Stanton

by Benjamin P. Thomas

  But though Stanton felt discouraged, Chase and other Northern anti-slavery leaders were resolved to continue the fight. When the Democrats nominated Cass and proposed to resist all efforts to bring the slavery issue before Congress, and when the Whigs nominated Taylor and ignored the slavery question altogether, antislavery Democrats and “conscience” Whigs alike revolted. In August 1848 they coalesced with Chase’s Liberty men to form the Free-Soil party. Adopting as their slogan “Free soil, free speech, free labor, free men,” they endorsed the Wilmot Proviso and chose Van Buren, aging but still sprightly, to be their standard-bearer.

  Throughout the North, Jacksonian reformers rallied once again behind their long-time favorite. Stanton seems to have taken no part in the campaign beyond supporting the Free-Soil candidate in private discussions with friends and business acquaintances. To have done more might have antagonized some prospective clients in Pittsburgh, where he had now cast his fortunes as a lawyer. For the businessmen of the town had large dealings with the South, and the commercial community, like America itself, was divided on the slavery extension issue.

  Like many other Democrats and Whigs, Stanton felt himself to be a man without a party that had any chance for success in 1848. November came and Taylor won the election, largely owing to Free-Soil inroads on the Democrats in crucial areas. “The presidential election has resulted in the overthrow of Cass,” Stanton wrote his sister, “which for one, I do not regret.” The campaign proved to him that Chase’s strategy was the correct one, for he added: “It is to be hoped that the friends of liberty will keep up an organization, and, by preserving an armed neutrality, hold as they may the balance of power in the Free States, until one or the other party, by falling in line, secure their principles.”8

  In February 1849, Stanton, hard at work in Pittsburgh, read that a combination of Free-Soilers and Democrats in the Ohio legislature had elected Chase to the United States Senate. “How shall I express my joy upon reading the above paragraph this morning?” Stanton wrote to Chase. “Thank God the day of small things in Ohio is over!” The new era foreseen by Stanton, in which men of principle would unite politically, seemed to have arrived.

  And yet Stanton, notwithstanding the high-mindedness he exhibited in letters to his family and to Chase, remained singularly inactive in politics. He always seemed to find a reason for avoiding any public statement that would too obviously mark him as an antislavery man; yet, grieving for lost loved ones and craving affection, he could not bear to lose his intimate association with Chase or the respect of Wolcott. “To love, and to be loved, is a necessary condition of my happiness,” he once wrote. But he had decided that the achievement of material success was also necessary for his happiness, and he would not risk his professional advancement in support of the antislavery party organization which could not win.

  In later years his caution seemed like cowardice and hypocrisy to his critics. “From that time he should not have been trusted by Democrats,” stated a business acquaintance of his early months in Pittsburgh.9 But this judgment demands the insight that only hindsight can afford. In 1848 Stanton was withdrawing, not turncoating. Whatever political ambitions he may once have harbored, he now put behind him. His career henceforth would be the law. Only in the courtroom or with his family would he reveal his capacity for total commitment in any cause he felt to be worthy. But these characteristics remained part of him and could be evoked by the right persons and by certain kinds of events. Otherwise he played both ends against the middle when he had to, and played the game to win. And he would hide that soft spot behind a stony front.

  The discovery of gold in California had started a stampede to the West Coast. Effective civil government was desperately needed to maintain order in the roisterous mining camps, but with California ready to apply for admission to the Union as a free state, some Southerners opposed her admission altogether, while others demanded some offsetting gain for the South. Headstrong men in both the North and the South clamored for an immediate definition of the status of slavery in New Mexico. Petitions deluged skittish congressmen, those from the North still supporting the Wilmot Proviso, those from the South protesting against the exclusion of slavery from the new territories as an affront to that section, and even threatening secession if Southern rights should be denied.

