Stanton

by Benjamin P. Thomas

  A military company, the “Steubenville Greys,” commanded by Stanton’s partner, McCook, was speedily filled up. Stanton loaned his horse to the troop for their drill, and inspired the members of the Jefferson County Female Bible Society to donate Bibles and Testaments to the men, Stanton making the presentation speech and McCook responding for the company. In his enthusiasm for the war, Stanton tried to enlist, but Dr. Tappan advised him that the army surgeons would reject him because of his asthma. He was to sit out the Mexican War at home.24

  Like his brother, Dr. Darwin Stanton tried to secure an appointment in the Army, but he was far more ill than Edwin. Darwin had resigned his post in Washington, and had returned to Hollidays Cove to resume the practice of medicine, when he was stricken with a fever that affected his brain. On September 23, 1846, he cut his throat, and in gory surroundings—“The blood spouted up to the ceiling,” recalled Dr. Alexander M. Reid—Darwin died.

  Edwin was inconsolable. In the chill evening he ran, without hat or coat, into the dark woods. McCook joined others in a frantic hunt for the distraught man, fearing that he might also kill himself. They found Stanton and led him back to Hollidays Cove.

  Responsibility returned Edwin to his senses. Darwin’s wife was almost destitute, for her husband had left her only a small amount of insurance. Edwin brought her and her three children into his home and assumed their support. Three months later he wrote to his friend Chase: “Events of the past summer have broken my spirits, crushed my hopes, and without energy or purpose in life, I feel indifferent to the present, careless of the future—in a state of bewilderment the end of which is hidden.”25

  The tragedies of his brother’s suicide and the death of his wife and their daughter in so short a time oppressed Stanton grievously. Formerly a hearty, cheerful man in private life, he now became morose. Finding a measure of comfort only in religion, he shunned social gatherings and, for a time, further political embroilment. Too much alone in the long winter nights, he brooded on his troubles.

  Heretofore he had been known as a hard man only in court. Now, to conceal his craving for affection and yearning for lost loved ones, he began to turn a stern face to the world.

  1 Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Jackson (Boston, 1946). 190–209.

  2 Stanton to ?, probably Tappan, Jan. 14, 1839, Stanton MSS; Edgar Allan Holt, Party Politics in Ohio, 1840–1850 (Columbus, 1930), 6–24.

  3 Tappan to Stanton, Feb. 8, 20, 25, March 3, 1840, Dr. John K. Wright Collection, LC; memo, Jan. 8, 1840, Stanton MSS; Holt, op. cit., 20–1.

  4 Stanton to Tappan, March 7, 1841, Stanton MSS; Tappan to Stanton, May 12, 1840, Wright Collection, LC; Holt, op. cit., 56; Steubenville Log Cabin Farmer, July 23, 1840; Shotwell, op. cit., 81–2; Flower, Stanton, 36.

  5 Stanton to Tappan, Feb. 6, 12, 22; James Means and Stanton to Tappan, Feb. 22, 1841, Tappan Papers, LC.

  6 Tappan to Stanton, Feb. 22, 1841, Tappan Papers, LC; Stanton to ?, probably Tappan, Feb. 6, same to Tappan, June 27, Tappan to Stanton, Feb. 16, 1841, Wright Collection, LC; Steubenville American Union, July 31, Aug. 7, 28, 1841.

  7 Wolcott MS, 73–5; Christopher P. Wolcott to Tappan, Sr., Aug. 27, 1841, Tappan Papers, LC. W. S. Buchanan, a student in Stanton’s office, recorded that Stanton once again gave way to the morbid instability that he had exhibited when Ann Howard died of cholera; Stanton allegedly exhumed Lucy’s body more than a year after she died and sealed the ashes in a metal box made for the purpose. He was supposed to have kept this box in his own room; Flower, Stanton, 38. This is highly questionable, however, for Stanton wrote to Lewis Tappan (March 20, 1844, Lewis Tappan Papers, LC) describing Mary’s wish to have a monument “placed over the grave of our child.” This monument was never erected. Lucy is buried in the Stanton lot in Union Cemetery in Steubenville, where a simple stone marker bears the worn and barely legible inscription on its underside: “Infant dau Lucy.” The cemetery records do not indicate the date of burial or state whether a body or ashes were interred. Mr. P. Scott Dimit, manager of Union Cemetery, searched the records, found the marker under a layer of sod, and helped decipher the inscription.

  8 Stanton to ?, probably Tappan, Jan. 30, April 20, 1842, Stanton MSS; to Bela Latham, Feb. 26, 1842, owned by Ralph G. Newman; Holt, op. cit., 89–95; Davis, “Economic Basis of Ohio Politics, 1820–1840,” loc. cit., 312–5.

