Activity at army posts and at the Brooklyn Navy Yard confirmed the rumor that supplies and perhaps troops were on their way to Anderson. People waited anxiously for news. On April 12 it came: guns were flashing in Charleston Harbor! Stanton wrote hastily to Buchanan: “We have the war upon us!… The impression is held by many: 1st, that the effort to reinforce will be a failure; 2nd, that in less than twenty-four hours from this time Anderson will have surrendered; 3rd, that in less than thirty days Davis will be in possession of Washington.”
Actually, there had been no attempt to reinforce the fort. But to the Confederates the announcement of Lincoln’s intention to send supplies to Anderson had meant the continued presence of a “hostile” force in one of their principal harbors. Unwilling to tolerate such a situation any longer, they had opened a destructive fire on Sumter. After holding on for thirty hours, Anderson surrendered.
The news from Sumter sent a wave of patriotism surging through the North. Even persons who had been sympathetic toward the South now cursed the Confederates for beginning a brothers’ war. Lincoln issued a proclamation convening a special session of Congress on July 4 and calling on the states for 75,000 militia to serve for thirty days. Volunteers responded so eagerly that state authorities were swamped. In cities, towns, the villages, men joined up and drilled to the cheers of onlookers. Drums rolled, fifes trilled, flags rippled everywhere.
But disaster already threatened; for Lincoln’s proclamation, while inspiring the North, also moved the slave states to band together in defense of Southern rights. Within two days the Virginia state convention had passed an ordinance of secession. Arkansas and Tennessee quickly followed Virginia’s lead. North Carolina made it evident that she would join her sister slave states. The border slave states—Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri—teetered uncertainly.
On April 19, the 6th Massachusetts Infantry, en route to Washington, was mobbed as it passed through Baltimore. Secessionists tore up railroad tracks and telegraph wires leading north and west from Washington. Virtually defenseless, the city was cut off from the North. Across the river hostile campfires flickered in the night. Stanton wrote to Dix, who was striving mightily to rally Union spirit in New York City, that the state of affairs in Washington was desperate beyond conception. “If there be any remedy—any shadow of hope to preserve this government from utter and absolute extinction—it must come from New York without delay.”4
Silence settled over Washington as stores were closed and boarded up. Barricades protected public buildings. Army and navy officers resigned by the score, civil workers by the hundred, most of them starting south, but some of them prowling the city, for what dread purpose no one could be sure. “For ten days our mail has been cut off,” Stanton wrote to his son Eddie, after communication with the North had been restored and troops had begun arriving. “… Last week there was a great panic here. The Virginia and Maryland people stopped everything from coming to market and there seemed to be danger of a famine.… Almost every family that could leave town did so by waggon carts, boats or any vehicle they could obtain while some of them went on foot at night.… There are now about twenty thousand troops here.”
Eddie, now at Kenyon, had asked his father’s advice about enlisting in a drill company. Stanton had no objections, he said, but he hoped Eddie would not volunteer for active service; there were men enough. He had been glad to learn that most Kenyon students were sticking to their studies, for “they are remote & secure from all danger and while passions are arming & raging elsewhere their time & thoughts should be diligently devoted to their studies so that when the hour comes for them to enter the busy scenes of life they may be well prepared.” Concealing from Eddie the alarm he had expressed to Dix, Stanton assured him that neither he nor Ellen felt disturbed concerning the safety of Washington. “We shall remain here feeling perfectly secure.”
As troops continued to arrive, Franklin Square, across from the Stanton home, became a camp. The din and bustle bothered him and especially Ellen, who had been ill, so he moved his family temporarily to a rented house on H Street. He still felt anxious for the safety of the city, despite the evidence of martial preparations and his knowledge that Scott was sure he could hold out until aid arrived.
