The Stantons began their return to Washington by way of Pittsburgh, which was, Stanton noted, “as black and smoky as ever.” After an absence of seven weeks, they were back in Washington. In the autumn they purchased a large lot on K Street, opposite the present Franklin Square, and began construction of a capacious brick-and-stone house. Ellen was soon immersed in blueprints, for, socially ambitious, she was determined that this house would fit her ideas of a home, even if its cost proved too large for their present means. These were busy, happy days for Stanton and his family. They were in good health, with even Stanton’s asthmatic affliction at a low ebb, there were few financial problems, and his professional hopes were high.
In October the startling news came that John Brown, an abolitionist veteran of the Kansas troubles, had seized the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in an effort to instigate a slave revolt. Beleaguered by state and federal military forces, he and the other survivors were captured, put on trial for treason, and eventually hanged. Stanton, stopping off again at Pamphila’s in the course of a business trip, showed keen interest in the trial, and told her that he “would gladly have appeared in the defense had he been called upon by those having the matter in charge.”19
Excitement mounted to fever heat in both the North and the South. Abolitionist spokesmen glorified Brown as a martyr, while Southerners saw his rash act as the fearful and inevitable result of antislavery agitation. As the presidential year of 1860 opened, an undertow of hate and suspicion pulled the country toward an awful abyss.
Most ominous was the fact that slavery had become an urgent moral issue. While Republicans demanded that it be treated as an evil, extremist Southerners insisted that it be recognized as a positive good. Determined to gain full protection for slavery in the territories under the Dred Scott decision, these hotspurs repudiated Douglas and his popular sovereignty doctrine. That doctrine, now that Douglas had attached his “police power” corollary to it, had become more hateful to Southerners than the Republican policy of delimiting slavery by congressional enactment. The Douglas doctrine threatened the unity of the Democratic party and the Southerners’ control of it. Their last hope was to make that party the instrument of their will. If they failed, they would take the Southern states out of the Union.
The Democratic National Convention met in April 1860, in Charleston, South Carolina, where secessionist tinder needed only a spark to touch it off. From the beginning it was evident that the Douglas men would stand pat on popular sovereignty as the keystone of party policy, and that the fire-eaters from the cotton states not only would reject that doctrine but were prepared to go to any lengths to vanquish the “Little Giant.” When the convention adopted the Douglas platform, the delegates of seven cotton states, along with a scattering of Northern sympathizers, stomped out of the hall. Unable to nominate Douglas under the party’s two-thirds rule, the remaining delegates at last agreed to adjourn and meet again in Baltimore.
Stanton was dispirited by the course of events. “Everything is dark and obscure,” he wrote to his friend Medary. “The friends of Douglas are confident and uncompromising. The Southern men seem equally decided against him. No solution of the problem has been suggested. Disaster and overthrow impends upon the Democracy and no power seems able to avert a danger that can only be overcome by union and confidence.” But confidence was lacking. When the Democrats reassembled on June 18, they split apart again. Then, meeting separately, one faction nominated Douglas, while the other, upholding the radical Southern point of view, nominated Breckinridge, Vice-President under Buchanan, who announced that he would support Breckinridge.
Meanwhile, the Republicans met in Chicago, and surprised Stanton and the country by passing over their front runners and nominating the almost unknown Abraham Lincoln. Stanton at least had met Lincoln during the Reaper trial. His low opinion of the Republican nominee remained unchanged.20
Adding to the confusion, remnants of the Whigs and Know-Nothings, alarmed at the possibility of civil war, came together in Baltimore to form the Constitutional Union party. They nominated John Bell, of Tennessee, and Edward Everett, of Massachusetts, on a platform acclaiming “the Constitution of the country, the Union of the States, and the enforcement of the laws.”
