Stanton

by Benjamin P. Thomas

  Patrick now complained to New York’s congressmen, who were unable even to see Stanton. Grumbling about the “systematic abuse” he was suffering, Patrick had to give up the unequal contest, for it was clear that army officers who supported McClellan were not going to get a fair hearing from the Department.22

  Force was not the only weapon in Stanton’s election battery. He assigned General John G. Barnard to write for the newspapers a history of the Peninsular campaign which would smear McClellan. The Secretary kept close watch over Barnard’s work, making frequent and trenchant comments, and encouraged General Wool to take to the pen on a similar theme, to place McClellan’s “generalship in a true light.”

  Six days before the election, Stanton ordered several commanders to furlough home all troops from crucial states who were in hospitals or otherwise unfit for the field but who could travel. Illinois, like Indiana, had made no provision for her soldiers to cast their ballots in the field. For the Republicans to lose Lincoln’s home state would be worse than a military defeat. So entire regiments were furloughed home; troops jammed trains from the Mississippi to the Atlantic. Dana recalled that “all the power and influence of the War Department … were employed to secure the re-election of Mr. Lincoln.”23

  News came to Stanton that Governor Seymour, “under a specious pretext,” intended to order out the New York National Guard to supervise the polls on election day. Stanton suspected a plot to intimidate Republican voters. He immediately wired Grant to send “loyal, suitable officers” with adequate troops to reinforce Dix. “Western men should be sent if possible,” he added, and Butler, who though a drawback in the field knew how to cow a city, might well accompany them.

  Grant sent Butler to see Stanton, and the Secretary confided his fears to the general. Dix aspired to be governor of New York, he said, and would not act tough in a crisis. He did not want to displace his old friend, but he would feel better with Butler there, ostensibly under Dix’s command. Butler accepted the assignment, and detachments from his Army of the James embarked for New York. A few days later Butler sent Stanton a dispatch stating simply: “The quietest city ever seen.” Lincoln probably never knew what had been going on in his behalf.24

  Lincoln, surprisingly, was alone at the White House on election day, for Seward, Usher, and Dennison had gone to their states to vote, Fessenden was raising money in New York, Bates and Welles were at their departments, and Stanton, his energy spent completely, was at home, seriously ill with chills and fever. At 7 p.m., Lincoln and Hay splashed through the driving rain from the White House to the War Department. Telegraph reports placed the President in the lead. One message announced a Republican victory in Steubenville. “Ah,” said Lincoln, “it’s all right; we have carried Stanton’s town.” In tribute to the absent War Secretary, the President proposed three cheers.

  By midnight it was evident that Lincoln had won decisively. The completed tally gave him 2,203,831 votes to McClellan’s 1,797,019. He had won every state except Kentucky, Delaware, and New Jersey, and his electoral vote would be 212 to 21 for the general. The men who were doing the fighting had voted for more of it in order to make their efforts worth while. Soldiers in the field gave Lincoln 119,754 votes to 34,291 for McClellan. When soldiers voted at home their ballots were not segregated, but the ratio must have been approximately the same. Without their ballots, Lincoln might have lost New York, Connecticut, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, and the arrest of New York’s Democratic agents had helped to take that state. Furloughed troops swelled Republican totals in Illinois and Indiana, where soldiers also guarded the polls. All together these six states contributed 101 electoral votes, enough to elect Lincoln.25

  Two nights later, a cheering crowd, gay with flags, banners, and lanterns, heard Lincoln give an impromptu victory speech, and then went on to Seward’s house. Seward suggested that the celebrants go on to Stanton’s; “he needs poking up, for he has been seriously sick, I hear, for several days past.”

  Indeed, this attack had almost been fatal, and Stanton had to remain in bed for three weeks, although he insisted over his doctor’s protests that army matters be brought to him. The visible effects of the illness shocked everyone. Even his enemies seemed stunned into a degree of backhanded sympathy. Whitelaw Reid, for example, wrote that “no one had ever connected the thought of possible sickness with his burly form and bullying ways,” and predicted that Stanton was about to resign from the cabinet.

  It was a shrewd guess, if premature. The sick man, who knew how close death had brushed him, confided to Chase that he required “absolute rest and relief from labor and care. I long for, and hope soon to have [them]. Our cause is now, I hope, beyond all danger, and when Grant goes into Richmond my task is ended. To you and to others it will remain to secure the fruits of victory, and to see that they do not turn into ashes.”