  9 Flower, Stanton, 37; Stanton to Tappan, May 31, 1842, Stanton MSS; Tappan to Stanton, May 5, Stanton to Tappan, July 17, 1842, Wright Collection, LC; Steubenville American Union, Jan. 1, May 21, Sept. 17, 1842; Holt, op. cit., 98.

  10 Wolcott MS, 75; Stanton to Tappan, April 22, 1842, Tappan Papers, May 31, 1842, Stanton MSS, and June 27, 1841, July 17, 1842, Wright Collection, LC.

  11 Piatt, Memories of Men Who Saved the Union (New York, 1887), 50–1; Wolcott MS, 77–8.

  12 Chase to Jeremiah S. Black, April 14, 1870, Black Papers, LC, reprinted in part in New York Tribune, Nov. 11, 1870.

  13 Stanton to Samuel Medary, April 4, 1843, copy owned by the estate of Benjamin P. Thomas; same to Tappan, Dec. 27, 1842, Feb. 8, 1843, Stanton MSS; M. Birchard to Tappan, Jan. 3, 1843, Tappan Papers, LC; Stanton to E. Lane, Feb. 10, 1843, Lee-Kohn Memorial Collection, NYPL.

  14 Stanton to Tappan, Feb. 18, 1843, Stanton MSS; B. B. Taylor to Tappan, Oct. 19, T. Umbstaetter to same, Dec. 22, and Birchard to same, Dec. 24, 1843, Tappan Papers, LC; Columbus Ohio Statesman, Dec. 13, and Steubenville American Union, May 27, July 8, Aug. 19, Oct. 21, and Nov. 18, 1843; Holt, op. cit., 174–5.

  15 W. Medill to Tappan, Jan. 12, and W. Blacksom to same, Jan. 18, 1844, Tappan Papers, LC; Medill to William Allen, Jan. 11, 1844, Allen Papers, LC; Stanton to Tappan, Jan. 8, 1844, Stanton MSS (misdated 1833); Columbus Ohio Statesman, Jan. 8, 1844; Holt, op. cit., 63–5.

  16 Stanton to Tappan, April 28, 1844, Stanton MSS; Wolcott MS, 158; Holt, op. cit., 198–9.

  17 Stanton to Lewis Tappan, March 20, 1844, Lewis Tappan Papers, LC; Wolcott MS, 101–2, 108–10; Flower, Stanton, 39–40; Joseph P. Doyle, In Memorium, Edwin McMasters Stanton (Steubenville, 1911), 26.

  18 Stanton to Tappan, Jan. 14, 1845, Tappan Papers, LC; same to same, April 28, Dec. 26, 1844, Jan. 10, 27, March 26, 1845, Stanton MSS; Steubenville American Union, July 11, Aug. 15, Sept. 5, 19, Nov. 7, 1844.

  19 Stanton to Chase, Aug. ?, 1846, Chase Papers, HSP; to Brinkerhoff, Jan. 19, 1845, in New York Sun, March 14, 1892.

  20 Stanton to Tappan, Jan. 27, 1845, Stanton MSS; Wolcott MS, 90–1; Flower, Stanton, 44; Gorham, Stanton, I, 31–3; Washington Semi-Weekly Union, Dec. 30, 1845.

  21 March 2, 1845, Benjamin Tappan Papers, LC.

  22 H. C. Whitman to Tappan, Nov. 23, 1845, Tappan Papers, LC.

  23 Nov. 30, 1846, Chase Papers, HSP; Holt, op. cit., 136–40, 244–7.

  24 Steubenville American Union, May 28, June 11, 1846; Flower, Stanton, 44; Doyle, op. cit., 27

  25 Ms notebook of Dr. Reid, owned by Miss Alexandra Sanford; Stanton to Lewis Tappan, Nov. 23, 1846, Lewis Tappan Papers, LC; to Chase, Nov. 30, 1846, Chase Papers, HSP.

  CHAPTER III

  ON THE WAY UP

  STANTON remained in Steubenville throughout the winter of 1846, lonely, but so crushed in spirit that he seldom left his house. He kept up law practice out of necessity, and dabbled fitfully in politics as an antidote to grief. Mostly he busied himself with correspondence, writing especially to his partner, McCook, who was now in Mexico commanding a cavalry troop. Their friendship grew warmer during their exchange of letters.

