Stanton
Page 52
“My chief is narrow-minded,” Hitchcock once confided, “full of prejudices, exceedingly violent, reckless of the rights and feelings of others, often acting like a wild man in the dark, throwing his arms around, willing to hit anybody, so he hits somebody, and makes a big stir. His idea of energy is altogether physical. He is coarse in his use of language, and his dislikes are mere prejudices—not founded upon any proper knowledge of character or … of the profession of which he is the legal head.” Yet Hitchcock admitted that in all matters of substance he agreed with the irascible Secretary.
Too often Stanton administered rebukes with unpardonable severity. Department underlings hid when bad news came in from the front, and mere trifles would send him into a tantrum. Many persons felt the whiplash of his tongue. Stanton’s trouble, often, was that he just did not realize that he had been cruel or unjust. He had once suspected young General James H. Wilson of incapacity. Information from Grant changed his mind, and thereafter Stanton supported the cavalryman. Learning of this after the war, Wilson reflected: “I would rather be opposed by Edwin M. Stanton than by any other man in America. I regard Mr. Stanton [as] the greatest civilian of the day.”
Provost Marshal General Patrick, of the Army of the Potomac, had a far lower opinion of Stanton. Patrick’s rugged sense of duty and Democratic party principles often put him in opposition to Stanton’s orders concerning travel passes, trade permits, fugitive Negroes, and arrests of civilians. It is noteworthy that Stanton’s growing irritation with Patrick never interfered with that officer’s promotions.
Early in 1865, Patrick decided to have a showdown. He and Stanton retired behind the locked doors of the Secretary’s office. “I never talked more plainly to any man in my life,” Patrick recorded; “I will do him the justice to say that he behaved well. He heard me patiently, said what he had to say, and gave me the key to much of the mischief that has been going on.”22
General Lorenzo Thomas, a man of limited ability and narrow views, was often the target of Stanton’s hostility. Thomas confessed that “Stanton is an enigma to me. He has no manners, and treats persons rudely, and yet at times he appears kind.” When Stanton was able to oblige petitioners, Thomas acknowledged, it was only after he had determined that the Army’s needs were first met. But with that hurdle overcome, the Secretary was happy to grant favors which could mean life or death, happiness or despair, to someone.
But he often had to submerge the impulse to oblige supplicants in the galling necessity to say no, and he rarely confessed the deep distress he felt on these frequent occasions. In a moment of release, Stanton poured out his heart to Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker, a relative of Henry Ward Beecher, who thanked him for a favor done. “In my official station I have tried to do my duty as I shall answer to God at the great day,” he wrote her, “but it is the misfortune of that station—a misfortune that no one else can comprehend the magnitude of—that most of my duties are harsh and painful to someone, so that I rejoice at an opportunity, however rare, of combining duty with kindly offices.”23
Those who suffered from Stanton’s outbursts of temper or who ran afoul of his policies looked upon him as a power-mad tyrant, and Gideon Welles added that he was a sycophant as well. More charitably, one of Black’s friends ventured this “true solution” of Stanton’s character: “… he had no head for abstract ideas; but great faculty for concrete things.” Stanton was no thinker, but an “actor” cloaked in power.
These erroneous judgments have satisfied most subsequent commentators on Stanton. A far more accurate description emerges from the recollection of Stanton’s chief clerk, Charles Benjamin, who observed his busy superior every day for seven years, and who admitted the defects of Stanton’s impetuous, erratic behavior in the same critical terms employed by Doster and Hitchcock. “Yet such a man would apprehend deeply where he apprehended rightly,” Benjamin wrote; “his ardor of mind would inspire him with confidence in the means, and trust for the end; his free-handed energy would open otherwise undiscoverable paths to fortune; his sense of humor would tend to link him to sober views of men and things; his furtive heartiness would win strong friends, if few; … his inherent love of orderly courses would strip absolutism of its worst excesses and consequences; and his supernaturalism would endow him with a calm and persistent courage.”
Stanton, in Benjamin’s estimation, was never the cold, feelingless, fact juggler most persons believed him to be and which the Secretary desired to seem. Rather he was “intuitive rather than logical, and romantic rather than realistic; … his firmness often meant sheer obstinacy,” and his “ardor” resulted in “raw haste.”24
The journalist Sylvanus Cadwallader, no admirer of Stanton, has left proof of the acuity of Benjamin’s perception. Cadwallader once dared criticize Stanton to his face for not attending the funeral of a combat officer who had been a friend of the Stanton family. The Secretary heard the reporter’s harsh observations through without commenting. Cadwallader belatedly realized that he had not known of the casualty.
