Stanton

by Benjamin P. Thomas

  Stanton could not shut his eyes and let matters slide. As ever with this stubborn, combative man, results were what counted. He had never surrendered a case in court and he would not do so now. As a lawyer he had not displayed great respect for abstract constitutionalism. All about him were evidences that legalistic interpretations concerning the nature of the Union and limitations upon the power of the national government were sustaining mainly those persons who sought to kill the Republic. This was, in his mind, no time to worry over proprieties or to be concerned with theories of the separation of powers. Defections, conspiracies, and treasons were everywhere. Stanton was worried that his own life was in danger. Far from becoming hysterical, however, he chose a deliberate course of quiet action.

  The path he selected to travel led to Capitol Hill. Ever respecting power, Stanton realized that the White House was moribund, the Supreme Court irrelevant and discredited, and the Democratic party hopelessly divided. Congress and its Republican leaders were the last hope for a strong policy, the last place for him to turn. He barely stopped to consider the fact that as a cabinet officer he was the President’s servant, and that in dealing secretly with congressmen he was violating his oath of office. In later years he responded to this criticism of his decision with the assertion that by the oath he had sworn he was also the nation’s servant.

  His decision to inform opposition congressmen concerning cabinet developments was an ultimately successful effort to bypass the partisan and institutional obstructions to communication which now blocked Pennsylvania Avenue and which were bringing the nation to an attitude of helpless weakness. During his stay in Washington, and especially in his brief cabinet tenure, Stanton had come to realize that the peculiarly rigid triangular structure of American national government had become even more inflexible because of the political and sectional divisions that were rending the land. Partisanship was preventing the exercise of national power. Stanton would cast party aside in favor of power, for only by some show of strength might the nation survive until the President-elect took office.

  Stanton’s actions brought him to a thin line separating patriotism in the nation’s cause from betrayal of his official trust as a cabinet officer. The sincerity of his patriotic impulse is the only justification for Stanton’s becoming a devious informant. Holt and General Scott were soon to decide upon similar courses; few Americans would be able to escape choices of allegiance in the weeks and years to come.

  Once decided, Stanton shrewdly chose such former Whigs as Thomas Ewing and such Republicans as Seward as his channels to Congress. On the same day as the explosive cabinet meeting—December 29—Seward wrote to Lincoln: “At last I have gotten a position in which I can see what is going on in the councils of the President. It pains me to learn that things are even worse than understood.” Buchanan, according to Seward’s informant, might still recall Anderson, surrender Sumter, and continue to permit arming of the South. A plot was forming to seize the capital before or on Lincoln’s inauguration day, and high officials were involved. More he would not commit to paper, Seward warned, “but you must not imagine that I am giving you suspicion and rumors. Believe me I know what I write.” Stanton also met with Ewing “nightly for ten or twelve nights,” and, as Ewing later recalled, “reported the condition of things and consulted as to future measures.” But Stanton thought that it was more circumspect to keep his meetings with Seward as secret as possible.

  Watson, Stanton’s associate in the Reaper case, served as their intermediary. Scarcely a day passed that Watson did not convey a message to Seward, sometimes in writing but usually by word of mouth. In some cases “particularly perplexing,” Seward declared, he had Stanton’s permission to identify him as the source of confidential cabinet information, especially to Lincoln and other high-ranking Republicans.

  Every day, when Seward returned home, he would ask: “Has anyone called while I was at the Senate?” And often the reply would be: “Yes, Mr. Watson was here to talk about a patent case.” Only twice from the end of December to March 4 of the next year did Stanton and Seward talk together personally, but the channel existed through Watson and it achieved Stanton’s purposes.5

  As Washington’s church bells sounded the call to Sunday worship on December 30, Black, who remained ignorant of Stanton’s dealings with the Republicans, went to Stanton’s house and told him that if

  Buchanan insisted on sending the commissioners the letter he had read to the cabinet, he would resign. Stanton, equally agitated, stated that he and Holt would follow Black in the same course. As he had advised Wolcott, such an action by several of the Northern cabinet officers would be like Anderson’s move to Sumter—the spiking of guns in order to move to a stronger position and thus keep the country’s flag flying.

