Stanton

by Benjamin P. Thomas

  4 O.R., XXVII, pt. 1, 60–1; XLIII, 71; June 17, 1863, Patrick ms diary, LC; George S. Boutwell in Allen Thorndike Rice (ed.), Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time (New York, 1888), 128; Benjamin, “Hooker’s Appointment and Removal,” in Battles and Leaders, III, 241.

  5 Morse, Welles Diary, I, 348–9; Gorham, Stanton, II, 101; Chase to David Dudley, June 30, 1863, Chase Papers, LC; Hooker to C. A. Stetson, July 4, 1863, autograph file, and Barnett to Barlow, June 19, 1863, Barlow Papers, HU; April 2, 1867, Bigelow ms diary, NYPL.

  6 O.R., XXVII, pt. 1, 69–73; pt. 3, 504, 510, 519, 521; Stanton to Surgeon General W. A. Hammond, July 3, 1863, Letterbook II, Stanton MSS; Welles, Diary, I, 357.

  7 Stanton to James A. Hardie, July 5, 1863, Hardie Papers, LC; New York Herald, July 8, 1863, has Stanton’s speech; Morse, Welles Diary, I, 365–71, on cabinet reaction to events.

  8 Stanton to A. K. McClure, July 22, 1863, Letterbook II, Stanton MSS; July 13, Oct. 30, 1863, Patrick ms diary, LC; Watson in O.R., XXVII, pt. 1, 92–4; pt. 3, 552–3; Dana to James S. Pike, July 29, 1863, CFL.

  9 O.R., XX, pt. 2, 306; XXIII, pt. 2, 111, 138; Lincoln, Works, VI, 138–9; Jan. 3, 1863, Patrick ms diary, LC.

  10 Lincoln, Works, VI, 377–8; O.R., XXIII, pt. 2, 518, 592, 601–2; XXX, pt. 3, 110; Andrews, op. cit., 438.

  11 N. G. Onleen to Stanton, Dec. 22, 1869, and Stanton to Buckingham, March 21, 1863, Letterbook I, Stanton MSS; Hesseltine, War Governors, 320; A. K. McClure, Abraham Lincoln and Men of Wartimes (Philadelphia, 1892), 241–2 (cited hereafter as McClure, Lincoln).

  12 Vallandigham to Stanton, June 26, 1848, Stanton MSS, on the loan. Stanton’s habeas corpus order, May 13, 1863, is in the R. T. Lincoln Papers, LC. Other data in Klement, op. cit., 87–97; Lincoln, Works, VI, 215; O.R., ser. 2, V, 657.

  13 Bates to Stanton, Jan. 31, 1863, Jan. 19, 1864, Stanton MSS; Lieber to B. J. Lossing, April 21, 1863, Lieber Papers, LC; Lieber’s memo on habeas corpus, HL; Watson to Holt, May 13, 1863, Holt Papers, LC.

  14 Morse, Welles Diary, I, 286; O.R., ser. 3, II, 936–41, has Draper’s report; U.S., AGO, General Orders Affecting the Volunteer Force, 1861–4 (Washington, 1864), II, 120–1, has Draper’s orders; and see Hyman, op. cit., 165–6.

  15 Minute of the War Council, Jan. 1, 1863, Stanton MSS; L. D. Ingersoll, A History of the War Department of the United States (Washington, 1879), 348–07; Gerald I. Jordon, The Suspension of Habeas Corpus as a War Time Political Control Technique (Ph.D. thesis, UCLA, 1941). Note that each field army, except Sherman’s, had a provost marshal organization independent of Fry’s. But as combat units became occupation troops, field army provosts performed enrollment services for the PMG Bureau.

  16 Hooker to Stanton, July 7, 1863, Stanton MSS; Whiting to Stanton, June 6, 1863, Policy Book, 7, RG 110, NA; Porter to mother, March 16, May 17, 1863, Porter Papers, LC; Stanton to E. D. Morgan, July 17, 1863, NYHS; O.R., ser. 3, III, 166–7, 612–13.

  17 Dana to James S. Pike, Aug. 18, 1863, CFL; O.R., XXVII, pt. 2, 886–93, 915–21; Morse, Welles Diary, I, 399; Gorham, Stanton, II, 111–12; Stoddard, op. cit., 182–90; Irving Werstein, July, 1863 (New York, 1957).

  18 O.R., XL, pt. 3, 345; Forbes to Andrew, Nov. 24, 1863, Andrew Papers, MHS; Gorham, Stanton, II, 109–12; Hesseltine, War Governors, 297–304; Jack F. Leach, Conscription in the United States: Historical Background (Rutland, 1952).

  19 Bodine, op. cit., 376; Stanton to Eckert, Sept. 1, and same to Prof. B. F. Lang, Sept. 20, 1863, Stanton MSS; Lincoln, Works, VI, 436.

