor against radical Democratic opposition, Stanton asked Tappan if he should work for the heretic’s election. Tappan agreed that Shannon should be “politically damned” for compromising on the banks, but as he had been nominated by the party, they would have to add their support. Stanton accepted Tappan’s decision and the code of party regularity that it embraced.
Besides renominating Shannon, the Democratic state convention endorsed Van Buren’s candidacy for a second term as President. Stanton, as a member of the committee on resolutions, helped frame a platform approving the Independent Treasury and endorsing such features of the Democratic program as opposition to a protective tariff as an adjunct of monopoly, and to internal improvements at federal expense.3
The Whigs chose to avoid issues and named as their candidate for President William Henry Harrison, a military hero, innocent of known political views. When a Democratic newspaper derided Harrison as a man who would be entirely happy with a barrel of cider and a backwoods cabin, the Whigs adopted the squib and extolled these symbols of purity and simplicity. Parades, rallies, and barbecues created wild excitement. Tempers grew short as election day approached. Ohio’s Whigs and Democrats convened in Steubenville in July. Stanton made a public speech in which he demanded that more than $5,000 in the notes of the defunct local bank be honored. The officers of that bank were Whigs. Their supporters, passing Stanton’s office, were enraged when they saw a tombstone he had set up, plastered with the bank’s worthless notes. Angry Whigs rushed the grandstand where Stanton was holding forth. A free-for-all followed in which several persons were injured. Stanton escaped unhurt, and thereafter during the campaign was more circumspect. He impressed his audience at Wintersville soon after, when he debated the issues with John A. Bingham, a forceful lawyer from Cadiz who in later years as a congressman would become Stanton’s firm friend.
Harrison carried the nation. Ohio Whigs elected Thomas Corwin governor and won control of the lower house of the state’s legislature. Stanton took no comfort from the fact that the Whigs had been obliged to assume Democratic trappings in order to win, and he did not trouble to conceal his contempt for Harrison. Soon after the President-elect visited Steubenville on his river voyage to Washington, Stanton advised Tappan that “he is regarded even in his own party as an old imbecile.”4
As a matter of course, Harrison promised to replace Steubenville’s Democratic postmaster with a Whig, and Stanton acidly noted that the “hungry crew are all agape,” with six vying for the office. A local Whig leader, Jim Collier, got the inside track. He spirited off Harrison’s granddaughters, who attended school in Steubenville, and drove them to Wheeling to join their grandfather. Collier thus reached Harrison before any other aspiring Steubenville Whig could, and he received the promise of the post office.
Stanton then conceived a scheme to capitalize on the chagrin of Collier’s outmaneuvered Whig rivals. He hoped to persuade the incumbent Democratic postmaster to resign immediately, as he would in any case soon be ousted. Then the county Democratic committee would replace him by a pliant anti-Collier Whig and let the incoming Whig administration wrestle with the problem of supplanting a Whig postmaster with Collier. He was sure that if Senator Tappan would convince outgoing President Van Buren to approve the plan, the results would please all Democrats. “It will breed a deadly strife in the Whig ranks,” he predicted.5
He went so far in anticipation of Tappan’s approval as to prepare the principals for the scheme, when Tappan rejected it. It was incredible, Tappan wrote, that Stanton should think he would ever appoint a Whig to office. And if Tappan had recommended him, Van Buren would not appoint him, nor would the Senate confirm him, regardless of the benefits that Democrats of Jefferson County might obtain.
Stanton answered lamely that he had not intended to embarrass Tappan and that similar strategy had been employed elsewhere. His plan had only one purpose—to divide Whig ranks as Democrats had been divided. He had no desire to benefit a Whig; “I acted to mortify the whole Whig party—and some of its leaders in chief.”
Political efforts combined with court work to keep Stanton busy in Steubenville and in a half dozen other county seats across Ohio. He served as secretary of the Democratic Central Committee of Jefferson County and in 1840 attended the county and district conventions. As hard times continued and bank after bank suspended specie payments, the Democrats took full advantage of the general discontent. “A merry time we are likely to have for the next few years,” wrote Stanton.6
Though political events bore him out, Stanton could not celebrate. He had spent the summer months of 1841 in anxiety that grew ever more fearful as his daughter Lucy sickened, weakening from some undiagnosed ailment as the long weeks passed. He abandoned politics, transferred office matters to the six student lawyers he now employed, and kept constant watch by her tiny bed. Stanton and his wife prayed, and felt an answering improvement in the baby’s condition; then, late in August 1841, Lucy died.
Both parents bore their heartache bravely to others, but to each other the blow seemed beyond enduring. Mary, who had recently lost her sister, became ill in turn, and Stanton seemed almost distracted. Pamphila and Mary urged him to return to the beneficent distractions of his practice and politics, and the new year saw him active once again.7
The bank issue continued to divide the Democrats; early in 1842 Stanton encountered open revolt. Many Democrats were signing pro-bank petitions which Whigs had inspired, and former political friends were openly denouncing Tappan, Stanton himself, “and anyone who would not bow down to Bank influence.”