“At the news,” the journalist recorded, Stanton slumped heavily on his high desk, “body leaned forward, his golden bound spectacles thrown upon his forehead, & with a tender sorrowful faraway look of countenance which I had never before seen him exhibit till then, & one rarely seen on this stern official.… I left Mr. Stanton’s office in a softened mood, suspecting there was, contrary to my former opinion, an unexplored region containing some drops of human kindness, under the unexplored exterior of the unloved Secretary of War.”25
1 World, Dec. 25, 1869; Payne’s ms sketches, CHS; Porter’s ms Journal, I, 411–13, Porter Papers, LC; Lieber’s ms essay on Stanton, HL. Stanton in Nov. 1865 refused to let Lieber publish it because it might seem like a bid for the presidency; Lieber to ? (probably Benson J. Lossing), Dec. 25, 1865, Lieber Papers, LC.
2 Strong, Diary, IV, 266; Doster, op. cit., 116–17.
3 Weigley, Meigs, 265, 311–20; Pierrepont to Stanton, Nov. 28, 1865, Stanton MSS; editorial, ANJ (May 27, 1865), 636–7.
4 Stanton’s comment is quoted in Barlow to M. Blair, April 29, 1865, Letterbook XI, 329–33, Barlow Papers, HL; Johnson, “Reminiscences of Hon. Edwin M. Stanton,” loc. cit., 79; Henry S. Olcott, “The War’s Carnival of Fraud,” in A. K. McClure (ed.), Annals of the War (Philadelphia, 1879), 705–16; J. Duane Squires, “Some Enduring Achievements of the Lincoln Administration, 1861–1865,” ALQ, V, 191–7; A. E. H. Johnson to J. Tweedale, May 2, 1886, Sec. War Correspondence File, Box 321, RG107, NA.
5 Thomas Graham Belden and Marva Robins Belden, So Fell the Angels (Boston, 1956), 57–62, 141–6, 159–60; Letter of the Secretary of War, Sen. Exec. Doc. 10, 41st Cong., 3d sess.
6 Ella Lonn, Desertion during the Civil War (New York, 1928). Upton, op. cit., 235–7; Sumner to Horace Gray, Dec. 30, 1863, Gray Papers, LC; “Some Letters of Salmon Portland Chase,” AHR, XXXIV, 554.
7 George W. Adams, Doctors in Blue (New York, 1952), 32–5, 76, 85–7; William Q. Maxwell, Lincoln’s Fifth Wheel (New York, 1956), 9, 140–3; Strong, Diary, III, 248–53; McClellan, Own Story, 545.
8 Strong, Diary, III, 314, 353, 359, 385; Maxwell, op. cit., 179, 236–7, 333; Sumner to Henry W. Longfellow, Jan. 12, 1864, Longfellow Papers, Craigie House, Cambridge; Thomas Hill to S. Hooper, Jan. 12, 1864, Hill Letterbooks, Archives, HU.
9 Maxwell, op. cit., 241–4; Strong, Diary, III, 393–4, 418, 439–42; Duncan, “… Surgeon General Hammond,” loc. cit., 252–61; Nevins, “The United States Sanitary Commission and Secretary Stanton,” MHS Proceedings, LXVII, 402–19.
10 Bruce, op. cit., 265–6, 275–7; Roscoe Pound, “Bureaus and Bureau Methods in the Civil War,” MHS Proceedings, LXVII, 420–35.
11 Grant, Memoirs, II, 105–6; Pound, “The Military Telegraph in the Civil War,” loc. cit., 202–3; Seward, Reminiscences, 243; Haupt, Reminiscences (Milwaukee, 1901), 165; T. H. Parker, “A Glimpse of the Railroads during the Civil War,” WPHM, XX, 20.
12 Newbold Noyes, “Crosby Stuart Noyes,”
ColHS Records, XL, 207.
13 O.R., ser. 2, III, 192, 222–4, 230, 778–9, 783–4, 790–1; IV, 174, 266–8; Hesseltine, Civil War Prisons (Columbus, 1930), 7–31 (hereafter cited as Hesseltine, Civil War Prisons); Lincoln, Works, V, 449; Nicolay and Hay, Lincoln, X, 44.
