Stanton authorized McCallum to superintend the loadings and the movement to Washington. From Washington to Jeffersonville, Garrett would be in charge. Scott would proceed to Louisville and manage the movement from there on. All army personnel were to obey the railroad officials. It was agreed that an order authorizing Hooker to take military possession of all railroads and equipment necessary to the operation, as provided for by Congress under Stanton’s instigation, should go out in Lincoln’s name. By nightfall the railroad men had separated to take up their assigned tasks.
Orders from Stanton began flashing over the military telegraph. By 5 p.m. on September 25, less than forty-eight hours after Dana’s message had reached Stanton, the first trains were chugging through Washington. At eleven the next morning, Stanton learned that the first three trains, of more than 60 cars, carrying 2,000 men, had reached Martinsburg in good order. Nine more trains with nearly 5,000 men had passed the Relay House, thirty miles north of Washington, and swung onto the B & O’s main line. Stanton sent “a thousand thanks” to the railroad men, and added: “If there is no hitch in the west all will go well, I hope.”
By the morning of September 27, 12,600 men, 33 cars of artillery, and 21 cars of baggage and horses had passed through Washington, and the first four trains had reached Benwood, across the mountains, 412 miles away. No time was lost in crossing the river, for instead of using ferries, railroad personnel and soldiers built a bridge of scows and barges so that the troops could march across.
Stanton heard that the station agent at Grafton had received an order to hold a troop train until General Carl Schurz arrived. The Secretary dashed off a torrid wire to Schurz: “Major-General Hooker has the orders of the Department to … put under arrest any officer who undertakes to delay or interfere with the orders and regulations of the railroad officers in charge of the transportation of troops.” The trains continued to move.
At 10 p.m. on the twenty-seventh, Stanton wired Scott at Louisville: “The whole force, except 3,300 of the Twelfth Corps, is now moving. The number will exceed 20,000.” Stanton granted Scott’s request to change the gauge of the Louisville & Lexington Railroad, and Scott impressed 8,000 Negroes and put them to work tearing up and resetting rails. The chugging caravan now extended from the Rapidan to the Ohio; the trains were carrying 20 per cent more men and 50 per cent more horses than the requisitions called for.
Not a single delay occurred until the trains reached Indianapolis. There the troops had to be detrained and reloaded because of the different gauge of the Jeffersonville Railroad. They had also exhausted their rations by this time; so during the stopover they paused for a hot meal. It meant a loss of six hours. Nevertheless, by September 29 trains were arriving and departing regularly at Louisville. At ten-thirty the next night the first troops arrived at Bridgeport. Seven days had elapsed since Stanton had put the operation in motion. Less than three days later, more than 20,000 men, 10 batteries of artillery with their horses and ammunition, and 100 cars of baggage had safely covered the 1,200 miles to Bridgeport. The first fifty miles, to Washington, had been over a railroad completely wrecked the previous autumn; the B & O, repeatedly torn up by the Confederates, had been partially rebuilt time and again; the two railroads spanning the last three hundred miles had often been disrupted by Confederate raiders under Morgan and Forrest. Stanton wired Scott at Louisville: “Your work is most brilliant. A thousand thanks. It is a great achievement.”
Behind the troop trains came another puffing caravan carrying the necessary camp and field equipment for the two army corps—wagons, horses, mules, tents, baggage, supplies of every sort. Stanton urged Garrett not to relax until this movement had also been completed. Although Confederate forces belatedly raided the railroad, thereby causing some delay, all the supply trains came through safely, and Hooker informed Stanton: “If you projected the late movement … you may justly claim the merit of having saved Chattanooga to us.”
