28 To Capen, Feb. 24, 1862, owned by Justin G. Turner; Lincoln quoted in H. D. Bacon to Barlow, Jan. 20, and Barlow to August Belmont, Jan. 17, 1862, Barlow Papers, HL; Wade in Isaac Arnold, The History of Abraham Lincoln and the Overthrow of Slavery (Chicago, 1866), 250; Dana to Sumner, Feb. 21, 1862, Sumner Papers, HU. The question of bankruptcy is fruitfully examined in Bray Hammond, “The North’s Empty Purse, 1861–1862,” AHR, LXVII, 1–18.
CHAPTER VII
SECRETARY OF A WAR
FROM HIS WORK as special counsel during Cameron’s tenure as War Secretary, Stanton knew that the commission he accepted on January 20, 1862, had thus far represented a source of weakness more than of strength in the nation’s military effort. In the development of the government’s institutions before 1861, the war office had been either an insignificant clerical convenience for army officers to employ or else an annoying obstacle for them to circumvent or overcome. The few prewar Secretaries who had tried to improve on this pattern had been evaded or merely outwaited by the military galaxy. No one knew what the authority of that office was.
This ambiguity could mean opportunity to a Secretary who seized the chance and expanded his powers, but the corruption and confusion that developed in Cameron’s lax regime had lessened the power and prestige of an office that had none to spare. Under him, the heads of the Army’s bureaucracy plodded along in accustomed paths, binding up the growing regiments in rigid tentacles of bookkeepers’ techniques, while spoilsmen fattened on the great profits available from the nation’s emergency needs.
Far worse was the fact that the field commanders remained virtually independent of the civilian Secretary and the President. Generals such as Frémont and McClellan, enjoying strong political backing from their states and from congressional cliques, were taking matters of policy into their own hands. In default of action by Cameron, Lincoln interceded in the most outrageous cases. But this involvement forced Lincoln to defy some of the leaders of his own party, and thereby the chances of Confederate victory were improved.
For the South needed to win no battles in order to gain its goal of independence; it merely had to endure until the North abandoned the struggle. It was not only that the rebels enjoyed the traditional military advantages of waging defensive war. The North had to learn how to come to an offensive spirit, and to maintain it despite the cost. If Northerners failed to find and to keep that spirit, or became unwilling to sustain the prosecution of the war regardless of the courses it took, then the capacity of Yankeedom to continue its crusade for the Union would vanish.
Whatever its defects, the Republican party, together with war Democrats like Stanton, formed the only group in the North committed to the reunification of the states at any cost. The Republican organization was young, faction-ridden, straining its seams from the conflicts over patronage and policy being waged by the ambitious men who were its leaders. Too many collisions over military policy between the party’s leaders and the President could crack the fragile structure beyond repair. If this occurred, then the South had won.
Like his party and the nation he served, Lincoln had no surpluses of power to dissipate in fruitless arguments between White House and Congress or between party leaders. Since the days of Andrew Jackson, Presidents of the United States had let slip the reins of leadership which that old warrior had held so firmly. Now in the midst of a shattering war Lincoln, like Stanton, had to repair the prestige of his office.
The War Department would inevitably be a source of strength to Lincoln in this essential need, or the cause of his failure, and with it the final collapse of the Union’s cause. Military victories or defeats reflected directly upon the untried President and his inharmonious party, for the nation, hazarding its future on the men in uniform, focused unwavering attention on the rapidly growing armies. Never since the days of Valley Forge had the destiny of America been so dependent upon its military power. What the War Department did, or failed to accomplish, was now a matter of moment to millions of Americans.
Already in this war, unlike the brief, cheap, simple conflict against Mexico fifteen years earlier, men from every loyal state were coming under arms, grain and cattle from midwestern farms and metals from Appalachian mines were being turned into food and guns in eastern factories, tens of thousands of draft animals were being purchased and shipped. A knowledgeable central authority was needed to assemble the men and supplies and to train the one to use the other, and then to move them to where they were needed. The new communications technology of the railroad, steamship, and telegraph could, if understood and exploited from Washington, provide a novel kind of mobility for the conduct of war.
