Grant, years later, wrote that Stanton on his own authority countermanded Lincoln’s orders concerning the Virginia legislature. “This was characteristic of Mr. Stanton,” Grant stated. “He was a man who never questioned his own authority, and who always did in wartime what he wanted to do.” But Grant, who knew from Stanton himself how seemingly difficult it had been to bring Lincoln to retract the instructions, misrepresented the situation.
Stanton’s role in rejecting the Virginia arrangement was an important one. In no sense, however, did he, as Grant asserted, take “the liberty of countermanding the order.” Nor did the Secretary, as Robert Stiles, one of the affected Virginia state legislators, concluded, deserve the “responsibility (or glory) of breaking up the policy of restoration.” The Virginia situation was an impossible one for the victorious Union. Lincoln’s arrangement there could never have won Congress’s approval; indeed, his willingness to end it indicates that it had lost his own support. Lincoln, not Stanton, ended the matter.23
Despite this victory, when Sumner saw Stanton the next day he found him still highly excited. Stanton’s concern resulted in his summoning Grant to Washington; he arrived late in the afternoon on April 13 and came to the War Department at once, where, Meigs noted, he “was welcomed and thanked by the Secretary with much emotion.” Almost at once they agreed to order the cessation of drafting and recruiting and to curtail army purchases and remove military restrictions. After this conference, the Secretary and the general enjoyed a brief, pleasant interview with Lincoln.
That night the Stantons entertained the Grants. A band serenaded the party, and the Secretary and his guests came out on the steps to listen. Fireworks were popping everywhere, and a crowd gathered to cheer the distinguished gathering at the Stanton home.24
After his guests had departed, Stanton worked on through the early morning hours of April 14 completing a provisional plan for the military government of the defeated South which Lincoln had asked him to prepare. Stanton had already given Lincoln a rough draft on the thirteenth; now he had Grant’s thoughts on the matter and they agreed that the Army must temporarily “take over” the territory it had won. Lincoln had invited Grant to attend a cabinet meeting that day. Stanton’s haste to prepare this plan is explained by the general’s presence.
The April 14 meeting opened with an exchange of congratulations between the cabinet officers and Grant. Lincoln, cheerful and happy, rejoiced at the imminent prospect of peace and hoped that the passions of war would soon diminish. He expected momentarily to receive news that rebel general Johnston had surrendered to Sherman, for he had had his usual dream foreshadowing important events, which had come to him before Antietam, Murfreesboro, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg.
Near the close of the meeting, Stanton remarked that the establishment of civil government and the maintenance of order in the South, where the rebel collapse had ended all governmental stability, would be the administration’s paramount problem, and at Lincoln’s request he had drawn up a tentative plan for the cabinet’s consideration.
Lincoln said that he had lacked time for a full study of Stanton’s proposal but was glad to have it presented. He thought it essential to have a plan in operation before Congress reassembled in December, and asked Stanton to read his plan to the cabinet members.
It was in the form of an executive order, and applied to Virginia and North Carolina, making them a military department under a military governor, whose regulations were to be enforced by a new provost marshal corps under the central direction of the commanding general of the Army and the War Department, and employing martial law as the base of authority.
The military governor and the provost marshals were to establish order, so that the civilian branches of the national government could re-establish revenue offices, postal facilities, federal courts and attorneys, and land offices, and then self-government could recommence, although this final step was not then of concern to Stanton. Private citizens who remained obedient and peaceful were to be unmolested. Stanton had “left open” the question of whether Negroes should vote or not, for this was merely a projected plan for immediate army needs, and the Negro question, he knew, would require extended debate.
A pause ensued. Everyone seemed to agree with the Stanton plan. Then Welles spoke up. He concurred on the necessity for prompt action, but he objected mildly to the provost reform and more forcefully to combining two state entities under even a temporary form of government, especially a military one. Virginia was different from other rebellious states, he contended, in that the administration had acknowledged the Pierpont government there as legitimate, and that government had consented to the separation of West Virginia from the mother commonwealth.
Lincoln thought that Welles’s objections were well taken; some of them had already occurred to him, he said. The President directed Stanton to redraft his document, making it apply separately to the two states, and to have copies of the new draft available for the cabinet members at their next meeting the following Tuesday.