  20 Grant to Dana, Aug. 5, 1863, Dana MS, Ac. 2603, LC; Dana’s reminiscence in ANJ (Jan. 1, 1870), 310.

  21 Dana to Stanton, Sept. 8, 9, 20–3, and Rosecrans to Halleck, Sept. 20, 1863, Stanton MSS; Dana, Recollections, 106–7; Lincoln, Works, VI, 474–5; Kamm, op. cit., 164; George G. Meade, Life and Public Services of George Gordon Meade (New York, 1913), II, 150; Andrews, op. cit., 469–70.

  22 O.R., XXIX, pt. 1, 146–7; Stanton to Dana, Sept. 24, 1863, Stanton MSS; Hay, Diaries and Letters, 93; Chase, Diary, 201–3; A. E. H. Johnson in New York Evening Post, Feb. 13, 1887; Bates, op. cit., 172–82.

  23 Meigs to his father, Oct. 27, 1863, Meigs Papers, LC; O.R., XXIX, pt. 1, 149–53, 161–2, 167–9, 187–8; pt. 3, 871; XXX, pt. 4, 78, 291. George Edgar Turner, Victory Rode the Rails (Indianapolis, 1953), 289–94, disposes of the argument that Chase should be credited with the train-lift idea.

  24 Dana to Stanton, Sept. 27, 30, Nov. 8, 10, 16, 1863, Stanton MSS; Anson McCook to George McCook, Oct. 8, 1863, owned by Mrs. McCook Knox.

  25 U. S. Grant, Personal Memoirs (New York, 1886), II, 17–27 (cited hereafter as Grant, Memoirs); Hay to Miles [O’Reilly], Oct. 24, 1863, Hay Papers, LC; A. E. H. Johnson in New York Evening Post, Feb. 13, 1887.

  26 Stanton to Halleck, Oct. 20, 1863, NYHS; Smith, Garfield, II, 845–85, and Rosecrans to Dana, ca. 1882, Dana Papers, LC, on Rosecrans’s accusations. Steedman’s reminiscence in Cincinnati Commercial, Nov. 20, 1879; Garfield to Young, March 31, 1867, John Russell Young Papers, LC; Chase to Garfield, Aug. 17, 1863, Chase Papers, LC; and Dana in ANJ (Jan. 1, 1870), 310, offer other data.

  27 Dana, Recollections, 151–2; Wolcott MS, 193; O.R., XXXI, pt. 1, 666, 684, 728; ser. 3, III, 910; Stanton to Dana, Oct. 22, 1863, Stanton MSS.

  28 O.R., XXIX, pt. 2, 394, 470; XXX, pt. 3, 722, 738; pt. 4, 31–2, 57; ser. 3, III, 967–81; Hesseltine, War Governors, 312, 321–3, 336–9; Gen. Robert Schenck, To the Loyal People of Maryland (n.p., n.d.), 1–2; Stewart Mitchell, Horatio Seymour of New York (Cambridge, 1938), 346–7; Report on Tennessee, Citizens File, Box 77, RG 109, NA.

  29 Leonard Ascher, “Lincoln’s Administration and the New Almaden Mine Scandal,” PHR, V, 38–51.

  30 Report [No. 14] of the Committee on Military Affairs on Bill [Senate No. 37] to Prevent Military Officers from Interfering in State Elections, Sen. Exec. Docs. 14, 29, 38th Cong., 1st sess.; Doyle, op. cit., 205; Hesseltine, War Governors, 335.

  CHAPTER XIV

  TRAMPLED BY THE HOOF OF WAR

  WITH Bragg’s army driven off, the energetic Grant renewed his proposal to attack Mobile and then to use that city as a base to bring the remainder of Mississippi and part of Alabama and Georgia under Union control. He argued that the winter weather would enable him to hold his present line in eastern Tennessee with a minimum of troops, and that only by sending large numbers of men from northern Virginia could the Confederates hope to check his advance. If they did this, then the Army of the Potomac could crush a weakened Lee. The plan was the only one that could be carried out during the winter, and it might end the rebellion by spring.

  At the White House, Halleck insisted that any weakening of Grant’s forces in Tennessee would enable Longstreet to take Knoxville, Cumberland Gap, or some other strategic point. Stanton and Dana, advocating immediate approval of Grant’s idea, felt that any Confederate pressure in the West could be overmatched if the Army of the Potomac in the East moved on Lee. But none of them, they acknowledged, trusted Meade to move in; he seemed to Stanton to be always “on the back track … without a fight.” They thought of Sherman or William F. Smith to succeed Meade.