Stanton aligned himself publicly with the Buchanan-Breckinridge forces. According to Black, neither abolitionists, Republicans, nor Douglas Democrats found favor in his eyes. “Mr. Stanton wholly denied Mr. Douglas’ notions,” he declared, “and blamed him severely for the unreasonable and mischievous schism which he had created in the party.… In the canvass of 1860 he regarded the salvation of the country as hanging upon the forlorn hope of Mr. Breckinridge’s election. We knew the Abolitionists to be the avowed enemies of the Constitution and the Union, and thought the Republicans would necessarily be corrupted by their alliance with them.… Mr. Stanton shared these apprehensions fully. He more than shared them. To some extent he inspired them, for he knew Mr. Lincoln personally and the account he gave of him was anything but favorable.”
It should be said in Stanton’s behalf that while few outright anti-slavery men supported Breckinridge, thousands of Unionists in the North and the border states, regarding Bell as a hopeless long shot, looked upon Breckinridge as the only candidate whose election would prevent the severance of the nation. Though Breckinridge was the secessionists’ candidate, he himself avowed his lifelong attachment to the Union, and Stanton, taking Breckinridge at his word, was sincere in his repetition of antislavery convictions to Pamphila.
Whatever Stanton’s inner sentiments may have been, it behooved him to stay on good terms with Black. A good many California land cases were now coming to the Supreme Court on appeal, and Black was retaining Stanton to represent the government in the greater number of them. On the death of Postmaster General Aaron V. Brown, Black had suggested that Stanton replace him in the cabinet, but Buchanan decided in favor of Joseph Holt, of Kentucky, perhaps at Stanton’s own request.
Stanton confessed to Ellen, vacationing in Pittsburgh, his disgust at the course of events. “I am weary and harassed and want to get away from here speedily as possible,” he wrote from Washington in May 1860. “There is nothing but political confusion, turmoils, and anxiety. Public anxiety about the future, intrigues, and passions are manifest on all sides. I want to be with you.” But the political confusion compounded the traditional slowness of governmental administrative and judicial procedures, and “nothing can be done.”
To suitors for his intercession with the administration, Stanton stated that “I have no political power.… My relations with [Buchanan] … are simply professional.” Despite his modest disclaimers, Stanton kept in close touch with events, especially through Black. He was convinced that schism in the Democratic party must result in the election of Lincoln. Giving no clue to his real feelings on the issues facing the country, he urged his brother-in-law to take advantage of his consistent Republicanism and come to Washington in search of official preferment. “The election of Lincoln,” Stanton wrote Wolcott, “is as certain as any future event can be.” In the last part of September, Stanton brought his family to Steubenville to attend Oella’s second marriage. This was to be Stanton’s last real vacation for five years, and the last moment of peace, repose, and calm in his life.21
State elections in October showed that the Democratic split had become irreparable and confirmed Stanton’s prediction that Lincoln would be the next President. The ruffling drums of secession beat louder in the South. Stanton was in Steubenville when the news of Lincoln’s election flashed over the wires. Arriving back in Washington, he was sought out by Black. Buchanan was preparing his annual message to Congress, which would assemble in December, and he had asked Black to comment on the legal aspects of secession and the government’s means of combating it. Black wanted Stanton’s opinion of the paper he had drawn up.
It was a limp argument insofar as the President’s powers were concerned. Buchanan could use military force to repel “a direct and
positive aggression” upon the government or government property, Black asserted. But for ordinary law enforcement he must rely on federal judges and other local federal officials. If feeling against the national government became so widespread in any state that these officials refused to act, the President, Black thought, could do no more than refer the matter to Congress.
According to Black, Stanton suggested only one slight change in this paper—which Black accepted—and then “not only approved but applauded enthusiastically” the final draft. Long deliberations over this message took place in the cabinet. Black learned that Buchanan intended to quote from his paper to the effect that the United States could not “coerce a State by force of arms to remain in the Union.” Protesting that such phraseology, taken out of context, would misrepresent his views, Black prepared a second paper, bolder in tone, which accorded more closely with Stanton’s views on the illegality of secession and the government’s powers to suppress it than did Black’s original opinion. It may have been this second paper, rather than Black’s previous and weaker argument, that Stanton read and endorsed, for as his biographer Gorham asserted in a scathing indictment of Black’s original opinion, it is most unlikely that Stanton would have approved that first document. Whatever Stanton’s views on slavery may have been by now, there was no dissimulation in his staunch unionism.