  To Chase, with whom his relationship was also becoming very close, Stanton bared his innermost thoughts. His letters to the antislavery leader increasingly took on a vocabulary of rapturous spiritualism. “Allow me my dear friend this evening to enter your study,” Stanton wrote on one occasion, “let me take you by the hand, throw my arm around you, say I love you, & bid you farewell.” The words came from the heart of a desperately lonely man who had found an understanding friend. Chase, like Stanton a Kenyon student, had been twi
ce a widower and had seen a number of his children die. In November 1846 he married for a third time, and Stanton found vicarious solace in Chase’s new happiness.

  Chase seized the opportunity offered by Stanton’s eagerness to correspond, to draw the man out of himself and to recruit him for the anti-slavery cause. He seemed to be succeeding. Stanton deplored to his friend the conservative influences which were gaining dominance in both the Whig and the Democratic parties. “Last summer,” he admitted to Chase, “I did not fully understand you, when speaking of aristocracy in this country, you insisted that its stronghold was in the South.” But it had become clear to him from reading Thomas Arnold’s History of Rome, at Chase’s suggestion, that an aristocracy like the one in the South had all the advantages in a contest with a popular party. Therefore Stanton was in a mood to renounce his Democratic allegiance and to place principle above party. “I go by faith more than knowledge,” Stanton wrote Chase, “and have faith in your principles, confidence in your judgment.”1

  Not realizing that Stanton’s words reflected deep despair more than firm decision, Chase accepted the mood of rejection for the fact of conversion. He was sure, for example, that Stanton would join him in defending John Van Zandt.

  Van Zandt was an Ohioan who had been sued for damages for aiding a group of fugitive slaves. The case had been appealed to the United States Supreme Court. Chase asked Stanton to help prepare the argument for the defense, but Stanton begged off, pleading that he was not yet equal to the effort. Stanton did criticize the brief at Chase’s request, and complimented him on an argument in which the friends of human freedom could take pride. When the Supreme Court decided against Van Zandt, however, Stanton admitted no surprise, “for in the opinion that I have of that tribunal it could not have been otherwise.” He noted that Justice Levi Woodbury, of New Hampshire, had written the opinion. “The dirty work of the South has always found Northern hands to perform it,” Stanton wrote, “and I can well imagine the deep scorn & contempt swelling in the bosoms of the Southern judges, as they beheld Levi on his belly crawling through that opinion.”2

  But however he vilified apologists for the extension of slavery, Stanton had no sympathy with Whigs who condemned the “unjust war” with Mexico. He considered such sentiments to be disloyal. Of course, the war would bring the United States a vast increase in territory, he wrote Chase, but he no longer opposed this or even the annexation of Texas. The pressure for national expansion was irresistible, and it would be folly for any party to stand against it. Stanton, predisposed against the Whigs and now insinuating that it was a party of treason, hinted that he could not now break with the Democratic organization, for it was the only party that had the capacity to serve patriotic ends. Instead of Stanton joining Chase in an antislavery third party, Chase should come to Stanton, so that the Democracy might better resist the expansion of slavery into the newly acquired territory.

  To that end, antislavery congressmen were uniting in favor of a resolution introduced by David Wilmot, a Pennsylvania Democrat, which would prohibit slavery in any territory gained from Mexico. Ohio’s representatives stood staunchly for the Proviso, and Stanton guessed that “the Western democracy seems to be fairly committed on that question; I think they will stick.”

  News came that General Zachary Taylor had won a crushing victory at Buena Vista and that Winfield Scott had taken Veracruz on the sea-coast and was advancing on Mexico City. The Whigs clamored more fiercely for a cessation of hostilities. At the same time, remembering how they had marched to victory behind Harrison in 1840, they watched appreciatively the rising stars of Scott and Taylor, both of whom were Whigs. Friends of the Wilmot Proviso kept sectional passions at the boiling point by continuing to push it forward in Congress.

  Gauging the swirling currents, Stanton saw the nation entering upon a new era in which principle rather than expediency would determine party alignments. He hoped that principled Democrats would assume the leadership of the party, and rationalized his persistent party regularity by asserting that the Whigs could never advance the liberal standard of “the welfare of their fellow men,” for they lacked principles altogether. Bitterly irrational when partisan animosity got the better of him, Stanton asserted that if Santa Anna had won at Buena Vista, the Whigs would have made him “the God of their idolatry.”3

  Spring came and Stanton shook off the torpor of mind and spirit that had borne him down all winter. He again assumed the chairmanship of the Democratic county committee and took on the new office of city solicitor which Steubenville had created. Stanton became a director of the fire department and enjoyed marching in full regalia at the head of the annual fire-company parade. He served on the board of visitors of a boy’s school, was active in Masonry, became a director of a company that planned to introduce the telegraph west of Pittsburgh, and played a primary role in efforts to get a railroad through Steubenville.