With other county leaders, Stanton quelled the revolt. The leaders then fell out over the question of punishing the pro-bank seceders. Stanton took the view that they should be severely punished, “coming square out and exposing them to the people denouncing them openly as unworthy of confidence and through the newspaper cut them off from the Democratic party.” The opposite view temporarily won, however, and the dissenters, from fear that they might go to the Whigs entirely if treated rigorously, were welcomed back into Democratic ranks. Stanton bided his time, still determined on punishment for the bolters.
Ohio’s radical Democrats, now in full control of local party units and of the state legislature, pushed through a general banking law, to which all future charters had to conform, and which opened incorporation to any qualified banking group. Another law specified that all banks refusing to redeem their notes in specie should forfeit their charters, and that bank officers and stockholders should be jointly and severally liable for failure to comply. Meanwhile, the Whigs, undecided as to what banking system to endorse, denounced these Democratic measures as “dangerous” and assailed the Democrats as favoring a “social revolution.”
Happy Democrats exulted. Stanton was visiting Tappan in Washington at the time of these events; on returning to Steubenville he wrote to an Ohio friend that “the way in which the Democratic legislature of Ohio was spoken of in Washington made me feel proud to be an Ohio Democrat … and it seems to me that if our folks continue to toe the mark the Whigs are bound to be badly licked next election.”8
Stanton’s zeal for the Democratic party did not overcome his sense of family responsibility.
During the April 1842 election he went to Virginia and helped his brother Darwin obtain the Whig nomination for a seat in the House of Delegates; then he electioneered for Darwin in a campaign that resulted in his brother’s election in a normally Democratic district. But not even Senator Tappan thought this strange political behavior; “I am very much pleased that Darwin is elected,” he wrote to Edwin.
Back in Steubenville, Stanton helped arrange a large mass meeting which expelled the pro-bank secessionists from the county Democratic organization, thus providing precedent for similar actions throughout the state. On the Fourth of July, he addressed the Harrison County Democrats in what he described as one of the most enthusiastic meetings he had ever seen. He was renamed to the Jefferson County Central Committee and attended the county convention in September. In October the Democrats confirmed Stanton’s predictions of success by sweeping Ohio, as they swept the nation, electing Shannon governor and regaining control over both houses of the legislature. And all the while, Stanton kept Tappan informed of Ohio developments: “I get more information from your letters as to Ohio matters,” Tappan acknowledged, “than from all other sources.”9
Tappan’s information from Stanton often included gossip as well as politics. “The Devil is to pay among the new Methodists,” he wrote on one occasion. “They had quite a revival last fall among the young men and women, and now there is a prospect of considerable increase in the population by the birth of young members who are coming into the church without the preacher having been paid for the marriage ceremony.” In another letter Stanton told how “Parson” Beatty of the Seminary connived with the Steubenville town council to augment a lot he owned by having High Street narrowed by twenty feet. Stanton wrote a newspaper article to expose the fraud, but the editor of the American Union found excuses for not printing it. Stanton was more successful in thwarting the efforts of a prominent farmer to buy lands foreclosed for taxes at much less than their value, and as the speculation involved only Whigs and “soft money” Democrats, Stanton was doubly delighted.
The Stanton home, Cadiz, Ohio. (photo credit 2.1)
Stanton’s first law office, over the home and cabinet shop of Joseph Hunter, Cadiz, Ohio. (photo credit 2.2)
Edwin McMasters Stanton. This photograph was probably taken in 1857. (photo credit 2.3)
One of his favorite stories to Tappan concerned a tightfisted local physician, Dr. Mairs, who was sued by a Steubenville landlady for three dollars for board furnished his hired man. The doctor retaliated by suing her for five dollars, for alleged “attendance in abortion.” For the outraged housekeeper, Stanton sued the doctor for slander and libel. In the slander suit, Mairs produced what Stanton described as “an Irishman that he had picked up in some gutter in Pittsburgh, brought him down here, washed and shaved him,… paid him wages, and brought him into court as a witness dressed up in the Doctor’s own clothes.” Stanton recognized the clothes and exposed the perjury. Mairs dropped his suit and paid $900 and costs. Stanton enjoyed playing the part of knight-errant against injustice, especially when the villains were Whigs or bolting Democrats.
Stanton’s law cases were proving too commonplace to bring him legal prominence, financial security, or quick political advancement. To satisfy his intellectual wants, he started a literary society among his law students, which Mary and Pamphila joined, and in which each member wrote a weekly essay. Early in March 1842, he obtained the appointment as reporter of the Ohio Supreme Court. The salary was only $300 a year, but his duties kept him at Columbus, where more important law cases might be obtained and where he could widen his acquaintance with lawyers and politicians. He hurried back to Steubenville early in August 1842, in time to be on hand at the birth of a son, whom he and Mary named Edwin Lamson Stanton. The boy helped fill the void left by the death of Lucy, and the spirits of the Stanton family notably revived.10
By early December he was ready to set out again for Columbus. He had proved himself adept in maneuvering within the tangled world of county politics and in the practice of routine law cases. Stanton was ready now for wider horizons.
