Stanton

by Benjamin P. Thomas

  If so, neither man had reason to complain of Lincoln’s attitude toward slavery during the early months of the war. For he scrupulously observed his pledge not to molest slavery in the states, not only as a matter of honor but also because his chief concern at the moment was to avoid taking any action that might cause the loyal border states to join the Confederacy. Congress was not so circumspect, however, and when it showed a disposition to pass legislation hostile to slavery, Stanton predicted to Dix that such action would incur the ill will of Northern Democrats and might even cause them to oppose the further prosecution of the war.

  Some Union commanders, notably General Frémont at St. Louis, were also disposed to act precipitately. Unable to crush the elusive Confederate guerrilla bands that ceaselessly harassed Missouri, Frémont prepared to confiscate the property of persons who were in arms against the government, and declared their slaves emancipated. The Republican antislavery radicals acclaimed Frémont a hero. But an outburst of resentment in Kentucky ensued that threatened to take the state out of the Union. Unable to persuade the headstrong general to recall his edict, the President repealed it himself. Corruption, favoritism, and mismanagement had flourished in the Department of Missouri, and this was the last straw. Lincoln removed Frémont from command.

  The resulting outburst of indignation against Lincoln from the Republican radicals surprised Stanton. Sentiment against slavery was stronger than he had thought, and it was clearly growing stronger. Gradually, and in large measure inscrutably, he now began to shift back to the antislavery side, about which he had been mute or evasive for the past ten or twelve years. He was still determined to be cautious, however, and was willing to sit astride the rising fence which the question of the Negro was building in the midst of war.

  A great army took form as recruits poured into McClellan’s camps all through the summer and autumn. But he showed no disposition to order an advance, although Confederate artillery batteries dominated the Potomac River, practically closing Washington’s outlet to the sea, and at Harpers Ferry rebel raiders had cut the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad line, the capital’s main line of communication to the west. Imperturbably McClellan continued to drill and review his troops. When criticized for inactivity he protested that his army was not ready, or put the blame on General Scott.

  Put under terrific pressure by Republican congressmen, who resented McClellan’s appointment and had shown suspicion of him from the first, Lincoln asked the general to prepare a report showing his own strength and that of the Confederates and estimating the number of troops he required for an advance. McClellan hurried to Stanton’s residence. “I have not been at home for three hours,” McClellan wrote to his wife, “but am concealed at Stanton’s to dodge all enemies in the shape of browsing Presidents, etc.,” assembling proof “that I have left nothing undone to make this army what it ought to be and that the necessity for delay has not been my fault.”

  McClellan’s report, the significant portions of the first draft all in Stanton’s handwriting, put his own strength at 168,318, and the enemy’s force at 150,000, “well drilled & equipped, ably commanded & strongly entrenched,” a rank exaggeration in every respect except that Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston was indeed able. McClellan estimated that he would need 208,000 troops for an advance and recommended that all recruits be assigned to him, leaving only defensive garrisons elsewhere. He was anxious to advance, he assured Lincoln, but it was folly to underestimate the rebel strength or to hazard the safety of the capital by a premature attack.

  There is no doubt that Stanton, in addition to writing a fair share of this report, accepted its premises and supported the general’s conclusions, which were based upon misleading and exaggerated intelligence concerning the enemy’s strength. But there is more to it than this, so far as Stanton is concerned. He always had a capacity for total identification with a cause, an institution, or a person. As a lawyer, Stanton had exhibited devotion to his clients transcending the normal obligation of an attorney. In Buchanan’s cabinet he had found a new symbol—the Union—and secretly sacrificed his lifelong party regularity in its cause.