On December 3, Buchanan delivered his message to Congress, and Stanton, like most Union-loving Northerners, felt that it conceded far too much to the South.22 Declaring that the national crisis had been caused by “the long continued and intemperate interference of the Northern people with the question of slavery in the Southern states,” the President expressed sympathy for Southern fears that further agitation would bring on a slave revolt, and though denying that adequate cause yet existed, he admitted that, should it arise, “the injured States, after having first used all peaceful and constitutional means to obtain redress, would be justified in revolutionary resistance to the government of the Union.”
But while admitting the revolutionary right of secession, Buchanan denied its legality. If South Carolina seceded, Buchanan could not recognize her as an independent nation. But he would present her case to Congress. Even Congress had “no power to coerce a state,” he said, using the language that Black had advised him to avoid; and even if such a power existed, it would be unwise to exercise it, for the resulting loss of life and treasure would end all hope of reconciliation.
Having placed the responsibility for future action upon Congress, Buchanan then proceeded to advise Congress on what to do. It should pass and submit to the states a constitutional amendment sustaining slavery in the states that recognized it, guaranteeing protection to slave property in all territories until they were admitted to statehood, reaffirming the master’s right to the recovery of fugitive slaves, and nullifying all state laws interfering with that right.
As the crux of Buchanan’s proposal, positive protection of slavery in the territories, had already been renounced by the Douglas Democrats and was looked upon with abhorrence by the victorious Republicans, the President’s program was sure to be rejected by a majority in the North. Nor was his message satisfactory to fire-eating Southerners. Two days after Buchanan delivered it, Howell Cobb, Secretary of the Treasury, the most outspoken secessionist in the cabinet, resigned from “a sense of duty to Georgia”; and four days later, Cass, the old and enfeebled Secretary of State, though himself a long-time dissembler on the slavery issue, also submitted his resignation on the ground that Buchanan had spoken too softly to the secessionists.
Then in Cincinnati arguing a case, Stanton received a telegram from Black urging him to drop everything and hurry to Washington. He guessed that it meant an invitation to join Buchanan’s cabinet.23
Arriving in Washington on December 20, Stanton read in the morning paper that he had been appointed Attorney General. Buchanan had appointed Black to succeed Cass as Secretary of State, and Black had prevailed upon the President to give Stanton the law portfolio, insisting that he was unwilling to leave the pending California land cases to anyone else. “Of course,” Black insisted, “you will take it.” Stanton replied that he was not sure; it depended on what course the President planned to take. Black assured him that Buchanan intended to uphold the Union. The two men left for the White House. There Buchanan confirmed Black’s assurance. Stanton reluctantly accepted the position.
Black’s reminiscent statement that Stanton was eager for the post and expressed his gratitude “in most exaggerated language,” is quite questionable. Stanton was clearly materialistic. His many private cases had brought him an income of $40,000 in 1859 in addition to expenses and bonuses, and promised to increase substantially. Accepting the cabinet office even with the idea that it was only to finish out Buchanan’s lame-duck term and with the probability of maintaining some private practice, meant a considerable financial sacrifice. It seems clear that patriotism and the hope of altering Buchanan’s policies, mixed with desires to round out the California land cases satisfactorily and to gild his reputation with a brief tenure as the country’s highest legal officer, inspired Stanton to accept the office. But in his own thinking, the patriotic impulse came first. He wrote his brother-in-law, a man unlikely to be deceived, that “I hold my present position only to defend the Government from its enemies—when it becomes apparent that defence will be unavailing I shall … spike my guns and retire to a stronger position and keep the flag of my country still flying.”
On the same day Stanton accepted the commission, that flag descended in South Carolina, where an ordinance of secession passed without a single dissenting vote. An election of delegates to a Mississippi convention resulted in a top-heavy secessionist majority. Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas prepared to renounce the Union.
Stanton did not enter upon his duties until December 27, although the Senate acted favorably on his nomination and with unwonted unanimity for the time. Wolcott, who was staying with Stanton in Washington, wrote to Pamphila: “This has been the dullest, dreariest Christmas within my recollection.… Everyone here talks and thinks of nothing but the threatened secession. Edwin, as you well knew he would be, is thoroughly right upon the question, but I doubt his ability to do anything with the head of the Government.”