“Imagine yourself in a long dining room, with two lamps hanging from the ceiling, the walls trimmed with pine after the manner of Episcopal Churches on Christmas day. At one side are the fiddlers and on the floor any quantity of ladies in their best dresses, and gentlemen with their hair combed slick, and their pumps on. The fiddlers strike up and the men and women jump, and you have the Inaugural Ball in all its glories—at least all that I can remember of it.” Stanton was describing Governor Shannon’s inaugural celebration to his sister Pamphila. He had just arrived in Columbus and was finding the change of scene congenial.
Once again Stanton favorably impressed Columbus society. Journalist Donn Piatt described him as “young, ardent, and of a most joyous nature,” with a ready sense of humor and a wonderfully hearty laugh. “He was not only a hard student in … his profession,” Piatt continued, “but he had a taste for light literature that made his conversation extremely attractive.” Stanton occasionally visited the Piatt homestead near West Liberty, where he once confided that he was writing a book on “The Poetry of the Bible.”11
During that winter in Columbus, Stanton also became acquainted with Salmon Portland Chase, who sought to enlist him actively in the antislavery movement. Thus far the Jacksonians, fearful of a sectional schism within their party which would endanger their program of reform, had condemned agitation on the question of abolition or the extension of slavery. Tappan refused to present antislavery petitions to the United States Senate, and the opposition to fearless old John Quincy Adams’s efforts to bring such petitions before the national House of Representatives came largely from Democrats. But it was inevitable that the reform impulse should direct itself against slavery, and make it a national issue. In Chase, a young Cincinnati lawyer who had formerly been a Whig, the newly formed Liberty party enlisted a zealous recruit.
Tall, massive, dignified, and handsome, Chase had flouted the displeasure of southward-looking Cincinnati by engaging in so many slave cases that he became known as “the attorney general for runaway slaves.” Deeply religious but self-righteous and opinionated, he had determined to subordinate all other party interests to the central issue of slavery. Stanton tried to convince him that the Democratic party offered the best agency for his antislavery efforts and promised to support them if Chase would come over to it. But Chase thought opponents of slavery could work most effectively through a third party, which, after gaining the balance of power, could throw its strength to whichever major party would promise to take a forthright anti-slavery stand. Neither man was able to convince the other, but they became bosom friends.
Unlike Chase, Stanton wanted to hold back the slavery issue as much as possible. Issues of banking and currency remained paramount in Ohio politics, where most Democrats chose to treat the questions of slavery and its extension as dangerous and distracting matters.12 Americans generally kept the dark cloud of slavery low on the horizon of the nation’s conscience. Glorying in their country’s strength, envisioning a magnificent “manifest destiny” in which the continent would be spanned, jingoes were demanding an end to the joint occupation of Oregon with Great Britain and the sole rulership over all the territory. The annexation of Texas, which had won its independence from Mexico, was becoming an urgent issue. But it was inextricably involved with the slavery extension question, and threatened such dire consequences to the unity of both major parties that Van Buren and Henry Clay, who seemed most likely to be the opposing presidential candidates in 1844, kept silent about Texas, though Van Buren was privately opposed to annexation.
Stanton supported Van Buren throughout the latter’s political career and offered no objection to his policy of silence. Expediency rather than principle ruled the American political scene, and Stanton was no man to play Chase’s quixotic role. His major concern at this time was to master his new responsibilities as court reporter, which proved more time-consuming than he had ant
icipated. Stanton gave due attention to this work, for it was greatly expanding his circle of acquaintances in the legal world. By April 1843 he felt enough in control of the situation to begin commuting between Steubenville and Columbus.
He continued to keep Senator Tappan in Washington informed of developments in Ohio politics. Soon after his arrival in Columbus, Stanton told Tappan of “a most glorious battle.” Thirteen of the state’s twenty-six banks were in collusion to refuse to reincorporate under the general banking law that the Democrats had passed earlier that year. Outgoing Whig governor Corwin in his farewell message to the legislature had urged some relaxation in the administration of the law, and a bill to extend the banks’ existing charters had been introduced. Many persons feared that if the banks continued their opposition and allowed their charters to lapse, the state would not only suffer from inadequate banking facilities but would also be flooded with paper money issued by out-of-state banks. The “soft money” Democrats felt inclined toward lining up with the Whigs.
Stanton, operating subtly behind the scenes to keep wavering Democrats up to the mark, reported that “our men,” especially one Caleb McNulty, kept the bill off the floor of the state legislature as long as possible, then tried to kill it with a filibuster. The lobbies were “thronged with bankers and their satellites, perfectly savage.” The House got into an uproar, which lasted until midnight, when it adjourned without acting. “A more mortified, foiled and beaten set of fellows you never saw,” wrote Stanton. “They had got so lost that they could not tell ‘where they were or who was with them’; one of them wanted to whip the Speaker.” Next morning the bank forces were still confused and the measure was voted down, in large part, Tappan learned, due to Stanton’s tactical operations.13