Stanton, as he wrote to both his sisters, had little opportunity for deliberation when he was offered the cabinet post. He discussed it with his wife, who urged him to decline, and with his friend and former associate in the law Peter H. Watson, who insisted that he accept as a patriotic duty, though to do so meant giving up again an annual income now of more than $50,000, which he might greatly and quickly expand, for the inelastic $8,000 salary of a cabinet officer. Stanton also talked with Jeremiah Black, who, in seeming jest, threatened a “disclaimer of this administration if I go in it.” He then conferred with Supreme Court Justice Grier, a fellow Pennsylvania Democrat, who discussed the matter in turn with his judicial brethren Nelson, Clifford, and Catron. All agreed that Stanton should accept in order to resurrect national confidence.
Last, Stanton went to see McClellan. According to the general’s account, Stanton burst into his house while he was dressing for dinner, and said he would accept if McClellan thought that this would aid the army commander in suppressing the rebellion. McClellan hoped that Stanton would accept.
Admiral David Porter presents a significantly different recollection. Porter and the Prince de Joinville were dining with McClellan at his home either on the evening of Cameron’s resignation or during one of the two days immediately preceding it. Stanton came to the open door of the dining room, and although McClellan saw him, he rudely kept him waiting there, finally admitting him only to keep him standing by the table for five minutes. Stanton kept his poise, Porter remembered, and McClellan finally invited him to join the trio at dinner; Stanton sat down and ate “with remarkably good appetite, but the general never introduced him to either of us at the table.” Stanton was not a man to forget such arrogance.21
Next day, according to McClellan, Lincoln called to apologize for not having consulted him about Stanton’s appointment. He had assumed that McClellan would be glad to have a friend at the head of the War Department, he said, and he had feared, if he consulted McClellan beforehand, McClellan’s critics would say that the general had “dragooned” him into appointing Stanton. If McClellan had chosen to oppose him, Stanton probably would not have received the position, but the evidence is conclusive that Stanton was not, as Barlow asserted, “appointed at the request of General McClellan.”
Few informed observers believed that Cameron’s departure from the cabinet was either voluntary or unfortunate. “There appears to be much exultation over the forced resignation of Cameron,” canny, inquisitive General Marsena Patrick noted, “by almost all I hear speak of it.” Journalist Horace White, who was also the clerk of the Senate Military Affairs Committee, reported to the Chicago Tribune that the excuse which Cameron’s friends offered for his resignation—his antislavery views—is “all bosh.” White insisted that congressional exposures of Cameron’s incapacity made his remaining in the cabinet impossible—“Every Republican Senator but one or two were determinedly hostile.” Among Cameron’s critics was Lyman Trumbull, who commented: “The slavery question, I presume, had nothing to do with Cameron’s removal. There were probably enough causes for it, without supposing that to be the one.”22
For the rest of his life, however, Cameron insisted that he left Lincoln’s cabinet as a result of his championing the use of Negro soldiers, and that it was due only to his recommendation and maneuvering that Stanton came in as his successor. His insistence convinced Henry Wilson and Frank A. Flower, among others, who used Cameron’s version of these events as the basis for their later writings on Stanton. It appears, however, that Gideon Welles was correct when in 1870 he described Cameron’s account as “preposterously absurd.” Cameron, as L. E. Chittenden asserted in 1867, resigned “in obedience to the universal sentiment of the [Republican] party.” Stanton succeeded him as the choice of the most influential cabinet officers and congressmen and especially Lincoln himself.23
Some Republicans feared that Lincoln’s choice of a Democrat for the War Department foreshadowed a more conciliatory policy toward the South. When Stanton’s nomination came before the Senate, William P. Fessenden, of Maine, interviewed him. “He is just the man we want,” wrote Fessenden afterward. “We agree on every point: The duties of the Secretary of War, the conduct of the war, the negro question, and everything else.”
The next morning Cameron arranged a breakfast at his home which Stanton, Wade, and Zachariah Chandler attended. This meeting, too, had good results. Trumbull reported that “our earnest men here who have conversed with him, say he is fully up to all they could ask … I feel very much encouraged by the change.” Later that day the Senate speedily confirmed Stanton’s nomination.24
A few private doubts were raised concerning the wisdom of Stanton’s elevation to the war office. Henry Halleck, now a Union Army general, who nursed a feeling of injury dating from Stanton’s California investigations, and who had hoped to see Holt get the place, confided to his wife that “Mr. Stanton does not like me, and of course will take the first opportunity he can to injure me. I shall take my precautions accordingly so as not to give him a chance.” Holt, for his part, quickly subdued any resentment he may have felt and wrote for the press a rhapsodic eulogy on Stanton’s virtues, which served to make the appointment acceptable to many moderates of both parties in the North, and this was a substantial assistance to the new Secretary.25
Sam Ward, a New York financier and lobbyist, who had lost a fortune in California, recognized that conservatives applauded the new War Department head, but he admitted to Seward that “to me, he is personally distasteful from the bitterness and injustice with which he persecuted some of my California friends.” Ward was worried that the new appointee would be “likely to gain great ascendancy over the President … for Stanton was a dangerous foe—a sleuthhound sort of man who never lost his scent or slackened his purpose.” Seward, Ward advised, had best make an ally of this unknown quantity.
