Presenting himself before the committee, Sherman answered Wade’s questions in a curtly defiant manner. His terms, he said, conformed to Lincoln’s well-known wishes for a quick and humane peace, and though not specifically authorized by Lincoln, would, in Sherman’s opinion, have been upheld by him, had he lived. Sherman then told the committee members that Stanton was a two-faced scoundrel.
Sherman’s testimony confirmed the suspicions of certain of the radicals that his peace terms had been intended to put him in the running for the presidency, and they thought that his criticisms may have damaged Stanton. At Stanton’s suggestion they summoned Meade and Grant to testify concerning the manner in which he had conducted the War Department. Under Wade’s questioning Meade asserted that he had no cause for complaint, and when prodded further, declared that Stanton had shown “great ability.” Grant, waxing more enthusiastic, said with emphasis that Stanton had performed “admirably,” and in response to further questions from Wade, asserted that there had never been any misunderstandings between him and Stanton, nor had the Secretary ever interfered with or obstructed his plans. D. C. Chipman, a Steubenville friend, wrote to Stanton that with the two generals thus on record, “you need have no solicitude about your fame.”17
Many persons were intent upon observing what would occur when Sherman came face to face with Stanton. On May 23, the Army of the Potomac led off the Grand Review. Spic and span, in perfect alignment, the troops swung down the avenue through the wildly cheering crowd, flags flying, horses prancing, field guns rumbling a heavy undertone to the cadence of the marching feet, the officers saluting smartly and the colors dipping when the various units passed the reviewing stand. This was a far cry from the defenseless days of 1861, and the nation took pride in its power and hurrahed in happiness that the bloodletting was finished.
Sherman’s western army paraded the next day. The tall, lean men from the Mississippi Valley followed their commander in rhythmic tread, lines straight, heads held high, stepping off smartly in their long, rolling stride. After passing the reviewing stand Sherman swung out of line, dismounted, and strode up the steps. Onlookers—some, like newsman Noah Brooks, equipped with field glasses—watched each motion of the men on the stand. Sherman saluted the President and took his proffered hand. Stanton stood next. He started to extend his hand to Sherman, but realized that the general intended to ignore it and allowed his hand to fall. According to Brooks, “Stanton’s face, never very expressive, remained immobile.” But Sherman flushed deeply, either in anger or exaltation, deliberately walked past Stanton, shook hands with Grant, and turned to watch the marching men.18
Sherman had publicly snubbed the Secretary. To Senator Lyman Trumbull, reading exaggerated newspaper accounts of the episode, this was a shocking breach of democratic principles. He urged Stanton to stay in the war office regardless of the rash of reports, touched off by the incident, that the Secretary was about to resign. Stanton’s mail brought him similar reactions from across the nation and—to his mind, most important—from many men still in uniform.
To Republican-Union party leaders, it was vital for Stanton to stay on. As Lieber commented to Sumner: “His resignation at present would be an unfortunate support of ‘the Blairs’ and look like a justification of Sherman’s conduct on the part of the Administration—a great mistake—should it happen.” To prevent it from happening, President Johnson, now head of the Union coalition, specifically asked Stanton to retain his portfolio, and, Barlow informed Montgomery Blair after an interview with the President, Stanton had reluctantly agreed.19
Despite all the fuss, Stanton always felt ready to forgive Sherman. He retained a conciliatory attitude toward the general, as he informed William Stanton. Yet proud, stern, stubborn Tecumseh, though more angry with Halleck than with Stanton, refused a reconciliation.
On the morning after the review, young Edwin L. Stanton answered a ring at the door of his home. Mrs. Sherman had sent a bouquet of choice flowers for his mother as a “mute appeal for forgiveness” for the general’s discourtesy; and Mrs. Sherman told Lincoln’s old friend Orville Browning that she wanted to call on the Stantons but was worried about the propriety of her doing so. Browning advised her to go, and serving as mediator, expressed his regret to Stanton at the difficulty that had arisen. Stanton replied that there was no difficulty so far as he was concerned, and that he entertained no hard feelings toward the general. Browning said that Mrs. Sherman would be glad to pay her respects to the Secretary and Mrs. Stanton, if a call from her would be acceptable; Stanton responded that it would be most agreeable. A few evenings later, at Mrs. Sherman’s request, Browning accompanied her to the Stanton home, where they spent a pleasant half hour.20
The general, however, continued to nurse his resentment. And the Secretary, without animus but convinced that Sherman had been foolish in his terms of peace with Johnston, would forgive but not retract. It went against the grain with Stanton to make amends to anyone publicly, and he was not convinced that in proportion to Sherman’s misdeeds he had handled the general ungently.