But if civilian authorities did not retain control over this vast outpouring of a nation’s resources, if men in Washington did not learn how to direct the growing military might—already there were more soldiers than any earlier Americans had ever commanded—then democratic, civilian government in the North might collapse while seeking to crush the South. Great expenditures of money were necessarily involved. If army contracts were tainted with corruption, as had been occurring under Cameron, the soldiers would despair of the purposes for which Lincoln was asking them to die, and moral as well as fiscal bankruptcy could kill the Union forever.
For the same reasons, the President required of Stanton a better job in suppressing home-front subversion than anyone was presently performing. He had to have a subordinate in the war office who agreed with him that the question of the Negro required delicate balancing with the strategic problem of retaining the allegiance of the slaveholding border states and with the fact that most Northerners detested slavery in the abstract but bore no love for free blacks. Lincoln wanted a war minister who would keep in check army commanders who had a different opinion on this issue, so that any action on the Negro question could come from the White House when and if the President thought the time ripe.
Workable solutions to these problems had to be found quickly and applied with unrelenting strength yet with great sensitivity. Lincoln had simultaneously to infringe upon the civil liberties of a people unaccustomed to restraint and still retain enough popular support to win free elections. The mere wastage of time, the development of war-weariness in the North and of cynicism among Union troops, could give victory to the rebels, or degrade civilian authority in the North to a point where the war might as well be lost. In the last analysis the fate of the nation depended upon the ingenuity, skill, and determination of the President and his War Secretary in finding leaders, manpower, and materials for the battle fronts while maintaining unity on the home front. An adequate Secretary must lead the President yet obey him always; rule the Army while sustaining its commanders; and keep legislators and the public in support of Lincoln’s decisions.
A man of mediocre talents like Cameron had clearly been inadequate for this demanding role. Lacking will and insight, he could not create an effective partnership between his office, the White House, army headquarters, Capitol Hill, and state capitals. Ever the politician, he failed to do more than improvise where brave leaps were needed. Only if there had been no war might Cameron have been acceptable as Secretary of War.
Stanton realized that he was secretary of a war, and that the only way to victory was on the battlefield. “Instead of an army stuck in the mud of the Potomac,” he wrote privately to Dana, with whom he had established close relations and who would later become his assistant, “we should have … one hundred thousand men thrusting upon Nashville and sweeping rebellion & treason out of Kentucky with fire & sword.” The North had the human and productive resources needed to crush the rebels. What was lacking was the “military genius to command our armies.” The nation must realize that the job had barely begun: “We have had no war,” he told Dana two weeks after taking over; “we have not even been playing war.”1
But brave words were cheap, and could not overcome the black mood that hung over the North when Stanton took office. Informed Washingtonians feared European recognition of the Con
federacy and worried over the failing state of the nation’s finances. Stanton was an unknown quantity, and although many persons were relieved that Cameron was at last gone from the war office, they could not see that his successor could improve things substantially or in time.
The new Secretary of War refused to admit despair, and immediately set to work. Before any efforts he exerted could count, Stanton had to learn the tangled routines of the War Department. He was soon so busy at the task that he wrote Pamphila: “Ellen and I have not seen each other for days at a time.”2 Yet despite this preoccupation, or perhaps because of it, during the first, hectic days in the war office Stanton favorably impressed those who saw him. “Standing at his desk in an ante-room I found a very pleasant gentleman,… scrupulously neat in appearance, with heavy frame and immense black beard, an intelligent eye and business manner, he looked for all the world like the photographs which represent him. At a glance you knew him to be the Secretary of War,” wrote an admiring New York Times reporter. George Templeton Strong, treasurer of the United States Sanitary Commission, forerunner of the Red Cross, felt, after calling on Stanton, that at the lowest estimate he was worth “a wagon load of Camerons.” He was not a handsome man, thought Strong; in fact, he was “rather pigfaced”—a robust, “Luther-oid” type of man. Prompt, intelligent, earnest, and warmhearted, he was “the reverse in all things of his cunning, cold-blooded, selfish old predecessor.” At the moment Stanton was the most popular man in Washington. But, asked Strong, “will it last?”3
It did not last, for Stanton proved careless of his own popularity. But he was shrewd enough to exploit the indefinite boundaries of his position instead of being confused or restricted by them. His personal friendships among leading Democrats and prominent Republicans in Congress, and with McClellan, now paid dividends.