The Navy Secretary did not, however, make an issue at this time of Stanton’s proposed use of military forces in the occupation, although in later years he claimed the credit for exposing a sinister design on Stanton’s part to overawe Southern states by martial power and to commit Grant to his ideas. At the April 14 meeting, the President and all the cabinet officers accepted Stanton’s military approach with the exceptions that Welles had taken and in which Lincoln had sustained him. What was deferred was essentially the question of Negro suffrage, not, as Welles later asserted, the need for temporary military government, on which all agreed, or the reorganized provost corps, or the sanctity of Pierpont’s puny Virginia state organization.25
That afternoon word came that Jacob Thompson, Stanton’s erstwhile cabinet colleague in Buchanan’s administration, and more recently a high Confederate official, was expected to be in Portland, Maine, that night to board a ship bound for England. Dana, once more in Washington, brought the telegram to Stanton, who immediately said: “Arrest him.” Then, as Dana was leaving, Stanton said: “No, wait; better go over and see the President.”
Dana found Lincoln washing his hands in a room off his office. Looking up, he said: “Halloo, Dana! What is it? What’s up?” Dana read the telegram from Portland, whereupon Lincoln asked: “What does Stanton say?” “He says arrest him,” answered Dana, “but that I should refer the question to you.”
Lincoln said slowly, drying his hands: “Well, no, I rather think not. When you have got an elephant by the hind leg, and he’s trying to run, it’s best to let him run.” Back at the War Department, Stanton asked Dana: “Well, what did he say?” Dana told him. “Oh, stuff!” grumbled the Secretary.
Down in Charleston Harbor an impressive ceremony, which Stanton had arranged, was taking place that same day. Stanton had conceived the idea that at the proper time he would order General Anderson to replace the flag that he had been obliged to haul down four years earlier. Now the Sumter flag was going up again, and among the guests were Henry Ward Beecher and William Lloyd Garrison, there at Stanton’s invitation. The Secretary had hoped to attend himself but, unable to leave the capital, had sent Holt to represent him.26 When the flag had descended in 1861, the war had begun. Its ascent in 1865 meant that the war, except for spasmodic rebel resistance, was won.
1 Browning, Diary, I, 687–8; Browning to Ewing, Oct. 17, Ewing Family Papers, LC; Ewing to Browning, Oct. 24, 1864, Ewing Letterbook, ibid.; Stanton to Chase, Oct. 13, 1864, Chase Papers, HSP; Chase to Stanton, Oct. 13, 1864, Stanton MSS; Lincoln, Works, VIII, 120.
2 Grier in Gorham, Stanton, II, 469–70; on Simpson, see reminiscence of Edwin L. Stanton, Sept. 18, 1867, and A. E. H. Johnson’s recollection in an undated news clip, both owned by Gideon Townsend Stanton. On Hoar, Rhodes, op. cit., V, 182; and see McClure, Lincoln, 129.
3 Nov. 15–28, 1864, Patrick ms diary, LC; Evarts to R. H. Dana, Nov. 16, 1864, Dana Papers, MHS; Meade, op. cit., II, 239; Adam Badeau, Grant in Peace
(Hartford, 1887), 80–1 (cited hereafter as Badeau, Grant); Butler, Correspondence, V, 168; Pierrepont to Lincoln, Nov. 24, 1864, R. T. Lincoln Papers, LC; Hitchcock to “My Dear Niece Mary,” Nov. 17, 1864, Hitchcock Papers, LC.
4 Stanton’s Nov. 19 letter in Maynard County (Ill.) Times, Oct. 25, 1877; and see Chase to Stanton, Nov. 29, 1864, owned by Gideon Townsend Stanton. On Stanton’s support of Chase, see Whitelaw Reid in Cincinnati Gazette, Nov. 18, Dec. 12, 1864; Nicolay and Hay, Lincoln, IX, 391; Wolcott MS, 197.
5 Dana to James S. Pike, Dec. 12, 1864, CFL.
6 O.R., XLIII, pt. 2, 348, 823–4; XLVI, pt. 2, 275–6.
7 O.R., XXXIV, pt. 3, 222, 239–40, 740, 749; XLV, pt. 2, 15–8, 84.
8 O.R., XLV, pt. 2, 195, 265, 283, 295–6, 307, 561; Lincoln, Works, VIII, 169; Bates, op. cit., 315–21.
9 McCulloch to J. E. Remsberg, April 15, 1891, LNLF; Thorndyke, Sherman Letters, 240–1.
10 Jan. 2, 1865, Meigs ms diary, LC; O.R., XXXVIII, pt. 5, 792–3; XXXIX, pt. 3, 428–9; XLIV, 806, 809, 836–7; pt. 2, 16; Robert K. Murray, “General Sherman, the Negro, and Slavery,” NHB, XXII, 125–30, offers an extreme view of Sherman’s Negrophobia.