  He kept this burning devotion after leaving the cabinet. In McClellan, Stanton now had a champion who he thought could help bring military victory closer. So he was proud of his intimacy with the spectacular young general. Ellen wrote boastfully to young Eddie of newspaper accounts which described his father as “General McClellan’s confidential adviser,” and Stanton confided to his friend Dr. Reid: “I believe the life of the Republic depends on that man.”11

  Success was always Stanton’s touchstone, and McClellan’s star seemed to be rising irresistibly. Stanton was impressed when General Scott, worn, ill, resentful, and unable to endure the way McClellan contemptuously bypassed him and assumed the right to control all military operations, requested relief from duty. On November 1, Lincoln placed McClellan in charge of all Union armies, while also maintaining him in immediate command of the Army of the Potomac.

  What was not yet clear was that the Union lacked a formula of command. The army structure, built for peace, was groaning under the strains of a great war. Under Cameron’s deficient administration, the civilian War Secretary disbursed funds but commanded nothing. Now the nation was entrusting its fate to a military officer, with only Lincoln, still an uncertain quantity as President and commander in chief, as a check on McClellan, who considered him a cowardly buffoon. Considering the manifold problems of policy requiring decisions and the temperaments of the two men, trouble was almost certain to come.

  Informed gossipers expected Cameron to quit the cabinet at the same time Scott left. Stanton heard that Lincoln was thinking of him as a possible replacement for Cameron, and canceled a planned partnership with S. L. M. Barlow, a wealthy lawyer and Democratic leader of New York City. As weeks passed and no word came from the White House, Stanton became increasingly perturbed and his critical views of the Lincoln administration were more freely expressed, although he continued to serve Cameron as special War Department counsel. But in his connection with McClellan, Stanton remained close to the center of events, and early in November he again proved his influence with the general.12

  About a week after McClellan became commander in chief, Captain Charles Wilkes, commander of the warship San Jacinto, cruising in the Bahama Channel, stopped the British mail packet Trent and, over the protests of her captain, took into custody James M. Mason and John Slidell, Confederate diplomats, who were on their way to London. The Northern people acclaimed Wilkes as a hero; but in England his highhanded action caused a wrathful outcry and the British Government prepared for war. The Lincoln administration found itself holding a raging British lion by the tail. To let go meant a serious loss of face in the eyes of Northern patriots; to hold on might embroil the dissevered nation in still another war.

  As the dispute posed this possibility, Lincoln asked McClellan to sit in on a cabinet session. McClellan wrote to his wife: “I shall be obliged to devote the day to endeavoring to get our Govt to take the only prompt & honorable course of avoiding a war with England & France. Our Govt has done wrong in seizing these men on a neutral ship:—the only manly way of getting out of the scrape is a prompt release with a frank disavowal of the wrong—before a demand for reparation is made.… I will try again to write a few lines before I go to Staunton’s [sic] to ascertain what the law of nations is on the Slidell & Mason seizure.”

  Stanton completely changed McClellan’s mind. “I have just returned from Staunton’s [sic],” the general wrote, “where I have had a long discussion on the law points of the M & S capture. I am rejoiced to find that our Govt is fully justified by all the rules of International Law & all the decisions in the highest courts which bear upon the case—so it matters but little whether the English Govt & people make a fuss about it or not, for as we are manifestly & undeniably in the right it makes little difference to us, as we can afford to fight in a just cause.” Still abominating the supposed weakness of the Lincoln
administration, Stanton had held forth on the desirability of taking a firm stand. But Stanton’s opinions were at odds with American precedent and with the policy Lincoln chose to follow.13

  The drift of public opinion continued to favor the antislavery Republicans. Even some members of Lincoln’s cabinet, notably Cameron, were ready to disavow the President’s cautious “border state policy.” So far, the administration, while employing more and more Negroes as laborers in the Army, had refused to permit their enlistment as soldiers; not even free Negroes living in the Northern states had been allowed to bear arms. The President regarded all matters affecting the Negro’s status as political questions of paramount importance, which were to be decided, not by generals or department heads, but at the top level, by himself or Congress.