Many Democrats were delighted that one of their party had gained such an important post, and looked for a statement from Buchanan to this effect. But the former President could find no charity for a former counselor who had joined the enemy camp.26 And McClellan, who actually detested Cameron, privately let him know that he regretted the change in the War Department and that he was sure Cameron was leaving fully of his own accord, while at the same time the general exulted to Barlow over the shift. Years later, long after he and Stanton had become bitter enemies, McClellan insisted to Fitz-John Porter that he had “deprecated the tricks which were resorted to to secure … [Cameron’s] resignation and the appointment of … [his] successor.” As in other testimony McClellan asserted that he had known nothing of the impending change until Stanton asked his advice about accepting the office, it appears that McClellan’s memory was playing him false.
There were few sour notes like these intruded or privately voiced, for the change at the War Department was as well received throughout the country as probably any change would have been. Congratulations showered on Stanton. William Stanton wrote that men of all parties in Stanton’s home state were delighted. John G. Nicolay, Lincoln’s secretary, thought the change “a very important and much needed one. I don’t know Mr. Stanton personally but he is represented as being an able and efficient man. I shall certainly look for very great reforms in the War Department.”
From Joseph Medill, editor of the Chicago Tribune, came a warning that Stanton would encounter rottenness and rascality at all levels of the War Department, and scores of lukewarm, half-secessionist army officers. “The country looks to you,” Medill wrote, “to infuse vigor, system, honesty, and fight into the services. The army has lost more men in the past four months from inaction and ennui than it would have done from ten bloody battles.” Barlow, congratulating Stanton, said that he realized the great sacrifices the new Secretary had made in taking on the post, and warned that “apart from the grand drama of politics, you will have your hands full, in stopping the terrible leaks, monstrous frauds, which have recently been perpetrated … by the … War Department.”27
Most baffling is how Stanton was able to satisfy the radical Republicans concerning his views on the Negro without arousing the suspicions of moderate Republicans and without forfeiting the confidence of McClellan and other Democrats. Barlow, for example, described Stanton as “a firm, consistent Union man, but as firm a Democrat as I know.… I know he is all right & he is withal a man of strong mind & will—not afraid of anything or anybody—honest—not ambitious of political preferment & will have his own way.”
But what was his way? Wade warned that “if the democrats think they have gained anything by the appointment of Stanton … they will find they have caught ‘a tartar.’ ” Lincoln assured an inquirer that Stanton had not been “selling … his old friends out” by coming into his cabinet; but the burning question remained, voiced succinctly by the New York Tribune editor Charles A. Dana: “Can you tell me what Stanton’s sentiments really are about slavery?” Here was the heart of the matter.
For Stanton, summoned a second time to the cabinet of a President whose abilities he distrusted and whose policies he hoped to change, though in what direction only he knew, his appointment meant both personal sacrifice and patriotic opportunity. This man, to whom the acquisition of wealth, the sublimation of personal convictions in favor of self-advancement, the avoidance of involvement in public controversies, had been the guideposts of living, was again prepared to abandon these attitudes.
A month after he took office, Stanton poured out his heart to his friend Nahum Capen. “No public man in times like these can fail to have both his words and acts misunderstood,” he wrote. “My official position was not sought for; it is held at great personal sacrifice, and aspiring to nothing beyond, having a heart single to the one great object of overcoming the rebellion and restoring the authority of the government in time to save the nation from the horrible gulf of bankruptcy—bankruptcy not to the Government only but to every citizen—I am content to bear admonition and reproof for any real or supposed errors with humble submission.”28 It was well that he was ready and willing to bear reproof, for it was not long in coming.
1 Curtis, Buchanan, II, 529, 533–4; Seward, Seward, 525; Stanton to Horatio King, March 15, 1861, King Papers, LC; Caleb Smith to R. W. Thompson, April 16, 1861, LNLF; Flower, Stanton, 108.