A few days before Stanton took office, he met with McClellan and trusted journalists at army headquarters. In an off-the-record interview Stanton promised to support him and Lincoln, carefully avoiding the question of policy differences between the two. Washingtonians remarked that the Secretary and the general were sometimes together from dawn to dusk. The relations between the two men were obviously cordial; and the New York Evening Press reported that “the one has unlimited confidence in the other.” McClellan thought that Stanton was his willing assistant who could warn him of radical plots. “They are counting on your death,” McClellan quoted Stanton as saying in this period, “and are already dividing up … your military goods and chattels.”4
At the same time Stanton began a close and lasting co-operation with the chairmen and members of radical-dominated congressional committees and with important individual legislators. He suggested to William D. Kelley, a potent representative from Pennsylvania, that they henceforth meet each morning to discuss pending legislation and future policy. On his crowded first day in office, Stanton made a friend of Wisconsin’s spectacular disloyalty hunter, John Fox Potter, whose House committee was claiming that the civil and military services were infested with secessionist sympathizers. Cameron had curtly refused even to receive Potter’s wild accusations and patronage nominations. Stanton invited Potter to call, and after going over the legislator’s bulging files, dismissed one officer and three clerks. Although Potter had accused more than fifty of disloyalty, he was delighted. As a result, Stanton was able to swerve the Potter Committee from its vendetta against the War Department, and thus eased the fearful hysteria among the officers and clerks. But Stanton did not hesitate to appoint to a clerkship a former Librarian of Congress, Pontius D. Stelle, who after thirty years of service had been discharged on unsupported allegations of disloyalty. As a frequent borrower from that library, Stanton knew the man and trusted him. Potter, who would have risen in a pyrotechnic display of outraged patriotic wrath had Cameron done this, said nothing.5
Stanton found other, more significant congressional allies in the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. Its most influential members—“Bluff Ben” Wade, a profane, barrel-chested senator whom Stanton had known in Ohio, intemperate Senator Zachariah Chandler, of Michigan, resolute Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, combative Brooklynite Moses Odell, the only Democrat besides Johnson on the committee, and fiery John Covode, of Pennsylvania—through their power of subpoena, could elicit information that he could not obtain himself, could scourge unfitness and cowardice, uncover fraud and waste, and probe the enigmatic workings of the military mind.
During Stanton’s first day in office the whole committee met with him. “We must strike hands,” he said to Chairman Wade, “and uniting our strength and thought, double the power of the government to suppress its enemies and restore its integrity.” Finding an eager ally in the new Secretary, the committee began to hold long and frequent sessions. Its members were sworn to secrecy, and as many of its transactions were not put on paper, much of what happened at its meetings will never be revealed. Stanton was a welcome attendant at many of its sessions. “The utmost confidence was exchanged,” Chandler wrote, “… and the files and records of the committee were constantly referred to and relied upon as sources of exceedingly useful knowledge at the White House and at the War Department.” Committeeman Julian was “delighted” with Stanton, “and had perfect confidence in his integrity, sagacity, and strong will.”6
Stanton’s shrewd public relations work with congressmen paid immediate dividends to the executive arm. Legislative impediments to needed appropriations, appointments, and policies lessened noticeably.