Stanton, like most Washingtonians, was far less sure, and he believed that Confederate forces at Harpers Ferry and Manassas Gap far outnumbered the untrained volunteers parading the streets of the city. He would have liked to visit Buchanan at Wheatland and help the former President prepare a defense of the crucial last months of his administration. Stanton also wanted to attend to long-neglected business and family matters in Pittsburgh and Steubenville; but he dared not leave his home and family with the enemy so close at hand.
Scott and the cabinet were squabbling over strategy, Stanton reported to Buchanan. Judge John A. Campbell, of Alabama, who had acted as an intermediary between Seward and commissioners sent by the Confederacy to arrange for the peaceable surrender of Sumter, had recently told Stanton that Seward had assured him some time previously that the fort would be given up, provided the commissioners exercised patience, whereas it now appeared that the administration had always meant to hold it. The story broke in the papers and put Seward in a bad light. “Mr. Seward’s silence will not relieve him from the imputation of double-dealing in the minds of many,” Stanton wrote to Buchanan, “although I do not believe it can justly be imputed to him. I have no doubt he believed that Sumter would be evacuated as he stated it would be. But the war party overruled him with Lincoln, and he was forced to give up, but could not give up his office. That is a sacrifice no Republican will be apt to make.”5
Shortly after the attack on Sumter, Lincoln proclaimed a blockade of Southern ports, knowing that the Navy, though rapidly augmenting, was still far too small for this task. It was questionable whether the blockade had been made sufficiently effective to be legal under international law, and whether, in any event, a nation had the right to blockade its own ports. A test case came up when the Treasury Department instituted proceedings in the United States District Court in Washington for the condemnation of ships taken as prize.
Stanton felt disturbed to learn that the U. S. District Attorney had consented to the release of some of these ships, because, through ignorance, or otherwise, they had broken the blockade unintentionally. Furthermore, in the cases that were argued, the government’s lawyers performed poorly, citing not a single authority, and confining themselves, so it seemed to Stanton, to “prophetic declarations of the policy and intent of the present administration, & vituperation of the last one.”
Greatly concerned lest the court decide against the government, he decided to seek an interview with Chase and to offer his services as a lawyer. But he met with such an uncivil reception from one of Chase’s assistants that he gave up the idea of seeing him and went home and wrote him a hurt letter instead. Stanton also protested to Chase about Cameron’s treatment of Dix, whose brief tenure as Secretary of the Treasury under Buchanan had enabled the new administration to take over the government with a comfortable working balance, and who had since spurred Union sentiment in New York City. Governor E. D. Morgan, of New York, had appointed Dix a major general of volunteers, but the War Department had delayed so long in confirming the appointment that he had been left with no command. Dix, on the point of resigning, asked Stanton to learn from the Secretary of War why he “had been side-tracked in such a humiliating manner.” After trying for a week to get an interview at the War Department, Stanton obtained Cameron’s assurance that he would refer the matter to General Scott.
Vexed at the lack of warmth he had encounterd at both the Treasury and the War departments, Stanton vented his rancor to Dix. “No one can imagine the deplorable condition of this city and the hazard of the Government,” he wrote, “who did not witness the panic of the Administration, and the painful imbecility of Lincoln. The uprising of the people of the United States to maintain their government and crush the rebellion has been g
rand, so mighty in every element, that I feel it a blessing to be alive and witness it.… But when we witness venality and corruption growing in power every day, and controlling the millions of money that should be a patriotic sacrifice for national deliverance, and treating the treasure of the nation as a booty to be divided among thieves, hope dies away … and between the corruption of some of the Republican leaders and the self-seeking ambition of others some great disaster may soon befall the nation.”6 A disaster came sooner than even the pessimistic Stanton had anticipated.