2 Curtis, Buchanan, II, 528–30; Morse, Welles Diary, I, 54–7; Hendrick, op. cit., 259–60; Weed to Seward, May 13, 1861, Seward Papers, UR.
3 Quoted in Martin Lichterman, John Adams Dix, 1798–1879 (Ph.D. thesis, Columbia University, 1952), 413–16.
4 Gorham, Stanton, II, 213; Curtis, Buchanan, II, 538–42.
5 To son Edwin, May 1, 1861, owned by Gideon Townsend Stanton; to Buchanan in Curtis, Buchanan, II, 547–50; to Capt. John F. Oliver, June 29, 1861, Stanton MSS; Col. Charles P. Stone, “A Dinner with General Scott in 1861,” MAH, XI, 531–2.
6 Stanton to Chase, June 9, 1861, Chase Papers, HSP; Dix, op. cit., II, 17–20; Gorham, Stanton, I, 217–18.
7 Wolcott MS, 173–5; Curtis, Buchanan, II, 559.
8 Stanton to Dix, Sept. 8, 1861, owned by Ralph G. Newman; Morse, Welles Diary, I, 57; Wolcott MS, 175–7; William P. Fessenden to Cameron, Aug. 28, J. D. Hoover to same, Aug. 29, and R. M. Blatchford to same, Sept. 6, 1861, Cameron Papers, LC. See also Weigley, Meigs, 163–8, 182–4; Fred A. Shannon, The Organization and Administration of the Union Armies (Cleveland, 1928), II, 53–69.
9 George P. Smith, a member of the 1861 Virginia committee, to Stanton, Oct. 14, 1865, Stanton MSS, offering to certify to the accuracy of a description of these events in the New York Times, Aug. 29, 1865, which in turn was inspired by a speech of Blair’s attacking Stanton’s prewar Unionism. Stanton’s statement on the Secretary of War’s powers, dated only 1861, is in Cameron Papers, LC. Other data in Stanton to Cameron, May 29, 1861, LMU; Curtis, Buchanan, II, 559; Seward, Seward, 604–5.
10 McClellan, McClellan’s Own Story (New York, 1885), 85, 478 (hereafter cited as McClellan, Own Story); Oct. 1861, ms “Extracts from Letters to Wife,” McClellan Papers, LC.
11 McClellan, Own Story, 176; ms “Extracts from Letters to his Wife,” Nov. 1, 1861, McClellan Papers, LC; Lichterman, op. cit., 445, 464. Ellen’s letter is in Gorham, Stanton, I, 232; Dr. Reid’s ms reminiscence is owned by Alexandra Sanford. McClellan’s report, attributed to Oct. 30, 1861, but actually completed in late November, is in U. S. War Department, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, 1880–1901), ser. 1. V, 9–11 (cited hereafter as O.R.; ser. 1 unless otherwise noted).
12 Maunsell B. Field, Memories of Many Men and Some Women (New York, 1874), 269–70 (cited henceforth as Field, Memories); Gen. John MacAuley Palmer, “Abraham Lincoln, Commander-in-Chief,” ALA Papers (1938), 25–48; Stanton to Scott, Oct. 3, 1861, HL.
13 Nov. 17, 1861, McClellan Papers, LC. The general had Barlow check on Stanton’s argument: Barlow to Stanton, Nov. 18, 1861, Barlow Papers, HL.
14 Flower, Stanton, 122; on Cameron, see New York World, Oct. 20, 1870; Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War (Boston, 1953), 108; Barlow to Stanton, Nov. 21, Caleb B. Smith to Barlow, Nov. 22, and H. D. Bacon to same, Nov. 24, 1861, Barlow Papers, HL.
15 [W. H.?] Cobb, ms memo, “Reminiscences of Washington in 1861,” no date or place, Cameron Papers, LC; Forney, Anecdotes of Public Men (New York, 1873–81), I, 76 (cited hereafter as Forney, Anecdotes).
16 Actually, Cameron’s report contained a whole paragraph written by Stanton, which stated: “Those who make war against the Government justly forfeit all rights of property, privilege, and security derived from the constitution and the laws against which they are in armed rebellion; and, as the labor and service of their slaves constitute the chief property of the rebels, such property should share the common fate of war to which they have devoted the property of loyal citizens.… If it shall be found that the men who have been held by the rebels as slaves are capable of bearing arms and performing efficient military service, it is the right, and may become the duty of the Government to arm and equip them, and employ their services against the rebels, under proper military regulation, discipline, and command.” Flower, Stanton, 116; Nicolay and Hay, Lincoln, V, 125–6. Cameron’s statement is in Wilson, “Jeremiah S. Black and Edwin M. Stanton,” loc. cit., 470, and “Edwin M. Stanton,” AM, XXV, 238.