  Other questions aggravated sectional ill will. The boundary between Texas and New Mexico was in dispute, and as New Mexico seemed likely to become a free state, Northerners wished to push the boundary eastward, whereas Southerners wanted the limits of Texas extended as far west as possible. Northerners wished to outlaw the slave trade in the District of Columbia, whereas Southerners, led by John C. Calhoun, irritated by the action of Northern legislatures in passing Personal Liberty Laws which hindered the recapture of fugitive slaves, demanded a more stringent fugitive slave law.

  Stanton exulted to see his friend Chase in the forefront of the frenzied fight in Congress. “The snarling and growling of the curs at your heels … can neither obstruct your path nor hinder your progress,” he wrote Chase. “For myself, I am willing to risk with you with my whole heart.” Stanton vowed that “in the battle for a living democracy in Ohio, you will never find me far from your side.” Yet when Chase, trying to put men of antislavery convictions in places of power, again urged Stanton to run for governor, Stanton replied that he felt unfitted for and disinclined toward high political office and suggested Brinkerhoff “or some other equally sound man against whom there would be less acrimony than against myself.” And again when Chase implored him to attend a Free-Soil meeting at Cleveland, Stanton replied that court work would keep him in Pittsburgh.10

  With the country torn by sectional animosity that threatened to result in civil war, the venerable Senator Henry Clay early in 1850 introduced a series of resolutions designed to restore calm. His plan called for the admission of California as a free state, the organization of Utah and New Mexico as territories without reference to slavery, federal assumption of debts incurred by Texas in return for her renouncing her claim to any part of New Mexico, prohibition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and a stricter fugitive slave law. Clay’s proposals touched off a heated debate in the Senate; throughout the country people came together to voice support or resistance. Chase, who regarded Pennsylvania as a pivotal state in the contest, urged Stanton to organize a meeting in Pittsburgh. “Let them declare not only the right but the sacred duty of Congress to prohibit slavery in the territories,” he beseeched Stanton, who promised to start immediate arrangements for a Pittsburgh meeting.

  The next week there appeared on the walls of Pittsburgh buildings large posters announcing a meeting to support the immediate admission of California as a free state. About fifty persons gathered at the courthouse at the appointed time. The man called upon to take the chair protested that he did not know the organizers of the meeting and hoped someone would take charge. “No one responded to the repeated solicitations of the chair,” the Pittsburgh Gazette reported, “and it became evident that no one present was inclined to assume any responsibility in regard to the meeting.” It was finally resolved to adjourn the meeting until the following week; but again the crowd was small, and after adopting a resolution that “the Union be considered safe,” the meeting adjourned sine die. If Stanton had taken any part in the meeting, he never showed his hand, and he left Pittsburgh soon after for an extended business trip, ostensibly to avoid a cholera epidemic.11

  As Clay’s compromise measures gradually won acceptance from moderate people throughout the country, Northern and Southern intransigents both stiffened their resistance. “There is no occasion for dismay,” Stanton encouraged Chase, “much less for compromise or surrender.” Perhaps it was “God’s Providence” that California should become an independent republic “unfettered to the dead carcass of Southern slavery.” Better that the Union should not add a star to its flag, he wrote, than that the slave power should increase its strength.

  Chase agreed with
him, and both men believed that Clay’s measures would not pass. But they misjudged the temper of Congress. Upon the death of President Taylor, an opponent of compromise, and the accession to the presidency of Millard Fillmore, a proponent of Clay’s measures, Clay and young Senator Stephen A. Douglas succeeded in rallying the moderates in Congress behind a series of bills which embodied the essential features of Clay’s plan. Most fiercely disputed was the new fugitive slave law, which denied to alleged fugitives the right to testify on their own behalf, and the right to trial by jury at the place of apprehension, and put their fates in the hands of federal commissioners. The commissioner’s fee was fixed at ten dollars if he decided for the claimant, five dollars if he decided for the slave, a virtual bribe in the eyes of antislavery men. And the law made anyone aiding a fugitive to escape liable to fine and imprisonment. Convinced that the basic issues were still unsettled, Stanton deplored the rigorous features of this law and the alacrity with which some former Wilmot Proviso men, beguiled by compromise, were becoming reconciled to it.12