Stanton had indeed performed one of the great feats of the war and was justly proud of his achievement. Sure that Hooker’s troops would only have languished in Virginia, where Meade showed no disposition to attack, he had moved them to a position where they could render real service. Stanton sent Meigs to Chattanooga to solve the supply problem, providing him with what Meigs described as “the fullest powers & more money & means of war at my command … than any other man since Napoleon,” with “no other instructions than to … help this thing through & he would put his name at the bottom of a sheet of paper & I might write over what I would.” In a telegram to Meigs, Stanton jibed at the lethargic Meade: “ ‘All quiet on the Potomac’ Nothing to disturb autumnal slumbers.… All public interest is now concentrated on the Tennessee and at Chattanooga.”23
Though Stanton had averted catastrophe at Chattanooga, Rosecrans’s situation continued to be perilous. He could not be overwhelmed by superior forces, but he had many more mouths to feed. The Confederates planted guns on Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain, heights dominating the city. Their batteries commanded the river. All the Union supplies had to be brought in from Bridgeport under rebel harassment, by back roads winding through the mountains, where horses often floundered belly-deep in mud. The undernourished animals became too weak to pull the wagons; troops went on half rations.
Dana reported grave unrest among Rosecrans’s officers. He deemed the removal of Crittenden and McCook to be imperative, and suggested that if Rosecrans was to be replaced, some western general “of high rank and great prestige like Genl. Grant for instance,” rather than an Easterner, should be put in command. Three days later he reported that George Thomas’s conduct in the late battle had won him the highest esteem, “and should there be a change in the chief command, there is no other man whose appointment would be so welcome to this army.”
Stanton obtained an order from Lincoln removing Crittenden and McCook and ordering them to Indianapolis for a court of inquiry, which, despite fears that these two officers were to be made the sacrificial goats for Rosecrans’s failure, exonerated them both. Replying to Dana’s telegram, Stanton stated that he held Thomas in high regard, “and I wish you to tell him so. It is not my fault that he was not in chief command months ago.” Thomas, however, sent word confidentially to Dana that he did not want it, from fear that a promotion would appear to be a result of intrigue against Rosecrans. But Dana reported that Rosecrans was definitely losing his grip: “There is no system in the use of his busy days and restless nights.” He deemed the army “very unsafe” in Rosecrans’s hands, prophesying that “catastrophe is close upon us.” Unless communications could be opened within a fortnight, the army would be obliged to abandon the city or starve.24
Stanton blew up. “The tycoon of the War Department is on the war path,” Hay confided to a friend; “his hands are red and smoking with the scalping of Rosey.… Prenez Garde.” But Stanton’s temper soon turned to more constructive channels.
Dana’s warning that Rosecrans might abandon Chattanooga brought about a hasty consultation between Lincoln, Stanton, and Halleck. An order flashed to Grant, at Cairo, to go at once to Louisville, where an officer from the War Department would meet him with instructions. Stanton was soon rocketing westward on a special train; the engineer had orders to throw the throttle wide open, and dishes crashed off the tables when the train took the mountain curves. Fearing that the careening cars might leave the tracks, an army officer yanked the bell cord for the engineer to slow down, but Stanton ordered the high speed maintained.
Arriving at Indianapolis, Stanton learned that the Louisville train, with Grant on board, was just about to pull out. He ordered it held, and hurrying down the long platform, he swung onto the last car. Grant greeted him cordially; the two men had never met before, and the general was still in the dark about why he had been sent for.
Stanton handed Grant two orders signed by Lincoln and told him he could accept whichever he preferred. Both orders put Grant in command of a new Military Division of the Mississippi, comprisin
g all the Union armies west of the Allegheny Mountains except Banks’s command in the southwest. One left the department commanders as they were; the other assigned Thomas to Rosecrans’s place. Grant took the one replacing Rosecrans.
After a brief rest at the Galt House in Louisville, Stanton and Grant continued their conversations through the next day. The Grants went out that evening, and Stanton, feeling ill, retired to his room. He had caught cold the night before, and suffered from an immediate resurgence of his asthmatic complaint, which plagued him in an aggravated form for the rest of his life.
A messenger interrupted his troubled sleep with a telegram from Dana: Rosecrans had decided to abandon Chattanooga. Stanton became highly agitated and began a frantic search for Grant, bidding guests and employees of the hotel to send the general to him at once if they encountered him.