The new Attorney General, fully aware of the magnitude of the crisis facing the nation, put on a confident air. “Nothing in my power will be left undone to uphold the integrity of the Government,” he wrote soon after taking office. “I do not believe this Government can be overthrown—it may be overrun for a brief period but cannot be destroyed.” Although Buchanan thought that Stanton “has not a superior as a lawyer in the United States,” and newspapers across the North applauded the appointment, the question remained whether it could make any difference.24
1 Stanton to Ellen, Dec. 6, 1854, and ms memorandum by Lewis Hutchison Stanton, owned by Gideon Townsend Stanton; Oct. 10, 28, Dec. 3, 11, 1854, Feb. 14, 15, 1855, owned by Mrs. Van Swearingen; Rev. E. M. Van Deusen to Ellen, Jan. 4, 1870 (misdated 1869), Ac. 1039, Stanton MSS; Flower, Stanton, 66.
2 Stanton to Ellen, May 21, 1855, undated (ca. Jan. 1856), Jan. 4, March 16, 1856, owned by Mrs. Van Swearingen; July 4, 1855, Jan. 31, April 11, 1856, owned by Gideon Townsend Stanton. Flower, Stanton, 66, accepts the recollection of Stanton’s gardener in Steubenville that Edwin burned all of his and Mary’s letters at about this time. This is incorrect, as Stanton later printed some of these in a brochure in order that his son might have them.
3 Stanton to Ellen, June 25, 1856, owned by Mrs. Van Swearingen, who also owns the wedding jewelry. The ceremony and honeymoon plans are described in James A. Hutchison to Ellen, June 27, 1856, owned by Gideon Townsend Stanton. Other data in Wolcott MS, 132; Stanton to William Stanton, Jan. 26, 1858, owned by William Stanton Picher.
4 Stanton to John W. Forney, Jan. 15, 1857, owned by Ralph G. Newman; same to Black, March 12, 1857, Black Papers, LC; same to Ellen Hutchison, Oct. 10, 1854, owned by Mr
s. Van Swearingen. Stanton’s former Steubenville law partner, McCook, had nominated Buchanan at the Democratic National Convention and had worked zealously for his election. According to Jared Dunbar, of Steubenville, McCook recommended Stanton for a cabinet post and arranged for Stanton to visit the President-elect at his Wheatland home. Buchanan asked Stanton to hold himself in readiness to enter the cabinet as Attorney General, but finally decided to give the post to Black. Dunbar claimed to have obtained this information from McCook; Steubenville Daily Gazette, Aug. 30, 1906. No further verification exists, and this reminiscence is of doubtful validity.
5 Stanton to Black, March 16, 30, 31, April 13, May 14, Aug. 25, 1857, Black Papers LC; Black, “Mr. Black to Mr. Wilson,” Galaxy, XI, 257–76; Wilson, “Edwin M. Stanton,” AM, XXV, 16.
6 Black to Stanton, Oct. 26, 1857, Black Papers, LC; Buchanan to Ogden Hoffman, Feb. 17, 1858, owned by Mrs. Van Swearingen; William N. Brigance, Jeremiah Sullivan Black (Philadelphia, 1934), 51–2. On background see John W. Caughey, California (New York, 1953), 309–10; U.S. Attorney General, Land Claim Report to the House of Representatives, May 22, 1860, House Exec. Doc. 84, 36th Cong., 1st sess., 1–5 (hereafter cited as Land Claim Report).
7 Ellen to Edwin, June 10, July 1, 1857, and Stanton to Ellen, Feb. 21–6, 1858, owned by Gideon Townsend Stanton; Stanton to Alfred Taylor, Feb. 15, May 26, 1857, Ac. 5769-A, Stanton MSS; undated memoranda, ca. July and Aug. 1857, and Lewis to Mary Hutchison, Oct. 7, 1857, owned by Mrs. Van Swearingen; Stanton to Black, Feb. 17, 19, and March 28, 1858, Black Papers, LC.
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