  Still, Black hesitated to approach Buchanan, perhaps because of the hard words he had spoken to him the night before; so he found Toucey and asked him to tell the President what he intended to do. Buchanan was confounded by the news, and sent for Black. With the North in a fever of anxiety over Sumter and with newspapers denouncing the administration for impotence and cowardice, these resignations, following so soon after that of Cass, would leave the administration bereft of Northern support.

  When Black walked into the White House, Buchanan said that he had thought that Black, of all persons, would not desert him in this bitter hour, the darkest he had known. Black responded that he longed to stand by, “but your answer to the commissioners … sweeps the ground from under your feet; it places you where no man can stand with you, and where you cannot stand alone.” After refusing his request that Fort Sumter be reinforced, Buchanan turned over to Black the reply he had written to the commissioners, and promised to revise it if Black would put his objections in writing and have them in the President’s hands by six o’clock that afternoon.6

  Black hurried to Stanton’s office. Stanton thought Buchanan should not answer the commissioners at all, but as he seemed determined to do so, Stanton joined Black in studying Buchanan’s paper point by point. Black wrote out his objections, Stanton incorporated them with his own, and then he copied the written sheets as rapidly as he could, both men laboring under high excitement. They deprecated even an implied acknowledgment of South Carolina’s right to send diplomatic representatives to treat with the United States; the Charleston forts belonged to the government, and the power to retain the public property even against state forces must not be frittered away. That power, the Black-Stanton argument ran, might legitimately involve coercion of a state. Buchanan must contradict the Carolinians’ claim that he had made a pledge concerning the forts, for if undenied “it … ties his hands so that he cannot, without breaking his word, ‘preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and see the laws faithfully executed.’ ”

  While Black took the document to the President, Stanton relieved his excited feelings by penning a letter to a Pittsburgh friend, explaining the current situation: “Judge Black is closer to the President than myself and exercises a great deal of influence over him. He will present the written objections, which I have just prepared, and stand by for the purpose of extricating the President from his present peril. If he shall refuse to recede from it, it seems to me there is no escape for Black, Holt, and myself except resignation.” For Stanton believed that if Buchanan bowed to the Carolinians, “there will not be a semblance of a Union left by March 4, next.”

  Stanton’s reference to “the written objection, which I have just prepared,” might be taken as proof that he composed most of the objections, and he told Holt a similar tale that day. On the other hand, Black stated to Holt that the President had authorized him to suggest such changes as he desired in Buchanan’s intended reply, and that “I shall propose a radical alteration of the whole document.” So far as authorship is concerned, however, the “Observations” Black had taken to the White House embodied the thinking of both men on points wherein they agreed fully. It is of little significance to decide, even were it possible, who f
athered any specific phrase.

  In later years Black claimed to be the sole author, and more than that, having had a falling out with Stanton, he depicted Stanton as following his lead—in effect giving Black two votes in the cabinet. “He did not furnish one atom of the influence which brought the President round on the answer to South Carolina,” Black asserted.7

  The important point is, of course, that Buchanan did come around, and for this stiffening in policy both Stanton and Black were responsible. To his credit, Stanton never denied Black’s influence with Buchanan. All Stanton ever claimed was that he had played a part in these proceedings.

  There seems no doubt that Stanton was steadfast enough to influence Buchanan directly as well as through Black. For example, Thompson wrote to Cobb: “Old Buck, at heart, is right with us, but after Stanton came in, I have seen him gradually giving way.” Talking with Wolcott during the hectic December 27–30 period, Stanton had confided that “he [Stanton] will insist that Anderson shall be backed up with the whole power of the Government.”