Ellen Hutchison Stanton around 1865. (photo credit 6.1)
Edwin Lamson Stanton as his father’s assistant in the War Department, 1865. (photo credit 6.2)
Stanton in 1865. (photo credit 6.3)
So far, except for the attack on Sumter and a few unimportant skirmishes, it had been a war of nerves, with both sides mustering their resources and maneuvering for position. But now, in the warm, bright summer days, “On to Richmond” became the cry. Northern troops were still ill-organized and raw, but so were those of the enemy. Lincoln yielded to the public clamor, against the advice of General Scott. A Union army, under General Irvin McDowell, made ready to attack the Confederates at Manassas Junction.
On Sunday, July 21, hundreds of civilians, believing that the impending battle would put a quick end to the war, wished to take advantage of what promised to be their sole chance to see a fight. Stanton’s brother-in-law, Wolcott, obtained a pass to go “to the front,” but Stanton persuaded him to stay behind. So Wolcott was not in the soaked and terror-stricken throng that rushed frantically back to Washington in pelting rain through the late hours of the night and far into the dismal morning. For at Bull Run the Union army, after fighting gallantly for several hours, had given way to panic and fled ingloriously.
Stanton had predicted that the administration’s blundering would bring catastrophe. Now, he wrote to Buchanan, an irretrievable misfortune and a disgrace never to be forgotten had been added to business ruin and national bankruptcy “as a result of Lincoln’s ‘running the machine’ for five months.” He thought it likely that the disaster would bring changes in the War and Navy departments—“until Jefferson Davis turns out the whole concern.” That might happen any day, he warned, for the city remained unguarded, while “Lincoln, Scott, and the cabinet are disputing who is to blame.” He saw little hope of saving the nation until those now sporting epaulets and those in high civil office were replaced by earnest, capable men. Yet, “with all the calamity that is upon us I still do not … despair of the Republic,” Stanton declared to Wolcott; “if our people can bear with this Cabinet they will prove able to supprt a great many disasters.”7
Bull Run brought the realization to the Northern people that they faced stern and bloody days and a long, hard war. Lincoln resolutely planned to see it through, and ordered a new outpouring of troops. Soon more than a quarter of a million men had been enrolled, and the War Department, unable to supply and equip them, authorized the state governors to buy whatever was needed and present their bills. This system, which was sanctioned by Congress in subsequent legislation providing for reimbursement of the states, resulted in wild extravagance and monstrous graft. With a score of states competing not only against one another but against the federal government as well, profiteers cornered the scanty stores and demanded exorbitant prices for commodities which, more often than not, were defective, useless, or spoiled. Through haste, negligence, and criminal collusion, state and federal officials accepted almost anything, regardless of price or quality.
A concerted movement developed for the dismissal of War Secretary Cameron, and his friends warned him that Democratic partisans wanted him replaced by Holt. But Cameron’s supporters were active too, defending his honesty and pointing out, accurately enough, that in the gigantic and unprecedented task that had devolved upon him, errors of judgment and misplaced confidence could scarcely have been avoided.
Whether or not Stanton was active in this movement to displace Cameron can only be conjectured. Wolcott advised certain New York bankers to loan no more money to the government unless Cameron was dismissed, although there is no evidence, beyond the unsupported statements of Gideon Welles, that Wolcott acted at Stanton’s instigation. So far as Stanton’s relations with Holt at this time are concerned, they were friendly but far from intimate, and were hardly of the quality to cause Stanton to become Holt’s champion as a replacement for Cameron.8
Stanton meanwhile had achieved cordial relations with Cameron; his recommendations for commissions and patronage now received generally good reception. Cameron turned to him for legal arguments justifying War Department purchasing policies, and he successfully defended the government’s right to keep militiamen under arms for the period specified in Lincoln’s call for troops. While at work on these special assignments for the war office, Stanton heard that Lincoln had summoned General George Brinton McClellan from western Virginia to command the Army in the field. At first Stanton doubted his ability to change things: “But if he had the ability of Caesar, Alexander, or Napoleon, what can be accomplished?” Stanton asked Buchanan. “Will not Scott’s jealousy, cabinet intrigues, and Republican interference thwart him at every step?” Almost at once, however, a new spirit of optimism began to infuse the Army and the nation, for McClellan gave the impression of a man born to command.