  On November 13, Colonel John Cochrane, near Washington, made an inflammatory speech, and brought the question of arming Negroes into the open. “Take the slave by the hand,” he said, “place a musket in it, and in God’s name bid him strike for the human race.” Cameron warmly endorsed Cochrane’s remarks, and immediately gained stature in the eyes of the radical Republicans. He was probably not unmindful of the possibility of re-establishing himself politically by means of their support.

  Stanton, according to a reminiscence of a decade later, was so indignant that he begged McClellan to cashier Cochrane and declared that if he commanded the Army he would never permit Cameron to enter its camps. Cameron soon afterward repeated these sentiments, whereupon Secretary of the Interior Smith publicly rebuked him for advocating a policy of which the President, like Stanton, disapproved.

  Republican dissension was sweet to the taste of Democratic politicians. Barlow, prominent in a Democratic clique that hoped to make McClellan President, wrote Stanton of the satisfaction he derived from reports of the two members of the Republican cabinet at loggerheads. “Such quarrels should be fostered in every proper way,” he advised Stanton, “though the General must, if possible, keep entirely free of them.” If Stanton was a party to this Democratic scheming, he for once used the utmost candor in answering Barlow’s letter: “I think the General’s true course is to mind his own Department and win a victory. After that all other things will be of easy settlement.”14

  One night not long after this, Cameron and Smith renewed their altercation over the use of Negro troops in the private suite of John W. Forney, who recalled that “the controversy became exceedingly animated, enlisting all the company, silencing the music, and creating a deal of consternation … while Edwin M. Stanton, then a quiet practitioner of the law, stood by, a silent figure in the scene.” He was still determined to keep his views to himself on this divisive issue.

  The time came for Cameron to prepare his annual report, which would accompany the President’s message to Congress. Anxious to reaffirm his sentiments with regard to arming Negroes, but realizing the delicate nature of the question, Cameron invited a number of persons, chiefly fellow Pennsylvanians, to his home for consultation. Among those present were Forney and David Wilmot. Someone read a portion of Cameron’s report in which he recommended the use of Negro troops. Nearly all the men except Wilmot pleaded that Cameron’s proposed statement would be impolitic.15

  Cameron recalled years later: “I sought out another counsellor—one of broad views, great courage, and of tremendous earnestness. It was Edwin M. Stanton. He read the report carefully, and after suggesting a few alterations, calculated to make it stronger, he gave it his unequivocal and hearty support.” Indeed, Stanton’s “alterations” had pushed Cameron into an extreme position.

  Without consulting Lincoln, Cameron had his report printed and readied for release at the same time as Lincoln’s message. Too late, Lincoln discovered what had happened. He immediately telegraphed an order recalling all copies of the report and instructed Cameron to delete the unauthorized passage before presenting it to Congress. But the unexpurgated version had already reached the press. Again the radicals denounced Lincoln for being too soft toward slavery, and for repudiating Cameron.16

  Lincoln endured the criticism and said nothing further to Cameron about the trouble he had caused. But he decided to get rid of the Secretary whenever he could do so gracefully. Wittingly or unwittingly, Stanton had prepared the way for Cameron’s downfall. A change in the War Department, which Stanton had long been advocating, would not be much longer deferred.

  What moved Stanton to advise Cameron as he did? Was he expressing his true opinion in advocating the use of Negro troops, or was he fomenting a quarrel within the Lincoln administration, as Barlow had urged him to do? He may have been doing both, but this much is certain: If the opinion he set forth for Cameron reflected his true views, they were strikingly at odds with the opinions he was expressing to McClellan and his other Democratic friends, who did not learn until years later that he was the real author of this part of Cameron’s report.

  Congressman Henry Dawes, returning to Washington after the Christmas holidays, found everything dark and gloomy. “Confidence in everybody is shaken to the very foundation,” he wrote to his wife. “The credit of the country is ruined—its army impotent, its Cabinet incompetent, its servants rotten, its ruin inevitable.” And worst of all was the War Department, which was still being mismanaged by Cameron.17

  The War Secretary’s shortcomings, evident from the first, had now become intolerable. Cameron realized that he had not measured up to the demands of his job and was willing to step out, provided he could do so without losing face. Learning that the ministry at St. Petersburg was about to be vacated, he told the President that the position might be acceptable to him.