14 Hyman, “Civil War Turncoats,” MA, XIII, 134–8.
15 Flower, Stanton, 235–6; Hesseltine, Civil War Prisons, 210–14; Lincoln, Works, V, 128, 940–1.
16 Lincoln, Works, VII, 345–6; O.R., ser. 2, VII, 110–11, 1504.
17 O.R., ser. 2, V, 691; VI, 314–15, 489, 504, 523–4, 625, 686, 1014; VIII, 800–1; Hitchcock to Mrs. Mary Mann, Nov. 25, 1863, Hitchcock-Mann Correspondence, LC; Bates, Diary, 314.
18 Stanton’s memo, undated, copy owned by the estate of Benjamin P. Thomas; Beale, Welles Diary, II, 168–71; O.R., ser. 2, VII, 607, 906–14, 926, 929, 1070–3.
19 Hesseltine, Civil War Prisons, 222–3; New York Times, Dec. 27, 1864; Flower, Stanton, 238.
20 Schuckers Papers, LC, memo, ca. 1875, on the Wisconsin editor; G. S. L. Grenfell to Barlow, Jan. 13, 1868, Barlow Papers, HL; Hyman, op. cit., ch. 7; Randall, Constitutional Problems, 155; K. A. Bernard, “Lincoln and Civil Liberties,” ALQ, VI, 380–94; O.R., ser. 2, LV, 380–425.
21 Brooks in Sacramento Union, May 2, 1863; Koerth in New York Commercial Advertiser, March 24, 1903; Randall, “The Newspaper Problem in Its Bearing upon Military Secrecy during the Civil War,” AHR, XXIII, 302–23.
22 Jan. 30, 1865, Patrick ms diary, LC; Hitchcock to Henry Hitchcock, April 25, 1862, MoHS; Wilson to Badeau, Aug. 5, 1865, James H. Wilson Papers, LG.
23 To Mrs. Hooker, May 6, 1863, in R. B. Hayes scrapbook X, HML; F. B. Carpenter in Los Angeles Herald, April 28, 1901; Thomas to Cameron, March 18, 1863, Cameron Papers, LC.
24 Benjamin, “Secretary Stanton: The Man and His Work,” JMSI, VII, 240–1; J. Ashton to Black, Jan. 3, 1870, Black Papers, LC; Welles to Andrew Johnson, Jan. 4, 1870, Johnson Papers, LC; Jessie Benton Frémont, Souvenirs of My Time (Boston, 1887), 146.
25 “My Four Years with Grant,” ms, ISHL; and see Lewis Stanton in New York World, Dec. 6, 1886.
CHAPTER XVIII
STANTON’S LINCOLN
JOURNALIST Cadwallader’s phrase—“the unloved Secretary of War”—would have been accepted as accurate by almost everyone of that generation and by most subsequent commentators as well. But one time in his life, apart from his relations with his family, and except for his intimacy with Chase years before, Stanton opened his heart to another person and found acceptance and reciprocal affection. Because Lincoln was a great man, Stanton reached in his service a plane far higher than his more prosaic spirit could have touched.
History records few instances when two men of more disparate outward characteristics were brought together in positions requiring mutual trust, complementary talents, and capacity for quick growth. Despite the differences in their natures, Lincoln and Stanton had much in common. They shared memories of a boyhood spent in the great river valleys that divide yet knit together the great plain west of the mountains. Both had come up from lowly origins, although Stanton had the advantage of a middle-class upbringing and a superior formal education. Each sought success through the practice of the law, but Stanton achieved far wider professional renown than Lincoln, driving ahead in his humorless, undeviating way toward the lucrative practice he enjoyed when Lincoln gained the pinnacle of politics.
Stanton was more closely attuned than Lincoln to the immediate present; he was in many ways a “modern” man-in-a-hurry, never tempering the inadequacies of his nature with the sweet sensitivity of soul that Lincoln brought to his experiences. Life was a way to material success for Stanton. Yet Lincoln, by offering Stanton his trust, by feeding the sense of nationalism already sparked in Stanton’s breast by service in Buchanan’s cabinet, and by matching Stanton’s temper with his quietude of spirit, received in return the devotion of a man who was content to be his servant.
Something in Lincoln’s calm, warm, mystical character drew Stanton out of the self-centered shell which he had built around his life. Lincoln’s shrewd judgments on men and exploitations of power impressed Stanton. His devout concern for human beings echoed far back into Stanton’s youth. Lincoln’s conviction that the American experiment in democracy was worthy of survival and sacrifice brought Stanton to action to sustain the conviction. Stanton’s early contempt for Lincoln gave way to respect, and then to love.