  The news of Floyd’s resignation had made Wolcott (and Stanton, from whom he derived his views) hopeful that Buchanan would deal sternly with South Carolina. There were rumors that the President intended to put Stanton in as Secretary of War in Floyd’s place, and if that should happen, Wolcott wrote, “you ‘may look for thunder about these days.’ ” But Stanton was not to get the war office.

  Buchanan had been outraged by the insulting tone of Floyd’s letter of resignation. When Floyd learned of the President’s resentment he wrote an apology to Buchanan and offered to modify his words. Rumors flew around Washington that Southern emissaries had got to Buchanan and persuaded him to order Anderson back to Moultrie from Sumter, whereupon South Carolina would evacuate Moultrie and respect the status quo in Charleston Harbor until the end of Buchanan’s term in office. Another rumor had it that Buchanan intended to take Floyd back into the cabinet.

  The South Carolinians had indeed suggested the compromise; but Buchanan had rejected it. And he was through with Floyd. On Monday morning he accepted Floyd’s resignation with a brief note, and that afternoon asked Holt to take over the war portfolio. Holt accepted, and Assistant Postmaster General Horatio King, of Maine, a firm Unionist, was put in charge of the Post Office Department.8

  Although these evidences of a stiffening of attitude on Buchanan’s part were encouraging to Stanton, he could not feel sure that the President would continue on this desirable track. Stanton therefore remained alert to combat any regression into the old weakness and, in addition to slipping news to Seward, busied himself in a dozen activities calculated to sustain national feeling and security.

  He learned that, before resigning, Floyd had ordered 124 cannons shipped from the Allegheny Arsenal to Southern destinations. Part of this armament had been hauled to the Pittsburgh wharf and was being loaded on shipboard when a crowd gathered in front of the courthouse to voice a public protest. Ellen’s brother, James Hutchison, helped to organize the meeting, and Shaler, Stanton’s law partner, delivered a rousing speech. Advised by telegraph of what was happening, Stanton hurried to the War Department, where no one seemed to know about Floyd’s order. Stanton took the information to the President, who showed neither surprise nor concern, although he asked Black to find out about it. Black discovered that the order had been given orally to the commander of the arsenal, and advised Buchanan to rescind it at once.

  A committee from Pittsburgh arrived in Washington, and Stanton accompanied them to the White House. Buchanan consulted Holt and as a result the order was canceled. Pittsburgh’s city council sent a vote of thanks to Buchanan, Stanton, and Holt.

  Meanwhile, Buchanan, with the memorandum written by Black and Stanton before him, revised his reply to the South Carolina commissioners. He restated his desire that Congress should deal with the situation in a manner that would avoid war and denied that he had made a pledge respecting the forts. Now, under threat of bloodshed, he was being asked to remove the government forces entirely from Charleston Harbor. “This I cannot do; this I will not do,” he said in the clarion language that Black and Stanton had hoped he would use.

  The South Carolina commissioners received the President’s answer on New Year’s Eve. Next day at Buchanan’s reception, grim-faced Southerners, marching through the receiving line wearing blue secessionist cockades, rudely spurned the President’s hand. Stanton, fearing that indecision might again sway Buchanan, called his friend Sickles to his office and arranged to send the tidings of the President’s decision to support Anderson to the principal Northern cities. “Fire some powder,” Stanton urged, “… go and fire some cannon and let the echoes come to the White House.” Sickles arranged mass meetings in several Northern cities in order to bring pressure to bear on the wavering Buchanan.

  Stanton wrote to Harding, his colleague in the Reaper case, urging him to promote a Union mass meeting in Philadelphia; on January 5 a gathering of 7,000 citizens adopted resolutions lauding Anderson and calling on the President to provide him with all the forces he required. At Stanton’s instigation, Henry Winter Davis, a former Kenyon acquaintance, now a congressman, wrote a public letter to his constituents asserting that Maryland’s interests demanded that the Union be preserved and that she must not countenance revolutionary violence to redress imaginary wrongs.9

  Smarting from failure and convinced that they were victims of executive deceit, the South Carolina commissioners sent an insulting rejoinder to Buchanan, accusing him of falsehood and warning that his course had “probably rendered civil war inevitable.” Buchanan read the message with mounting anger, and on the advice of the Union members of his cabinet, wrote across the paper that its nature was such that “the President … declines to receive it.” A messenger returned it to the disgruntled South Carolinians, who soon afterward left for home.