Stanton and McClellan soon met through their mutual acquaintances in Democratic party circles. The general had cause to thank him. Soon after the attack on Sumter, a group of men from western Virginia had hurried to Washington to plead with Lincoln and Cameron for arms with which to hold off secessionist control of their portion of that state. Neither saw a legal way open to them to dispose of available guns to private persons. The Virginians then went to Stanton, whose opinion that “Lincoln was Chief Magistrate of the whole people, not of the States,” convinced Cameron that authority existed. Stanton then offered his total personal wealth as bond for the proper use of these guns, and prepared a formal legal justification for a transfer of arms at the discretion of the Secretary of War. Cameron hastened the business through the cumbersome departmental machinery, and the Virginia Unionists, triumphant, carried enough weapons home to hold key points until McClellan received orders to secure their region.9
The short, broad-shouldered, powerfully knit young general immediately set to work, superintending the erection of defense works around Washington, emptying its streets of the ragged, drunken mobs of soldiers that had become a plague, and indefatigably making the rounds of far-flung camps to watch raw recruits learn discipline and precision. McClellan felt vast pride in “his” hard, efficient army that was taking on shape and spirit under his directing eye, and the troops, responding to the pull of his magnetic personality, called him “Little Mac” and “the Young Napoleon.”
Born in Philadelphia of a wealthy family, McClellan had attended the best preparatory schools before entering West Point, where he graduated second in his class. As an engineer officer on Scott’s staff during the Mexican War, he won praise from his superiors. The War Department then sent him to the Crimea to study the organization and techniques of contending armies. But he could not stand the boredom of peacetime army life, and resigning his captain’s commission, he became a railroad executive in Cincinnati.
In the scramble for retired West Pointers during the early days of the war, Governor William Dennison had persuaded McClellan to take command of all the Ohio volunteer regiments, with the rank of major general. Then came an appointment as major general in the national army, commanding the Department of the Ohio, with seniority next to Scott. This department included the loyal counties of western Virignia, and McClellan, dispatching troops into that area, saved it for the Union. The Confederate force that he defeated was small, untrained, and ill equipped, but the flamboyant proclamations with which he heralded his victories gave him a military stature far beyond what he had earned. And so he came to Washington, a hero in the eyes of the nation, but actually untes
ted and unready for high command.
Unused to the adulation that now came to him, McClellan allowed it to go to his head. “The people call on me to save the country,” he wrote to his wife in August 1861; “I must save it, and cannot respect anything that is in my way.” His disposition to vanity, despite occasional self-doubts, became a Messianic complex. Untempered by experience and afraid to seem unsure, he became jealous of superior authority and resentful of advice.
McClellan was proud to have been a lifelong Democrat and found it intolerably irksome to defer to upstart Republicans. “I can’t tell you how disgusted I am becoming with these wretched politicians,” he confided to his wife; “they are the most despicable set of men & I think Seward is the meanest of them all—a meddling, officious, incompetent little puppy … The Presdt is nothing more than a well meaning baboon. Welles is weaker than the most garrulous old woman you were ever annoyed by. Bates is a good inoffensive old man—so it goes only keep these complimentary opinions to yourself, or you may get me into premature trouble.”
During the course of the summer Stanton and McClellan became intimate. They held the same low estimate of the Lincoln administration. Like most loyal Democrats, they believed that the maintenance of the Union should be the sole purpose of the war. If it became a crusade against slavery, popular support would crumble and the volunteer forces would melt away. The rebel armies, not the Southern people, should be the object of attack. Injury to the property of noncombatants should be avoided whenever possible; masters should not be disturbed in the possession of their slaves. Reconciliation, not subjugation, should be the Northern aim. These, in any event, were McClellan’s views, and he believed from their frequent conversations that summer that Stanton shared them.10
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