11 Jan. 7–11, 1865, and dinner seating plan for Jan. 12, on flyleaf, Meigs ms diary, LC; Memoirs of General William T. Sherman (2d ed., New York, 1887), II, 242–52 (hereafter cited as Sherman, Memoirs); Dahlgren, op. cit., 492; Lloyd Lewis, Sherman, Fighting Prophet (New York, 1932), 482–3 (hereafter cited as Lewis, Sherman); Oliver 0. Howard, Autobiography (New York, 1907), II, 189–92; on John Sherman’s propensity to advise his brother, see Gen. Manning Force, ms Personal Record, II, 131, UW.
12 Maj. J. H. Gray to wife, Jan. 14, 1865, War Letters, 1862–5, MHS; M. A. De Wolfe Howe (ed.), Home Letters of General Sherman (New York, 1909), 327–30 (cited hereafter as Howe, Sherman Home Letters); Garrison, op. cit., IV, 132–3; O.R., XLVI, pt. 2, 157; XLVII, pt. 2, 36–7.
13 O.R., XLII, pt. 3, 1098–1106; XLVI, pt. 2, 29, 155–7; XLVII, pt. 2, 3, 69; Butler to Comm. J. M. B. Clitz, Sept. 25, 1865, Letterbook, Butler Papers, LC; on Mrs. Saxton, see W. H. Stanton, op. cit., 137–8.
14 Dana to J. S. Pike, Dec. 12, 1864, CFL; Stanton to Mrs. Porter, Jan. 20, 1865, D. D. Porter Papers, LC; Brooks, op. cit., 257.
15 O.R., XLVI, pt. 2, 311–12, 343–4, 365, 823–4, 841; Lincoln, Works, VIII, 330–1; A. E. H. Johnson in Washington Star, Sept. 3, 1892; Ward Hill Lamon, Recollections of Abraham Lincoln (Washington, 1895), 249ff., and in a fuller version in an undated memorandum, Lamon Papers, HL; and see Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner (Boston, 1893), IV, 206 (hereafter cited as Pierce, Sumner).
16 Halleck to Lieber, March 5, 1865, Lieber Papers, HL; Morse, Welles Diary, II, 252; Brooks, op. cit., 212; Charles Richard Williams, Diary and Letters of Rutherford B. Hayes (Columbus, 1922), II, 569.
17 O.R., XLVI, pt. 3, 86–7, 96–7, 169; XLVII, pt. 2, 947–8; Reid in Cincinnati Gazette, March 18, 1865; A. E. H. Johnson in Washington Star, Feb. 15, 1896.
18 Lincoln, Works, VII, 385, VIII, 377; Howe, Sherman Home Letters, 377; O.R., XLVI, pt. 3, 109, 332, 346, 509; Stanton to Ellen, April 2, 1865, owned by Mrs. Van Swearingen; A. E. H. Johnson in Washington Star, Feb. 15, 1896; on Senator Sherman, Gen. M. Force, ms Personal Record, II, 131, UW. M. Blair to Barlow, April 26, 1865, Barlow Papers, HL, on General Sherman’s severity at City Point.
19 Wolcott MS, 200; Flower, Stanton, 262–3; Townsend, Anecdotes, 122–4; Brooks, op. cit., 219–21; Washington Chronicle, April 4, 1865; ANJ (April 8, 1865), 517.
20 Stanton to Ellen, April 7, 1865, owned by Mrs. Van Swearingen; O.R., XLVI, pt. 3, 619, 640, 655, 663–4; A. E. H. Johnson in Washington Star, Feb. 15, 1896; ms journal of Dr. Reid, owned by Alexandra Sanford; Flower, Stanton, 270, and Hugh McCulloch to J. E. Remsberg, April 15, 1891, LNLF, deal with the reception of the news. Stanton’s order is in New York Times, April 9, 1865.
21 Lamon, Recollections, 234–5; Rhodes, op. cit., V, 180; Wilson, “Edwin M. Stanton,” loc. cit., 15; Evan R. Jones, Lincoln, Stanton, and Grant (London, 1875), 121; Carpenter, op. cit., 265–6; Flower, Stanton, 271, 310–11, on the resignation. Other data in Lincoln, Works, VIII, 405; O.R., XLVI, 678, 684, 711; Sumner to Chase, April 12, 1865, Chase Papers, 2d ser., LC.
22 Lincoln, Works, VIII, 399–405; Fawn M. Brodie, Thaddeus Stevens (New York, 1959), 209–13; A. E. H. Johnson in Washington Star, Jan. 11, 1896; Flower, Stanton, 271.
23 Stiles, “Lincoln’s Restoration Policy for Virginia,” MH, XXII, 209–23; Campbell, Reminiscences and Documents Relating to the Civil War During the Year 1865 (Baltimore, 1887), 43–4; Grant, Memoirs, II, 506–7.