  Stanton slowly regained his strength, and the knowledge that he had played a major part in helping Lincoln win re-election spurred his recuperation. A brief wire from Grant—“The election having passed off quietly, no bloodshed or riot throughout the land, is a victory worth more to the country than a battle won. Rebeldom and Europe will so construe it”—was far more precious to him than any of the exaggerated praises he received from Republican party spokesmen.

  The real victors in the elections, Stanton insisted, were the Union and the Union soldiers, whose willingness to fight on against the rebellion had rallied the Northern people to support Lincoln. But Stanton too had fought a good fight, and won.26 Now he was awaiting only the final testament to his accomplishments, the defeat of all rebel forces and the surrender of the last vestiges of Confederate authority, to cast off the burdens he had long ago assumed at Lincoln’s urging.

  In less than six months the goal of Confederate defeat was to be realized. But fate had something far different in store for Stanton than the return to private life for which he yearned, and on which his health depended.

  1 Chase, Diary, 234; Hay, Diaries and Letters, 206; O.R., XXXVII, pt. 2, 16–18, 37, 70, 91, 94; Hitchcock to Mrs. Horace Mann, July 14, 1864, Hitchcock-Mann Correspondence, LC, which is far fuller than the account in Croffutt, op. cit., 463–4.

  2 Grant to Halleck, July 9, 1864, R. T. Lincoln Collection, LC; William Whiting to A. C. Washburn, July 11, 1864, Washburn Papers, MHS; reminiscence of A. E. H. Johnson in Washington Star, Nov. 2, 1895.

  3 Brooks, op. cit., 160; Hay, Diaries and Letters, 208; O.R., XXXVII, pt. 2, 223; S. P. Lee to James R. Doolittle, Feb. 20, 1865, Doolittle Papers, LC.

  4 O.R., XXXVII, pt. 2, 223; Stanton to Halleck, July 14, 1864, Letterbook IV, Stanton MSS; Browning, Diary, I, 675–6; Hitchcock to Mrs. Horace Mann, July 14, 1864, Hitchcock-Mann Correspondence, LC; memo, July 18, 1864, W. H. Smith Papers, OHS; Lincoln, Works, VII, 439–40; to Pamphila in Wolcott MS, 195–6; Smith, Blair Family, II, 274.

  5 Aug. 4, 1864, C. B. Comstock ms diary, LC; O.R., XL, pt. 3, 357; L, pt. 2, 945–51.

  6 Dana to J. S. Pike, Aug. 8, 1864, CFL.

  7 Hesseltine, War Governors, 375–6; O.R., ser. 3, IV, 488–90, 544–5, 639, 688–90, 714.

  8 Nicolay to Hay, Aug. 25, and to Therena Bates, Aug. 28, 1864, Nicolay Papers, LC.

  9 Black to Stanton, Aug. 24, 1864, Black Papers, LC; Gorham, Stanton, II, 148–53; Ralph F. Fahrney, Horace Greeley, and the Tribune in the Civil War (Cedar Rapids, 1936), 172.

  10 To Black, Aug. 13, 1864, and Black to Stanton, Sept. 3, 1864, and on the loan, note of Nov. 17, 1859, Black Papers, LC; Edward C. Kirkland, The Peacemakers of 1864 (New York, 1927), 121; Brigance, op. cit., 119, 128–9.

  11 For Sherman, see O.R., XXXVIII, pt. 5, 390; Henry C. Wilson to Stanton, Sept. 12, 1864, Stanton MSS; Lincoln’s endorsement on petition, July 27, 1864, Lincoln Photostat Coll., LC.

  12 Morse, Welles Diary, II, 102; Shellabarger to Stanton, Sept. 12, H. C. Page to same, Sept. 21, and C. S. Spencer to same, Sept. 26, 1864, Stanton MSS; Ballard to Sumner, ca. Sept. 30, 1864, George Fort Milton Papers, LC.

  13 Sta
nton to Sumner, Oct. 3, 1864, HU; McClellan to Barlow, Sept. 21, 1864, McClellan Papers, LC; C. D. Smith to Stanton, Sept. 21, 1864, Stanton MSS.

  14 Smith, Blair Family, II, 287; Blair, Sr., to Montgomery Blair, Sept. ?, 1864, Blair Family Papers, LC; Morse, Welles Diary, II, 158; Wade to Chandler, Oct. 2, 1864, Wade Papers, LC.

  15 William D. Foulke, The Life of Oliver P. Morton (Indianapolis, 1899), II, 228–68; William F. Zornow, Lincoln and the Party Divided (Norman, 1954), 191.