  Lincoln hesitated, mindful of the possible resentment of the Army of the Potomac toward another interference from Washington, yet, as Garfield confided to Rosecrans, the President and Stanton were “immensely disgusted with the late operations of the Army of the Potomac.” Finally Lincoln shelved Grant’s plan because of lack of confidence in Meade and hesitancy in removing him, and the Union armies went into winter quarters. Grant moved his headquarters to Nashville, where big things were in store for him.

  On February 29, 1864, Stanton flashed Grant the news that Lincoln had named him lieutenant general, a rank, in the history of American arms, enjoyed only by Washington and conferred by special brevet on Scott but now revived by Congress. Three days later he directed Grant to report to Washington to take command of all the Union armies.

  In backing him, Stanton clearly was not acting as a servant
of the radical leaders. From all that he knew of Grant’s views on the Negro issue Stanton could be sure only that he and the general agreed with Lincoln that in order to win the war, the strength of black men must be added to the Union effort and denied to the Confederacy. But far more important to Stanton was his conviction that Grant was a fighting general.

  On March 9, in a short ceremony at the White House, Grant received his commission from Lincoln in the presence of the cabinet and a few high-ranking officers. Halleck became chief of staff, in which capacity he would serve as a channel of communication and co-ordinator between Grant and the War Department on the one hand and the department commanders on the other, thus relieving Grant of paper work and Stanton of the need to oversee a thousand details of military administration. As one of Grant’s subordinates, C. B. Comstock, commented: “… the programme is, Halleck here as office man & military adviser, Sherman to take Grant’s place, McPherson Sherman’s, Grant in the field.” This arrangement, which Stanton helped to work out, gave to the Union a command system superior to anything theretofore achieved in modern war.1

  Grant had planned to make his headquarters in the West, but he soon agreed with Lincoln and Stanton that his proper place was with the Army of the Potomac. Meanwhile the Committee on the Conduct of the War continued to urge the removal of Meade. But now, having entrusted Grant with the supreme command, the civilian leaders wished to give him a free hand. Grant persuaded Stanton to keep hands off, and asked Meade to stay. With Meade as the tactical commander and Grant close by to determine strategy and spur him into action, the Army of the Potomac hereafter would perform effectively.

  Lincoln and Grant between them worked out a broad strategic plan. Grant, with Meade directing the Army of the Potomac, would harry Lee relentlessly, always trying for a death grip. Sigel would push up the Shenandoah Valley and approach Richmond from the West, while Butler, advancing on it from Fort Monroe, would snarl the railroads from the South, thus severing Lee’s supply lines and blocking his escape route. In the West, Sherman would drive for Atlanta, pommeling Bragg’s old army, now under Johnston, and wasting Georgia’s resources, while Banks, taking off from New Orleans, would carry out Grant’s unfulfilled design of reducing Mobile and then push northward to join Sherman. The strategy of concerted attack which Lincoln had sought to employ from the beginning was in effect at last.

  Stanton threw all the power of the War Department behind the gigantic undertaking. Manpower was again a matter of foremost concern and was more acute because the terms of the men who had enlisted for three years at the outset of the war would expire at almost the precise time that the big spring drive had been scheduled to get under way. These veterans now constituted the hard core of the Union forces, and Stanton doubted whether the war could be won without them. So while calling on the loyal governors to stimulate voluntary enlistments and ordering a new draft designed to bring a total of one million men under arms, he also offered every possible inducement to these seasoned troops to re-enlist—a federal bounty of $400 plus whatever a man’s town, county, and state might be offering, a thirty-day furlough, a trim chevron designating a soldier as “a veteran volunteer,” and the right of a regiment to keep its old number and organizational standing provided three fourths of the outfit signed up.

  When a veteran regiment had obtained the necessary number of re-enlistments, it would parade smartly through the camps, flags flying, band blaring some patriotic air, and marching men and bystanders bursting into a roar of cheers. Under the contagion of this enthusiasm, and from their own consciousness of their indispensability, 136,000 battle-hardened troops joined up again to see the war through to the end, and Stanton could take satisfaction in having brought the government through one of its hardest tests.2

  The War Department was a place of unceasing organized confusion as its orders assembled in Virginia and in the West huge quantities of weapons, rations, and medical stores; and great amounts of horses, mules, wagons, railroad iron, cars, locomotives, bridge timber, telegraph cable, and war materials of every sort. Stanton worked without letup through the early months of 1864, ignoring the wild rumors of quarrels between himself, Halleck, and Grant.