24 Sumner to Chase, April 13, 1865, ISHL; April 13, 1865, Meigs ms diary, LC. A drunken man, claiming to be acquainted with Stanton, tried to mingle with the party but was sent away. He was later identified, probably mistakenly, as Michael O’Laughlin, of whom more later. Benn Pitman (comp.), The Assassination of President Lincoln and the Trial of the Conspirators (facsimile ed., New York, 1954), 226–7.
25 F. W. Seward in Washington Chronicle, Jan. 25, 1875; Gideon Welles to son Edgar T. Welles, Jan. 28, 1875, Welles Papers, LC; Morse, Welles Diary, II, 280–2; his “Lincoln and Johnson,” Galaxy, XIII, 525–7; and his letter to Johnson, July 27, 1869, in Beale, Welles Diary, III, 714–17. Lincoln and Chase were at this time in correspondence on a plan of restoration, using military force as a primary step, which was very similar to Stanton’s; see Lincoln, Works, VII, 399–400. On need for martial law, see Roswell Marsh to Stanton, April 10, 1865, Stanton MSS.
26 Dana, Recollections, 273–4; O.R., XLVII, pt. 2, 536, 581.
CHAPTER XVII
THE MISFORTUNE OF THAT STATION
WITH Lee’s surrender foretelling an early end to the war, Stanton took on stature as the organizer of victory. He had made a far greater impact on the public consciousness than any of his predecessors and had lifted the office of Secretary of War out of obscurity. His countrymen knew his name as they recognized Lincoln’s and Grant’s, and his popularity was close to theirs, although then as now Americans understood better how to evaluate and reward the services of generals and Presidents than to judge the achievements of an appointed official. It is therefore even more remarkable that Stanton should have achieved the wide recognition that he did.
Only the terrible, revolutionary nature of the war can explain this. To Stanton’s generation it was a shocking experience; the cost in lives and money was unprecedented. War needs had prescribed that the Negro must go free. Battles had stricken secession from the remedies available to a state in the federal union. Blood and suffering had kept the nation together, although the question of the further purposes for which that centripetal force had been exerted was still unanswered.
Was Stanton’s contribution to Union victory as extraordinary as the nature of the conflict? Persons close to Stanton believed that it was. Dana was sure that the Union would have lost its fight without him. Admiral Porter, who privately wished that Stanton rather than Welles controlled the Navy, concluded that “Lincoln’s Mars” was “the man for the times.” From the vantage point of his cosmopolitan education and career, Francis Lieber adjudged that democratic government, a new idea in history, had seemed doomed in 1861. The Union’s first efforts to save itself had been fitful, awkward, and inadequate. Then Stanton had helped to release the nation’s energies. From a people not subject to a consolidated government and with a strong anti-militarist tradition, he organized armies through volunteering and conscription. He sternly overbore the many active sympathizers with rebellion who infested the North, maintaining adequate internal security with a minimum of trespass on civil liberties. At the same time, Lieber wrote, he kept down “the arrogance of the sword,” yet never let “the chariot of war … run in the mere rut of routine.” A stern pilot, Stanton was the only one who could have brought the ship of state into the safe harbor of victory.
Other commentators were more restrained in their judgments on Stanton’s accomplishments. George W. Payne, an obs
cure government clerk, estimated that “there is nothing of a remarkable … character” in what Stanton had achieved, considering the expert assistants who ran the War Department. And of course Stanton’s detractors—the Blairs, McClellan, Frémont—insisted that he had delayed rather than spurred victory. Ironically, Stanton’s great enemy, the publisher of the New York World, Manton Marble, came close to a part of the truth when he editorialized that Stanton “could not have made a great figure in ordinary times.” Stanton would have agreed with him.1
He was not a great man. But unlike the Blairs or McClellan, he never deluded himself with the idea that he was. Stanton recognized his own simple abilities and grave limitations. Provost Marshal Doster, from his intimate associations with Stanton, drew a perfect description of the man. “Stanton,” he wrote, “was an able, overworked Pittsburgh lawyer suddenly called on to play the combined roles of Carnot and Fouché, apparently utterly ignorant of both roles, and equipped with no special talent … other than the professional ones—ability to work, dogmatic temper, a bullying propensity.… As in his law office, red tape, papers, precedents, decisions were his business here. As there he knew he could abuse his client as much as he chose, provided he won his case, so here he knew, no matter what he did, all would be right, if he secured the verdict.” No good lawyer ever gave up a case, Doster continued; nor would Stanton. “So he went on working up his case … in a perennial passion.… The verdict—victory—the suppression of the rebellion were the goal. Nothing else mattered.”
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