  16 Morgan to Stanton, Sept. 15, 1864, Stanton MSS; on soldiers’ sentiments, see Col. Hazard Stevens’s letters, May-Sept. 1864, UW; General H. W. Allen to J. H. Speed, Sept. 11, 1864, Holt Papers, LC; O.R., XXXIX, pt. 2, 396–7; XLII, pt. 2, 370; ser. 3, IV, 709–12, 732.

  17 O.R., XXXVIII, pt. 1, 154–5; pt. 5, 809; XLII, pt. 2, 1045–6; XLIII, pt. 1, 61; pt. 2, 170, 463–4; Josiah Benton, Voting in the Field (Boston, 1915); Gorham, Stanton, II, 158–9.

  18 Dana, Recollections, 261–2, attributed these incidents to the night of the presidential election on November 8. But Hay, Diaries and Letters, 228, states that it was on this night of the state elections that Lincoln read from Nasby, and the clinching fact is the presence of Reid, who told of being at the War Department the night of October 11 in a letter of that date to Edward McPherson (McPherson Papers, LC). Hay also makes Dana’s account somewhat dubious by stating that Stanton enjoyed the reading of Nasby. Perhaps the Secretary pretended that he did until he got Dana alone.

  19 Hay, Diaries and Letters, 228–9.

  20 Steiner, op. cit., 314–15; Zornow, op. cit., 191–204.

  21 Depew, My Memories of Eighty Years (New York, 1922), 52–5; Benton, op. cit., 155–6.

  22 O.R., XLII, pt. 3, 435–6, 571; Oct. 30-Nov. 11, 1864, Patrick ms diary, LC.

  23 T. H. Williams, Lincoln and the Radicals (Madison, 1941), 235; O.R., XXXIX, pt. 3, 603; ser. 3, IV, 871–2; Dana, Recollections, 260–1.

  24 Hay, Diaries and Letters, 233; Butler’s Book, 753–6; O.R., XLII, pt. 3, 470.

  25 Brooks, op. cit., 195; Wolcott MS, 215; Hay, Diaries and Letters, 233–6; Hesseltine, War Governors, 380–4; Mitchell, op. cit., 380.

  26 Seward in Brooks, op. cit., 200–1; Reid in Cincinnati Gazette, Nov. 18, 1864; Grant in O.R., XLII, pt. 3, 581; Stanton to Chase, Nov. 19, 1864, in Maynard County (Ill.) Times, Oct. 25, 1877.

  CHAPTER XVI

  HIS IRON MASK TORN OFF

  IN THE midst of what Lincoln called “the passion-exciting subject of the election,” Chief Justice Taney died, and in private conversations Lincoln indicated that he had Chase in mind for the place. Since his resignation from the cabinet, Chase had been morose and bitter, but he had stumped for Lincoln against McClellan. Now Chase admitted to Stanton that if Lincoln offered him the vacated position, he felt inclined to accept it.

  This was a blow to Stanton, for he had secret hopes for the appointment. His lawyer’s mind was entranced by the vision of the nation’s highest judicial post. Secretly concerned at the precarious state of his health and increasingly worried about his family’s finances, Stanton would have welcomed the secure future which the Supreme Court leadership offered. Still, he did nothing himself to indicate this desire to the President, but, probably with Stanton’s knowledge, his wife, who usually kept out of official matters, took a hand. At Ellen’s request, Orville H. Browning, Lincoln’s close friend, interceded with the President.

  Browning was motivated more from distrust of Chase than from admiration for Stanton. Meeting with Lincoln, however, Browning professed real enthusiasm concerning Stanton’s qualifications. The President admitted his own high regard for Stanton but offered no further comment.1

  A number of Stanton’s influential friends worked for his appointment with greater conviction than Browning displayed. Justice Robert C. Grier, of the Supreme Court, who was himself widely thought of as a probable replacement for Taney, offered Stanton every aid “to have you preside on our bench—I am sure you would be the right man in the right place.” Methodist bishop Matthew Simpson, the President’s favorite preacher, also called on Lincoln to urge Stanton’s claims for the position. Simpson recalled that after he finished talking, Lincoln swung a long leg over his chair arm, ran his fingers through his hair, and said: “Bishop, I agree with every word you have said. But where can I get a man to take Secretary Stanton’s place? Tell me that and I will do it.” Soon after, Lincoln made a similar comment to Judge E. R. Hoar.

  Weeks passed and the President made no move. Speculation increased. Alexander K. McClure, the Pennsylvania politician, concluded after talking with Lincoln that he was almost set on Stanton.2 Other rumors had it that Stanton would become Chief Justice so that Lincoln could appoint Butler, Banks, or Montgomery Blair to replace him at the war office.