17 Dawes to wife, Jan. 6 and 7, 1862, Dawes Papers, LC; Montgomery Blair to James E. Harvey, undated (ca. Jan. 1870), Blair Family Papers, LC.
18 Chase to Black, July 4, 1870, Black Papers, LC; David Donald (ed.), Inside Lincoln’s Cabinet: The Civil War Diaries of Salmon P. Chase (New York, 1954), 12–13 (hereafter cited as Chase, Diary); Field, Memories, 266–9.
19 Blair to Andrew, Jan. 14, 1862, Andrew Papers, MHS; A. H. Meneely (ed.), “Three Manuscripts of Gideon Welles,” AHR, XXXI, 491; Field, Memories, 266–7; undated memo, ca. Aug. 1870, J. W. Schuckers Papers, LC; Speed to Holt, Dec. 8, 1861, Holt Papers, LC; Bingham, ms “Recollections of Lincoln and Stanton,” owned by Milton Ronsheim; Edwards Pierrepont to Seward, Feb. 9, 1862, Seward Papers, UR.
20 Benjamin to Horace White, June 1, 1914, ISHL; Cameron to Frank A. Flower, March 6, 1887, Cameron Papers, LC; Flower, Stanton, 117.
21 Wolcott MS, 177, 179–80; Chase, Diary, 62; Stanton to Black, undated, ca. Jan. 1862, incorrectly filed in 1858, Black Papers, LC; Chase to Black, July 4, 1870, in New York Evening Post, Nov. 11, 1870; Grier to Stanton, Jan. 13, 1862, Stanton MSS; McClellan, Own Story, 153; Porter, ms Private Journal #1, 174–5, Porter Papers, LC; Meneely, “Three Manuscripts of Gideon Welles,” loc. cit., 492; S. W. Crawford’s ms notes on Cameron, July 1883, ISHL.
22 Jan. 14, 1862, Patrick ms diary, LC; transcript of Tribune article, Jan. 15, 1862, and White to F. J. Garrison, Nov. 8, 1914, White Papers, ISHL; “Trumbull Correspondence,” MVHR, I, 103; McClellan, Own Story, 152, 161; Barlow to August Belmont, Jan. 17, 1862, Barlow Papers, HL.
23 Cameron’s versions are in New York Times, July 16, 1865, and New York Tribune, March 10, 1869. See also the anonymous
“Edwin M. Stanton: Secret History of Lincoln’s Cabinet,” Lippincott’s, V, 230–1; and the Cameron-Flower correspondence, Jan.-March 1887, in Cameron Papers, LC, and Flower Papers, WSHS. For other data, A. K. McClure to Welles, Sept. 22, 24, 1870, Welles Papers, LC; Beale, Welles Diary, I, 54–69; Chittenden, Address on President Lincoln and His Administration at the Beginning of the War (n.p., 1867); John Russell Young, Men and Memories (New York, 1901), I, 54 (hereafter cited as Young, Men and Memories).
24 By agreement between Cameron and Stanton, the former retained the office until January 20 while Stanton settled pressing personal affairs; Cameron committed himself to making no new army appointments during those six days, leaving recommendations for Stanton to deal with. See Meneely, The War Department, 1861 (New York, 1928), 370. Other data in Francis Fessenden, Life and Public Services of William Pitt Fessenden (Boston, 1907), I, 299–31; Cameron’s endorsement on letter of Feb. 2, 1862, Lamon Collection, LC; “Trumbull Correspondence,” loc. cit., 103; A. G. Riddle, Recollections of War Times (New York, 1895), 350–1.
25 Halleck, Jan. 15, 1862, in Collector, XXI, 29; New York Times, Jan. 25, 1862, has Holt’s speech, and its effects are described in T. S. Bell to Holt, May 16, 1862, Holt Papers, LC; Union League Club of New York, Proceedings in Reference to the Death of Edwin M. Stanton (New York, 1870), 12.
26 Ward to Seward, Jan. 14, 1862, Seward Papers, UR; Curtis, Buchanan, II, 522–3; and see Buchanan to Horatio King, Jan. 28, 1862, King Papers, LC.
27 Barlow to Stanton, Jan. 14, and McClellan to Barlow, Jan. 18, 1862, Barlow Papers, HL; Porter to Cameron, Dec. 19, 1886, Cameron Papers, LC; William Stanton to Stanton, Jan. 16, 1862, owned by William Stanton Picher; Nicolay to Therena Bates, Jan. 14, 1862, Nicolay Papers, LC; Medill in Bernard A. Weisberger, Reporters for the Union (Boston, 1953), 222–3.
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