The deep relationship that grew between them was apparent only to those few persons who knew both men well. Lincoln’s secretary, John Hay, soon after the war ended wrote to the War Secretary: “Not every one knows, as I do, how close you stood to our … leader, how he loved you and trusted you, and how vain were all the efforts to shake that trust and confidence, not lightly given & never withdrawn. All this will be [known] some time, of course, to his honor and yours.”
Hay delighted Stanton by recalling that “there are many meddlers whose knuckles you had rapped, many thieves whose hands you had tied, and many liars whose mouths you had shut for a time by their prompt punishment, who had occupied themselves in traducing you. That is all over now.… It is already known, as well as the readers of history a hundred years hence will know, that no honest man has cause to quarrel with you, that your hands have been clean and your heart steady every hour of this fight, and that if any human names are to have the glory of this victory, it belongs to you among the very few who stood by the side of [Lincoln] … and never faltered in your trust in God and the People.”
Hay’s confident prediction that history would cast a gentle light on Stanton’s career as War Secretary, and correctly illuminate the nature of the relationship that existed between Lincoln and his “Mars,” was one with which Lincoln agreed. The President told his journalist friend T. J. Barnett that Stanton “is utterly misjudged … at present, the man’s public character is a public mistake.” A friend of Seward’s, after a lengthy sojourn in Washington, reflected that Stanton “justified the high encomiums you bestowed upon him. I am satisfied that Mr. Stanton merely desires to know what is right and then has both the inclination and the nerve to do it. Much prejudice exists against him—but ultimately the country will do him justice—tardily perhaps—but surely.”
Not so surely. For Stanton deliberately obscured his real feelings in order to carry out his responsibilities as Secretary. Thus, even General N. P. Chipman, who worked closely with Stanton and admired him, had to confess that “well as I felt that I knew him, yet he is a stranger to me.”1
And a stranger he remained, except to Lincoln. The two men grew together. In 1862, a shrewd Ohioan, William T. Coggeshall, likened Lincoln to “a boy carrying a big basket of eggs.” “Couldn’t let go his basket to unbutton his breeches—was in sore distress from a necessity to urinate—& stood dancing, crying—What shall I do?” The cabinet, Coggeshall continued, “is like a collection of powerful chemicals—each positive, sharp, individual—but thrown together neutralize each other & the result is an insipid mess.”
By 1865 Lincoln was no longer dancing in agonized indecision, and of the cabinet officers, Stanton had emerged into brilliant prominence. The war had developed both men to an almost incredible degree. Their relationship had steadily become warmer and warmer, until by 1865 it had evolved into an understanding partnership on official matters and a firm personal friendship. Nothing could have been further from the truth than Manton Marble’s assertion that Lincoln was convinced that there was not an honest hair on Stanton’s head.2
To be sure, Mary Lincoln and Ellen Stanton did not like each other, and this prevented social exchanges beyond those required for official decorum. But as things worked out this was no great impediment in the way of the increasingly affectionate feelings of the two men for each other. They arranged things so that they spent as much time in each other’s company as possible, only in part to facilitate discussion of the endless matters of war and politics.
For example, when in late June 1863 the h
eat of Washington became intolerable, Ellen Stanton went off to the cooler highland of Bedford, Pennsylvania, after first exacting a promise from Lincoln that he and her husband would join her there for a long weekend. Each week the two men hoped to be off. But in August, Stanton admitted to her that “some thing always turns up to keep him or me in Washington. He is so eager for it that I expect we will accomplish it before the season is over.” They were never able to get away together, however.
The preceding year they had arranged to take adjoining summer cottages on the shaded grounds of the Soldiers’ Home in suburban Georgetown. Often, Stanton could not get out there, though Lincoln could, and the President would go out of his way while driving to the White House from the Soldiers’ Home to stop at Stanton’s town residence. While the cavalry escort which Stanton insisted accompany Lincoln waited, the Secretary would come out of his house and talk with the President in his carriage. Sometimes, their discussion of official matters was interrupted by the shouts of the crowd at nearby Franklin Square when a baseball game was in progress.3
Often they could get out to the Soldiers’ Home retreat together, and it became a common sight in the last two summers of the war to see the President’s plain open carriage leaving the capital for this suburban haven of relative coolness, carrying the tall, lean frame of Lincoln slouched next to the heavier, squat, erect body of his War Secretary. The two men talked incessantly in low tones so that the drivers and the escorting cavalrymen would not hear, and jotted notes on scraps of paper from the time they left Pennsylvania Avenue, but they visibly relaxed as they approached their destination.