  These possibilities horrified most Union Army officers. Meade wrote to his wife that “I should think it a great misfortune to see either Banks or Butler there.” Hitchcock, no admirer of Stanton’s personality, thought much less of Butler as a qualified replacement and was “afraid to say who may occupy his place in the War Department.”

  Stanton remained as “shut-pan” as Lincoln through all this intense jockeying. In mid-October, he and Fessenden went to Grant’s headquarters for a tour of the Virginia front, and Stanton learned from Grant that he wanted him to stay in the war office.

  When Stanton returned to Washington he had to decide whether to abandon hopes for the court post in order to continue to serve the Army, or to remain available and satisfy his own ambitions. While he struggled to choose and to get Lincoln re-elected, his illness came on, and Grant’s fears of Butler as Secretary of War increased. Even General Patrick, who hated Stanton, agreed in conversation with Grant that Butler meant disaster. Patrick, on November 15, learned that Grant had decided to go to Washington and intervene personally.

  Grant got Lincoln’s promise to make no change in the war office without consulting him. Then he advised the President to keep Stanton where he was, as the best man by far for the job in hand. It appears, too, that Grant and Stanton met the same day. When he returned to his headquarters Grant was able to assure the apprehensive Patrick that Stanton would not give up the Secretaryship.

  Stanton, however, had made up his own mind before Grant came to Washington. William M. Evarts, himself a possible nominee for the post of Chief Justice, noted on November 16, before Grant reached the capital, that Stanton had decided to keep the war office, and Edwards Pierrepont, Stanton’s close friend, informed Lincoln that Stanton almost a fortnight before had specifically told him that he no longer desired the judicial nomination.3

  No one can say whom Lincoln might have chosen if Stanton had remained in the running. It may not have been a real sacrifice, therefore, for Stanton to withdraw from consideration. But by the same logic it was a genuine offering which Stanton made on the altar of patriotism, for as far as he knew in mid-November, Lincoln might have picked him.

  All this was secret. Stanton meanwhile, bland and calm in the knowledge of his decision, was supporting Chase at every opportunity, encouraging him to keep courage and to retain his availability. Lincoln leaned more toward Chase, making light of the harsh things Chase had said about him, and asserted that as Chief Justice, Chase would be disposed to uphold the administration policies he had helped to frame. To a number of callers Lincoln said his sole doubt about Chase was whether his ambition for the presidency might govern his actions on the bench.

  Chase was still disturbed at newspaper reports which favored Stanton for the judicial palm. He finally had to write to Stanton, asking what he knew of Lincoln’s plans. On November 19, Stanton felt able to indulge in candor now that Grant had seen him and Lincoln. “I am not a candidate for it, do not want it, and this office has not been spoken of between the President and me,” Stanton answered Chase, “except that I have given him a number of recommendations and solicitations for your appointment.” The newspaper reports of his own candidacy were lies “invented by knaves for fools to feed on,” Stanton
insisted. Chase was overjoyed to receive this news from his “dear friend.”4

  On December 6, Lincoln gave Chase the nomination. Stanton and, through him, Dana were among the few who knew that “the appointment was not made by the President with entire willingness. He is a man who keeps a grudge as faithfully as any other living Christian, and consented to Mr. Chase’s elevation, only when the pressure became very general, and very urgent.” Montgomery Blair would have received Lincoln’s nod, Dana believed, except for Grant’s intercession and the fact that the Senate had clearly intimated that it would not take him for the high court because he was “a second rate man.” In the interest of party harmony, Lincoln rose to the occasion and chose Chase. Stanton had done some rising on his own.5

  Late in September, Sheridan had narrowly escaped disaster in the Shenandoah Valley. While he was returning from a war council in Washington, Early’s reinforced Confederates struck his army at Cedar Creek and sent it reeling back in confusion. Sheridan heard the firing at Winchester, twenty miles away, and spurring forward, rallied the troops and won a decisive victory. The feat won him a promotion to major general and Stanton’s gratitude.

  But now, to end forever the vexatious uses the Valley afforded the enemy as a granary and a corridor of invasion to the North, Sheridan under Grant and Stanton’s orders began a program of wholesale destruction, burning barns and fences, confiscating livestock, and destroying all the foodstuffs that his men were unable to eat. Stanton also adopted stern measures to protect the Manassas Gap Railroad from guerrillas, directing that every house within five miles of the tracks be destroyed, unless the owners could prove their loyalty, and that any unsworn civilian found within a similar distance of the tracks be assumed to be a robber or a bushwhacker.