Grant returned about eleven o’clock, receiving Stanton’s message from everyone he met while approaching the hotel. He hurried to Stanton’s room and was inwardly amused to see the nervous, bearded Secretary clad in a low-reaching nightgown. Stanton read Grant the dispatch from Dana and declared that the retreat must be prevented. Grant immediately wired Thomas to take command at Chattanooga and to hold on at all costs. Thomas answered promptly: “We will hold the town till we starve.”25
Rosecrans later charged that his removal from command was the result of a plot inspired by Stanton, of the sort he believed had cut off the careers of McClellan and Burnside. The evidence against this is convincing. General James B. Steedman stated that Stanton’s only animus against Rosecrans was that the general was “a damned coward” at Chickamauga, but that the Secretary had supported Rosecrans up to that time. After the war, General James A. Garfield, of Rosecrans’s staff, confided that Rosecrans had been seeking access more to the White House than to the enemy. “If the President hunters had left him alone,” Garfield wrote, “he might have been at the head of our armies today but in the fatal summer of 1863 he was enveloped in clouds of incense—& visions of the Presidency were constantly thrust before him.… Certain it is that the War Department was ready to find fault with him from that time forward.” Dana recalled that although Stanton no longer trusted Rosecrans, he never pressed for his removal. Lincoln made that decision; though Stanton was in favor of it.26
Five exhausting days after he had left Washington, Stanton telegraphed Watson: “I expect to leave for home tomorrow,… I will not make as quick time returning as I did coming here.” His exertions had sapped his strength, and Stanton had to seek rest. He spent Thanksgiving Day in Steubenville with his mother, now nearing seventy, his son Edwin, and his sister Pamphila, who was shocked at his appearance and, remembering how her husband, Wolcott, had worked himself to death as Stanton’s assistant, warned him to guard his health. He answered that were he to collapse, a hundred men could fill his place who might do better. Talk of his indispensability angered him, for it was not only untrue but insulting to others.
Meanwhile Grant, reinforced by Sherman’s troops and with the supply problem well in hand, sent Bragg’s army reeling southward from Chattanooga in defeat.27 The Confederates had made Grant’s task easier by sending part of their besieging force under Longstreet to fall on Burnside at Knoxville. With Chattanooga liberated, Burnside, in his turn, was hemmed in. But when Grant sent Sherman to relieve him, Longstreet drew off toward the Virginia border. The Union forces now had an unshakable hold on most of eastern Tennessee, owing largely to Stanton’s strategic shifting of troops and his championship of Grant.
Though the Union victory at Chattanooga came too late to influence the autumn state elections, Republicans, campaigning under the name of the National Union party in order to attract the votes of loyal Democrats, found that wherever the outcome seemed uncertain the War Department threw its weight behind Union candidates. Stanton granted furloughs so that troops from doubtful states could go home and vote. In Maryland, provost marshals guarded the polls, forced prospective voters to take a state-drawn test oath, over the protests of Democratic Governor Bradford, and arrested some objectors; but it was clear enough that only Democrats suffered interference from the military.
In Delaware, New York, Kentucky, and Tennessee furloughed regiments arrived home in time to cast ballots, and to assert by their presence and comments that Democrats were akin to traitors. Provost marshals in Tennessee instigated a “get out the vote” campaign, stating that civilians who did not vote were explicitly denying the sovereignty of their nation and state. As voters had to swear to a rigid state oath of past loyalty, Tennessee Democrats, many of whom had supported the Confederacy in one way or another, were caught in a trap. They could neither ignore the election nor safely vote against Republican candidates.
The Midwest was the area of greatest concern. Reports of plots by copperhead societies to make the elections a signal for revolution came from Indiana’s Governor Morton and others. At the request of Morton, Stanton granted General Lew Wallace and other Hoosier officers leave to make speeches in Indiana. Pennsylvania’s Governor Curtin had ruffled Stanton no end, but the War Secretary helped to elect him by authorizing furloughs for several Keystone regiments.28
Midway in the campaign a scandal involving Stanton threatened to swing California into the Democratic column. The Supreme Court, deciding a case initiated by Stanton five years before, had found the New Almaden Company’s title to its California mining lands to be “utterly fraudulent.” The company, however, was continuing to occupy and work the properties, which, by reason of the decision of the court, belonged to the government.