  No sooner had Chase learned of Cameron’s willingness to resign than he began to boost Stanton as the best man to succeed him. Chase, besides managing the Treasury Department, had kept watch on the War Department. He regarded himself as the most competent man in the government and was incurably meddlesome; but he acted in this instance in accordance with Lincoln’s wishes.

  Cameron, either of his own accord or owing to Chase’s persuasiveness, also favored Stanton as his successor. He regarded him as a fellow Pennsylvanian whose appointment to the cabinet would preserve Pennsylvania’s influence in the government and might be taken, however remotely, as an endorsement of his conduct of the war office. Lincoln must have been impressed when Chase and Cameron, the two cabinet members who were most familiar with the operations of the War Department, both recommended Stanton to head it if a change was to be made.18 Moreover, Lincoln had thought for a long time that the loyal Democrats would support the war more ardently if they were represented in the cabinet, and Stanton was a Democratic regular and a tested Unionist. But Holt still had his supporters, Montgomery Blair was urging Lincoln to appoint Ben Wade, and Lincoln wondered if Blair himself, with his West Point training, might be the best man for the post.

  Early in January, John A. Bingham, now a Republican senator from Ohio and an old political opponent of Stanton’s in their Cadiz days, had an interview with Lincoln. The President adroitly led Bingham to reveal his high estimate of Stanton as a possible replacement for Cameron. Stanton pulled further ahead in this sweepstakes when Lincoln learned, upon inquiry, that Seward also favored him. To find Chase and Seward in agreement was unusual and gratifying. Perhaps Lincoln saw Stanton as a makeweight between the discordant factions of the cabinet. Chase, having known Stanton best in the Ohio years, regarded him as an antislavery man and hence as a potential ally; whereas Seward, having known him as a Buchanan Democrat devoted to the Union, thought that he would align himself with the moderates. Stanton’s dexterity in enlisting the backing of these cabinet rivals offers another striking instance of his wily versatility in ingratiating himself simultaneously with men of widely divergent views.19

  Lincoln invited Stanton to call on him at the White House, accompanied by George Harding, who feared that the memories of that last meeting at the Reaper trial would make for an unpleasant scene. But, according to Charles F. Benjamin, to whom Harding later d
escribed the meeting, when Harding “reintroduced the two men to each other, to the[ir] credit … he was the most embarrassed of the three. The meeting was brief but friendly and Lincoln and Stanton shook hands cordially at parting, both thanking him for the trouble he had taken in bringing them together.”

  On Sunday, January 12, Cameron called on Chase at his home. The Russian post had become vacant, and Cameron suggested that Chase should again see Lincoln on behalf of Stanton. Chase thought it would be better to enlist Seward’s support first, and drove to Willard’s Hotel to see him. He did not know that Seward had already spoken favorably of Stanton to Lincoln, and Seward let Chase imagine himself the chief architect of Stanton’s appointment.

  At that point Cameron came in. He had just received a curt letter from Lincoln stating that the President was now prepared to accept his resignation and proposed to nominate him as minister to Russia the next morning. Cameron felt deeply offended. Chase and Seward assured him that Lincoln could not have been intentionally discourteous, and prevailed on him to discuss the matter with the President the next day. Chase suggested that Cameron should also state frankly that another Pennsylvanian should be appointed to the war office and that Stanton was the man. Then Chase and Seward would see Lincoln and second the suggestion. Cameron agreed to this procedure.20

  On the day after Seward, Chase, and Cameron decided on their line of attack, Cameron resigned, and Lincoln on January 14 appointed Stanton in his place. Lincoln had soothed Cameron’s wounded feelings by subscribing an antedated letter expressing his “undiminished confidence” in Cameron and his “affectionate esteem.”