  Such reports, Halleck assured Sherman, “are all ‘bosh.’ ” He, Grant, and Stanton were working in efficient harmony. The commanding general kept away from Washington, drilling officers and troops, while Halleck and Stanton dealt with “the rascally politicians and shoddy contractors.” Hay agreed that “the stories of Grant’s quarreling with the Secretary of War are gratuitous lies. Grant quarrels with no one.” And Grant wrote to Lincoln on May 1, with the big push about to begin: “From my first entrance into the volunteer service of the country to the present day I have never had cause of complaint, never have expressed or implied a complaint against the administration or the Secretary of War for throwing any embarrassment in the way of my vigorously prosecuting what appeared to be my duty. Indeed, since the promotion which placed me in command of all the armies, and in view of the great responsibility and importance of success, I have been astonished at the readiness with which everything asked for has been yielded, without even an explanation being asked. Should my success be less than I desire and expect, the least I can say is, the fault is not with you.” It was a far different tone from that continually sounded by McClellan, Buell, and Rosecrans.

  But already a hitch had developed. In April, Banks had moved up the Red River, expecting to win a quick victory and then move on Mobile. But he mismanaged the campaign so flagrantly and took such a drubbing that his army could be expected to be of little use for some time. Grant wired that Banks should be removed, and Stanton agreed. But Banks was Lincoln’s personal friend and had the strongest kind of support in Congress, in the cabinet, and in Northern political circles as well. If Grant made the removal of Banks a matter of absolute military necessity and suggested the precise boundaries that a replacement would command, the President would act. Stanton would support Grant as soon as the general made his desires clear.

  Grant recommended that Canby, Stanton’s onetime aide, take command of Union troops in the southwest, with Banks having charge of New Orleans. Stanton added his approval to this proposition, and Lincoln issued the order. The new team was working.3

  It had shaken down barely in time. On May 4, Stanton announced that Grant had crossed the Rapidan and was advancing on Lee; Sherman had started to attack Johnston from Chattanooga; a third army was ready to start the next day.

  Now began the tense waiting period, which Stanton most hated and which in the past had always presaged disaster for his beloved Army of the Potomac. He had done all he could; now it was up to Grant.

  Lee melted away from the Rapidan, waited for Grant’s army to enter the tangled, wooded region to the south of the river known as the Wilderness, and then struck viciously. The military telegraph to the War Department fell ominously, shatteringly quiet. It was as though the Wilderness had swallowed up Grant’s army.

  Tension mounted and strained at Stanton’s nerves. Hitchcock noticed “that, in reaching for a piece of paper, his fingers showed a nervous tremor that I had never observed before,” and wondered, as Stanton must have wondered, whether Grant, like McClellan, Hooker, Burnside, and Meade, had failed.

  Then, on Friday evening, May 6, a message flashed in to the War Department from Union Mills, about twenty miles out of Washington. Henry Wing, a nineteen-year-old correspondent for the New York Tribune, wanted to communicate with Dana; Stanton took over at the end of the wire. Wing reported that he had just come from the battlefield, barely evading rebel cavalrymen, and wanted permission to wire a report of the battle to the Tribune. Stanton ordered him to divulge his information to the War Department. Wing refused to do so unless he was allowed to send his message to the newspaper. Wild with anxiety, Stanton threatened to arrest him.

  Lincoln came in. “Ask him if he will talk with the President,” he told the operator. Wing agreed to tell Lincoln all he knew provided he could send one hundre
d words to the Tribune. Lincoln consented to this condition and told the young reporter to put his message on the wire. Meanwhile, Stanton sent a special locomotive for him.

  Wing arrived at Washington shortly after 2 a.m. and was brought at once to the White House. Lincoln and the anxious cabinet members learned only that both armies had suffered terrible slaughter. When Wing left the battlefield at the end of the first day, the outcome had still been doubtful, but he brought a message to Lincoln from Grant. “He told me to tell you, Mr. President,” said Wing, “that there would be no turning back.” Lincoln threw his arms around the boy and kissed him. He and Stanton visibly relaxed. The specter of a repetition of past sacrifices which had accomplished nothing was at last dissipated.

  Two days later the first official reports arrived from the front. The battle had been a draw, but Grant, unlike all his predecessors in command of Union forces in Virginia, was still driving southward. Another bloody battle took place at Spotsylvania Court House, and Grant wired that “the result up to this time is very much in our favor.” He would continue the campaign “if it takes all summer.”

  As Grant’s messages arrived, Stanton relayed them to the country, ostensibly as reports to Dix in New York, although he gave them directly to the Associated Press. This innovation in public relations proved beneficent. Not even the endless casualty lists which followed Grant’s reports dampened the general enthusiasm in the North or seriously unsettled business confidence.

  Then fighting stopped as an unceasing downpour made organized movement impossible for five days. Grant assured Lincoln and Stanton that “the elements alone have suspended hostilities and that it is in no manner due to weakness or exhaustion on our part.” The army was in the best of spirits and confident of success. Grant was grateful for the unfailing flow of men and supplies which had come to him from Washington. Stanton glowed with happiness, his secretary recalled, and the “fretfulness and impatience” which had so marked his behavior during the past three years lessened amazingly.