Forced by the needs of his position to work closely with the radical Republicans who controlled these committees, a man of Stanton’s impassioned nature could scarcely have remained uninfluenced by their determination to “get results” and their fiercely partisan attitude. Stanton soon actively aided Wade, who was uncertain of re-election by the Ohio legislature. The Secretary sent word back to Columbus that he and Lincoln would view Wade’s defeat “as a great national calamity.” Wade won, and Ohio political observers attributed a large part of his victory to Stanton’s support from Washington.
Wade, convinced of this, wrote appreciatively to William Stanton, remarking how “the political horizon has brightened” since Edwin had taken the helm. “I have no doubt,” Wade continued, “that his courage, and consummate statesmanship, will enable him to surmount all the difficulties of his position, crush out the rebellion, preserve the old Constitution, and defend the authority of the old flag throughout every State of the Union. This is something of a job, but of all the men I know he is the best calculated to perform it. He has the confidence of Congress and the whole country and he will never disappoint them.”7
Stanton’s success also depended, if to a lesser degree, upon the co-operation he could obtain from his cabinet colleagues, each of whom controlled blocks of political power and sought differing policies. He impressed Attorney General Edward Bates most favorably. Bates, the oldest member of the cabinet, slim of body but rugged of face, and a cautious logician, sized up the newcomer as “a man of mind and action.” To Halleck, who feared Stanton’s enmity, Bates wrote in praise of the new Secretary that he “will soon have matters moving with greater method & precision than heretofore, & moving with a rush.”
While Chase courted Stanton openly, the canny and cryptic Seward resorted to subtler methods. He seldom called at the War Department, but the Stantons were regularly invited to his frequent dinner parties, where he expounded his moderate views to the new Secretary while the two men lounged comfortably in his library, puffing on their after-dinner Havanas and sipping Seward’s vintage wines.
This association deluded and outraged Postmaster General Montgomery Blair, six feet tall, erect, a West Pointer turned lawyer, with a contriving mind fixed on stubborn purposes. Blair immediately questioned Stanton’s personal and political honesty, although he had so detested Cameron that he had vowed support to anyone who succeeded him. But Blair’s father, Frank P. Blair, Sr., once a member of President Jackson’s “kitchen cabinet,” now enjoying
the role of elder statesman, felt that when Cameron left the War Department he himself had been turned out.
The Blairs at first believed that Stanton was McClellan’s puppet. They later changed their tune. But their relations with Stanton never improved, and the women of the Blair family maintained a social ostracism against Ellen. Montgomery Blair publicly announced early in 1863 that he “did not speak to Mr. Stanton on business.” He accused Stanton of accepting bribes and said that he “would not be surprised to hear that he was in the pay of Jeff. Davis.” In another instance, Montgomery and Frank Blair, Jr., told General Patrick that “we will give it to Stanton someday”; and that Stanton was Seward’s tool.8
Stanton would have little personal or official connection with Caleb Smith, Secretary of the Interior. But he had to deal frequently with Navy Secretary Gideon Welles, a onetime Jacksonian Democrat and close friend of the Blair family, a former Connecticut editor, an honest, plain-spoken man, fearless, with the Puritan’s penchant for more readily discerning men’s faults than recognizing their virtues. Shy and unsocial, Welles toothsomely gossiped with himself during his leisure hours while recording his impressions of people and events in his voluminous and penetrating diary. Welles’s Olympian visage—a wig of long hair and a magnificent gray beard, thick eyebrows, and a commanding nose—caused Lincoln, out of his hearing, to call him “Father Neptune,” just as he would come to call Stanton “Mars.”
When Stanton entered the cabinet, Welles, although respecting Stanton’s ability, suspected that Stanton had been predisposed against him by political rivals and disgruntled contractors who had put Welles under fire from the press, and he grew to regard Stanton with as great personal aversion as did Blair. Stanton soon stirred Welles’s bile by acting as though the Navy were merely an adjunct of the Army. After one or two incautious assaults that left him somewhat chopfallen, Stanton side-stepped the peppery old shellback whenever he could.
Stanton Page 21