  Unable to heal the internal festers brought on by the sectional struggle, the Whig party was mortally sick; the Free-Soil movement had also spent its strength. Southern influence was becoming ever stronger in the Democratic party. When Cass and James Buchanan, two faithful party wheel horses, came on to take the lead as presidential possibilities for 1852, Stanton became disheartened. Court work took him to Washington in May, when the Democratic National Convention met in nearby Baltimore, and he could easily have slipped off to the sessions. But he had no desire to do so. Deadlocked on Cass and Buchanan, the convention finally nominated another dark horse, Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire, on a platform that accepted the compromise measures of 1850 as a final settlement of the slavery issues.

  Stanton had been in Washington a great deal the previous winter, but had found the city boring. “Besides the Presidential question there is nothing of any interest in Washington,” he wrote. “There is no one in either branch of Congress that a person wishes to hear speak; neither is there any question of importance under discussion.… The Compromise is worn out, so that every body is sick of it. The Library [of Congress] is burnt up so that there are no books to read. There are not many pretty faces on the avenue to look at—handsome women are very scarce here. Stupid lectures are delivered at the Smithsonian.” Lola Montez, the actress, furnished almost the sole attraction. Gossip said that Sam Houston, the doughty Texan, had been twice turned away from her lodgings. “She declined to see visitors in private,” Stanton commented, “but shows herself nightly at the theatre for $1.50 per head.”13

  General Scott, the Whig presidential candidate, waged an ineffectual campaign. The New York “Barnburners,” discouraged and thirsting for the spoils of victory, made peace with their Democratic brethren. Southern Whigs, offended by the antislavery proclivities of their Northern confreres, switched their allegiance to the Democrats. Pierce won in a landslide. The fact that this election spelled doom for the Whig party caused Stanton slight concern. But he deplored the degree to which the Democratic party was becoming the servant of complacency and vested interests.

  Stephen A. Douglas also believed that the Democratic party needed reinvigoration. This dynamic “Little Giant” was a heavy speculator in Chicago real estate and other western lands, and he therefore wanted a projected transcontinental railroad to run through the Nebraska region, instead of taking a more southerly route. He also hoped to give the Democratic party a new rallying cry that would appeal to Northerners and Southerners alike and thus loft him to the presidency.

  To promote his railroad project, on which his other plans depended, it was essential for Douglas to encourage settlers to move into the Nebraska region. Accordingly, in January 1854, taking advantage of his position as chairman of the Senate committee on territories, he reported out a bill for the organization of Nebraska Territory. It would need Southern support to pass. Douglas offered a boon. His bill enunciated a principle which he called “popular sovereignty,” by which settlers, after establishing a territorial government, could admit or exclude slavery as they chose.

  Douglas’s principle, as finally stated, meant the annulment of that provision of the 1820 Missouri Compromise which prohibited slavery in all of the Louisiana Purchase lying north and west of Missouri. He divided the new territory into Kansas and Nebraska, thereby giving Southerners a better chance of extending slavery into the southern part. President Pierce gave the bill the administration’s support.

  The slavery issue tore the country apart again. Antislavery Northerners were shocked at Douglas’s cool renunciation of a solemn compact of thirty years’ standing, which, after all, was of great antiquity in a nation only seventy-five years old. The South had no burning desire to extend slavery into Kansas. But Northern opposition to Douglas’s measure made it a matter of Southern honor to demand equal rights in the territories, which meant the right to own slaves there.

  Wholly unconcerned with the moral aspects of slavery, Douglas failed to understand the depths of Northern resentment and stuck grimly to his purpose. For months the battle that raged in Congress kept the nation at white heat. Visiting Washington in 1854, Stanton described the depression which the year’s events had cast on the capital: “It … will not be a gay season.… The Hotels are not thronged as usual.… The … breaking up of all the old political organizations and the general uncertainties of the future in trade, politics, and finance, have cast a gloom over public spirit very visible here.”