Without fully examining the merits of the case, Lincoln immediately sent his close friend Leonard Swett to California armed with a writ authorizing the U.S. marshal to seize the mine and to use federal troops if resistance should be encountered. It was also decided that the government would lease the repossessed mine to the Quicksilver Mining Company. The matter began to smell bad.
Not only had Stanton taken action to dispossess the New Almaden claimants during his sojourn in California, but he had also been employed afterward by the Quicksilver Mining Company to represent it in a case before the Supreme Court. Now the Quicksilver Mining Company seemed likely to acquire the New Almaden properties. Men high in government, including Swett himself, were said to own Quicksilver stock, and Stanton was rumored to have been the person who obtained the writ of dispossession against the New Almaden Company; for this accusation no proof was ever adduced.
Republican prospects in the California gubernatorial election dimmed. Friends of the administration, however, claimed that Lincoln had been misled by his advisers or by financially interested persons, and pointed out that as soon as he had been undeceived he had taken steps to correct his error. Perhaps the political repercussions had been more frightening than the actual situation warranted, for the Republican candidate for governor was overwhelmingly triumphant.29
Most of Stanton’s attention during the campaign, however, was centered on his native state of Ohio. John Brough, the Union candidate for governor, was opposed by the blatant copperhead agitator Vallandigham, who had made his way to Canada and was now campaigning from there. The real question at issue was whether the pivotal state of Ohio was willing to support the further prosecution of the war.
Stanton realized the crucial nature of the Ohio contest. He felt sure that the Army detested copperheads, and arranged for Ohio troops to vote in the field and for War Department clerks to go home on leave with free railroad passes. With the returns counted, Dana wired from Grant’s headquarters that Ohio soldiers, almost 40,000 of them, had voted almost unanimously for Brough, who won by more than 100,000 votes. Union candidates took 29 of 34 seats in the state senate and 73 of 97 in the house.
And Stanton was especially pleased that Steubenville’s “Bloody Fourth Ward,” traditionally Democratic, had gone Union, and that on election night crowds had cheered for Lincoln and Stanton and christened the electoral district “Stanton’s Ward.” He wrote to an old friend there: “I
am proud of my native town, and rejoice that the enemies of my country have been so signally rebuked.” His own efforts during the critical summer and autumn of 1863 had in large part made possible the victories in battle and in the balloting.
Elsewhere the Union ticket swept to victory in a smashing reversal of the results of 1862, carrying every loyal state except New Jersey. Unblushingly using the power of the War Department on behalf of Union candidates, Stanton had helped bring about a stunning victory on the home front. When lame-duck Democrats in Congress tried to carry through a law forbidding military officers from interfering in civil elections and a censure resolution against Stanton for using military power at the polls to overawe opposition, he had no excuses, no explanations, no justifications to make. The proposed law and the censure attempt failed.30 Most important to Stanton, the election results were in.
1 O.R., XXV, pt. 2, 148, 269–70, 300–1, 351, 435; Morse, Welles Diary, I, 293–4; A. E. H. Johnson, “Reminiscences of the Hon. Edwin M. Stanton,” loc. cit., 76–7; William O. Stoddard, Jr. (ed.), Lincoln’s Third Secretary: The Memoirs of William O. Stoddard (New York, 1955), 173.
2 O.R., XXV, pt. 2, 437–8, 449, 504–6; XLV, 18; May 24, 1863, Hitchcock diary, William A. Croffut Papers, LC; Lincoln, Works, VI, 282; Chase to Hooker, May 23, 1863, Chase Papers, 2d ser., LC.
3 O.R., XXV, pt. 2, 567; XXVII, pt. 1, 47–8; pt. 2, 567; XXVIII, pt. 3, 54–5, 76–7; Morse, Welles Diary, I, 328–30; Stanton to Capt. Ferguson, June 13, 1863, R. T. Lincoln Papers, LC; same to Gen. Couch, June 12, 1863, Letterbook II, Stanton MSS; Lincoln, Works, VI, 298; Kamm, op. cit., 150–3.
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