  Summer 1847 was brightened by George McCook’s return from the war. Their correspondence had meant a great deal to Stanton, and he busied himself arranging a public welcome under Democratic party auspices, including decorations for the town, a dinner for three hundred persons, and a parade. He had undertaken to look after McCook’s fiancée during his absence, and she and Stanton had extensively discussed her love for McCook. “I have passed through much that you have yet to feel,” he wrote her; “… by the love for George which you now feel, the fountains of your heart were first opened; … the heart is a fountain of bitterness as well as of joy.” Bitterness had no place, however, when McCook arrived in Steubenville to end his long voyage.

  The veteran came to Stanton’s home to change clothes before calling on his fiancée, and the two men drove in his buggy to her home. During the next few days the three were seen together everywhere, and Stanton’s evenings were gladdened with their frequent visits to his home. “You need have no uneasiness about me,” McCook wrote to his mother, “I am at Stanton’s and have everything that could be desired.” McCook suffered briefly from intestinal infections which he had picked up in Mexico, but the careful nursing of Edwin and Pamphila soon brought him around. Once well, McCook left for Pittsburgh to make arrangements for his marriage. Stanton brought the bride there from Steubenville and was best man at the wedding. Then Stanton had to stay in Columbus for several weeks and McCook returned to Steubenville to take over their office. Like Stanton, he found it boring. “In the office. The want of constant business makes me dislike to stay here,” McCook wrote in his diary. And next day: “Not much business to do. And time drags wearily down in the dusty streets.”4

  McCook and Stanton agreed that Steubenville was too dull between court terms, and for Stanton too full of unhappiness, to justify his remaining there. Stanton decided to practice in Pittsburgh as partner to Charles Shaler, a former judge with wealthy connections and an established business. He did not plan to change his legal residence, however, or to terminate his partnership with McCook, who after all decided to remain in Steubenville. Late October 1847 found Stanton established in Pittsburgh.

  When Chase heard that Stanton intended to move to Pennsylvania, he offered to take the stump in his behalf if he would stay in Ohio and run for governor. To Stanton, this was “out of the question. My mission is elsewhere.” But he could not forsake politics altogether, and he allowed himself again to be named a delegate to the Ohio Democratic convention at Columbus, where he hoped to see Chase in January.5

  Chase felt gratified that Stanton did not intend to renounce politics, for a showdown on the slavery issue could not be much longer deferred. Peace negotiations for the vast Mexican lands under American military control had already begun, and the Wilmot Proviso gave the antislavery men a rallying point. Stanton, however, began to hint that he might not be able to attend the Columbus convention, “much as my heart desires to strike for truth and freedom.” The need to build up a practice in his new home city and his own reluctance to re-enter political involvements kept him in Pittsburgh.

  He arranged wi
th his brother-in-law, Pamphila’s husband, Christopher P. Wolcott, a devoted abolitionist, to keep him informed of developments at the Columbus assembly. Wolcott warned Stanton that “a strong effort will be made to smother the Wilmot Proviso.… It will need strong arms and stout hearts to bear up the Proviso against the forces that are rallying against it.” He seconded Chase’s pleas that Stanton hurry to Columbus “at the time of need.”

  In Pittsburgh, Stanton eagerly scanned the accounts of the Columbus meeting. Conservative Ohio Democrats, in the majority, endorsed Cass, a foe of the Proviso, for President and nominated a reputed friend of Southern interests for governor. The platform, though deploring slavery as an evil, evaded the question of its status in the territories and declared that it was a matter for each state to control as it saw fit.6

  Stanton and Chase had each expected too much of the other. The former had hoped that Chase would be able to commit Ohio Democrats to the support of the Proviso. Chase had come to Columbus only because he thought Stanton would be there to back up the pro-Proviso forces. “Why—why are you not here?” Chase wrote despairingly. The vote on the resolution concerning the Proviso had been close; Stanton’s presence might have helped redress the balance. “I regret that your voice is not to be heard … honorably for yourself and usefully for your country!” Chase admonished him. “You have great gifts of God, energy, talent, utterance. And now a great cause demands more.”

  Stanton’s reply questioned his ability to have affected the outcome of the convention, but he asked Chase’s pardon for “the greater duty” that had kept him in Pittsburgh. He wrote Wolcott less modestly: “The Democratic Convention seems to have ‘fizzled’ out for want of some one who had courage enough to make them toe the mark.” Stanton admitted to deep dejection as the battle lines shaped up. Neither of the major parties offered much comfort to those opposed to the extension of slavery. He saw Jacksonian democracy as moribund.7