  Convinced at last that the menace to Anderson was sufficiently acute to warrant his being reinforced, Buchanan instructed General Scott to put the warship Brooklyn, at Fort Monroe, in readiness to proceed to Charleston. Scott, fearing that the Brooklyn could not cross the bar at Charleston and wishing to act with all possible speed and secrecy, asked Buchanan to allow him to charter the fast unarmed merchant ship Star of the West, then lying at New York, and send it in place of the powerful Brooklyn. Buchanan yielded against his better judgment, and at 9 p.m. on January 5 the side-wheel steamer that had taken Stanton on the first leg of his journey to California churned across the bar at Sandy Hook, carrying 200 troops, 4 officers, supplies, arms, and ammunition. At the last minute word came from Anderson that he was fully able to hold out. Buchanan tried to countermand Scott’s orders. But the ship had put to sea.

  Somehow, Interior Secretary Thompson remained strangely unaware of the Star of the West’s departure, and wired southward that no troops had been sent South, “nor will be” while he remained in the cabinet. But news of the expedition leaked out, and Thompson, seeking confirmation from Buchanan, became enraged at the President’s deceit, as he defined it. He and others rushed off telegrams of warning. When the Star of the West steamed in toward Sumter on January 9, she was greeted by shells from South Carolina batteries. Helpless to return the fire, she put about and returned to New York.

  Disgruntled, Thompson resigned from the cabinet, and Secretary of the Treasury Thomas followed him. “One by one the Secessionists have been worked out,” Stanton wrote to Wolcott. “We are now a unit. Who will come to the present vacancies is uncertain. I think no retrograde step will be made. How far we can advance is uncertain.10

  Buchanan, seeking a successor to Thomas for the Treasury portfolio, settled on John A. Dix, of New York. Stanton was delighted, for Dix, formerly a United States senator, had supported the Wilmot Proviso, favored the nomination of Van Buren by the free-soil Democrats in 1848, and opposed the organization of New Mexico or the admission of California unless slavery was excluded from them. Courageous, decisive, fluent, and possessed of proven executive ability, he would vastly
strengthen the Unionists in the cabinet.

  At first Buchanan had proposed to make Dix Secretary of War, moving Holt back to the Post Office Department in place of King and choosing someone else, probably a Southerner, for the Treasury. Stanton wanted no more Southerners in the cabinet and preferred that Holt stay where he was; so he enlisted the help of King to get a quick acceptance of the Treasury post from Dix before Buchanan could change his mind again.

  Dix was already on his way to Washington. King met him at the depot, and on the way to Willard’s Hotel obtained his acceptance of the Treasury headship. “Taking leave of him for the night,” wrote King, “… I was driven at once to Mr. Stanton’s residence.… Having company in the parlor, he met me in the hall, and when I informed him that all was as he desired, he was so filled with delight that he seized and embraced me in true German style.”

  When Dix’s nomination was sent to the Senate, Stanton urged Seward to help bring about a speedy confirmation. At Buchanan’s request, Dix took a room in the White House, where, almost every night for the next six weeks, he discussed affairs with the President and helped stiffen his will.

  Soon after taking office, Dix sent a Treasury officer to New Orleans to take charge of a number of revenue cutters which had been tied up there and to dispatch them to New York. A Southern captain refused to surrender his vessel. Dix wired immediately to put him under arrest, and added: “If anyone attempts to haul down the Union flag, shoot him on the spot.” General Scott and Stanton were the only officials who saw the order before it was sent, and Stanton commended Dix on its resolute tone. Stanton supported Scott in his quiet transferring of small detachments of regular soldiery to the Washington area, which was made possible only by the fact that the cabinet was now clear of secessionist sympathizers.11