  Party discipline triumphed. The bill was enacted into law. Northerners retaliated with new attacks on the hated fugitive slave law, with Charles Sumner, the tall, pedantic senator from Massachusetts, offering scathing speeches against it, to which Southerners responded with equal bitterness.

  Stanton gained admission to the Senate floor, listened to one of Sumner’s tirades, and expressed admiration for him. Chase had previously introduced him to the embattled New Englander, and Stanton sometimes encountered the pompous Sumner at the home of Dr. Gameliel Bailey, editor of the abolitionist National Era, and commended him on his course. Soon after, Stanton was able to help Bailey secure a substantial loan on some Washington real estate, and through this connection expanded his circle of antislavery connections.14

  The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act resulted in drastic new party alignments, especially in the North. Abolitionists, Free-Soilers, old-line Whigs of antislavery convictions, and antislavery Democrats now took steps to join forces, drawn ineluctably into a loosely knit but aggressive new party that soon took the name Republican and avowed as its major purpose resistance to the further spread of slavery. Chase hastened to join it and became one of its leaders.

  In a sense, the Republican movement was a resurgence of Jacksonian idealism, and this fact, together with the party’s antislavery purpose, might have been expected to exert a strong pull on Stanton. But, so far as his correspondence shows, he felt no attraction to it. Though taking no public part in politics of any sort, he remained nominally a Democrat. He still professed antislavery sentiments to members of his family and to friends of like sympathies. To other persons he was reticent. He was keeping his resolve to stick closely to business.

  Shortly before Stanton began practicing in Pittsburgh, his sister Pamphila and her husband had set up housekeeping in Akron. Stanton’s mother and his young son Eddie went there to live with them, but Stanton promised his mother that he would always keep the Steubenville home so that she might return to it if she wished. This she did before many months had passed, taking Eddie with her.

  As he prospered, Stanton employed a gardener and a handyman to maintain the Steubenville residence. An abandoned factory obscured the view of the river from the house, and Stanton had it torn down. On the extensive acreage thus cleared, which became known as “Stanton’s Patch,” he had a greenhouse built, and he himself planted fruit trees, flowers, and a vegetable garden. He bought a few head of purebred dairy cows, and on weekend visits from Pittsburgh he e
njoyed milking them. Once in the haying season Stanton broke a new white-oak fork trying to show how big a load he could lift.

  “He loved his son passionately,” a servant recalled. “Often have I seen them walking about the yard … clasped arm in arm like two school girls.” The boy had lost an eye as a result of an accident, and Stanton continually warned him to be careful at play. Each interlude in Steubenville meant presents for all, including the servants, and a visit to Mary’s grave.15 But as he prospered in the practice of law the opportunities to enjoy his Steubenville haven became fewer.

  Stanton’s natural gifts—energy, talent, utterance—fitted him particularly well for the life of a lawyer in Pittsburgh. With a population numbering some 46,000, it was already established as the “Iron City,” where great workshops produced everything from tacks to steam engines. Paved with cobblestones, the downtown streets resounded to the clatter of one-horse drays and two-wheeled carts and the curses and shouts of sweating stevedores. At the junction of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers lay the city’s business center, already famous as the “Golden Triangle.” Railroads, canals, and overland routes connected the city with Philadelphia and Baltimore; the Ohio River carried commerce to and from the western and southern markets.

  Stanton saw opportunity for himself in this boom town. Though people were beginning to move out from the city’s center to new homes on the high, steep hills to the north, he lodged downtown at the Monongahela House and later at the St. Charles Hotel, amid the din and the bustle. Here the industrial smoke lay so thick that one wag suggested that when the telegraph came to Pittsburgh, hams could be hung on the wires to cure. On the other hand, boosters claimed that sufferers from asthma benefited from the polluted atmosphere, which may have explained Stanton’s choice of a downtown residence.16