More was involved in this than either man’s personal feelings. It tied in with their differences over policy, with the question of what attitude the government should adopt toward the conquered South and the rights that should be accorded to the Negro. This was a controversy in which Sherman and Stanton were irrevocably at odds; so the feud continued to smolder.
1 Beale, Welles Diary, III, 291, needs supplementing by Welles’s letters to Johnson, July 27, 1869, and to Joseph Fowler, Nov. 9, 1875, in ibid., 714–21, 733, and to M. Blair, ca. Feb. 1877, HL. See also Frederick Seward in Washington Chronicle, Jan. 25, 1875; John A. Dodds, “Honest John Covode,” WPHM, XVI, 181; Dawes, “Recollections of Stanton under Johnson,” AM, LXXIV, 495–7; Julian, op. cit., 225, 257; April 16, 1865, Meigs ms diary, LC; George Fort Milton, Age of Hate (New York, 1930), 169.
2 Stanton’s notes, dated April 16, midnight, describing these events, copy owned by the estate of Benjamin P. Thomas, makes it clear that there was no prearrangement between him and the legislators as Welles always insisted. See Pierce, Sumner, IV, 244; Beale, Welles Diary, III, 719–21, 733; Welles, “Lincoln and Johnson,” Galaxy, XIII, 528–30, 666.
3 O.R., XLVI, pt. 3, 952, 965. Dix informed Stanton that his order had been carried out with respect to a large plate that had been made, but that he had retained a smaller plate, thinking the Lincoln family might want it. He sent the Secretary a print made from this plate. Stanton answered that the family objected to publication and Dix should also destroy the smaller plate, as ordered. Stanton evidently kept the print, however, and a few years ago a reproduction of it turned up in the Nicolay Papers, ISHL. Other data in Lamon to Stanton, April 12, 1866, HL; Morse, Welles Diary, II, 292–3; Browning, Diary, II, 23; order, April 18, 1865, Garrett Family Papers, LC; G. M. Dodge, Personal Recollections (Council Bluffs, 1914), 28.
4 Memo of Plumb, NYHS; Elizabeth Blair Lee to Adm. S. P. Lee, April 17, 1865, Box XII, Blair-Lee Papers, PU; O.R., XLVII, pt. 3, 221, 243–4, 263; Morse, Welles Diary, II, 293–5; Johnson to Speed, April 21, 1865, Johnson Papers, LC; Bates, op. cit., 395–7, 424–5.
5 Anna S. McAllister, Ellen Ewing, Wife of General Sherman (New York, 1936), 304; Hesseltine, Ulysses S. Grant, Politician (New York, 1935), 51–2 (hereafter cited as Hesseltine, Grant); the order is in O.R., XLVII, pt. 3, 263; Johnson’s claim in M. Blair to Barlow, April 26, 1865, Barlow Papers, HL.
6 Morse, Welles Diary, II, 309–10, III, 247; O.R., XLVII, pt. 3, 277, 285–6; A. E. H. Johnson in Washington Star, Sept. 3, 1892.
7 Thorndike, Sherman Letters, 241; Russ, “Administrative Activities of the Union Army,” loc. cit., 84–5; Lewis, Sherman, 553; Wolcott MS, 200–1; Ida Tarbell’s memo of conversation with Dana, Allegheny College; Lieber to Halleck, Feb. 4, 1865, Lieber Papers, HL; Milligan to Johnson, April 29, 1865, Johnson Papers, LC.
8 Smith, Blair Family, II, 183–4; E. B. Lee to Adm. S. P. Lee, May 18, 1865, Blair-Lee Papers, PU; Morse, Welles
Diary, III, 247; Chandler to wife, April 23, 25, 1865, Chandler Papers, LC; Browning, Diary, II, 24; M. Blair to Barlow, April 28, 1865, Barlow Papers, HL.
9 April 24, 1865, Patrick ms diary, LC; same date, Hitchcock ms diary, GI, which differs significantly from the account in Croffut, op. cit., 476–7; Milligan to Johnson, April 29, 1865, Johnson Papers, LC.
10 April 25, 1865, Comstock ms diary, LC; O.R., XLVII, pt. 1, 34–6; pt. 3, 296, 301–2, 345–6; Sherman, Memoirs, II, 349–73.
11 Wilson to Badeau, May 13, 1865, Wilson Papers, LC; Halleck-Lieber exchange, June 3, 4, 16, 1865, HL; O.R., XLVII, pt. 1, 29–48; pt. 3, 334–5, 345–6, 410, 435, 634–7; Dahlgren, op. cit., 510–11.
12 W. T. Sherman to Grant, May 28, 1865, HL; John Sherman to Stanton, April 27, 1865, Stanton MSS; Young, Men and Memories, I, 436; Force ms Personal Record, II, 181, UW.
13 Grant to Sherman, May 6, 1865, W. T. Sherman Papers, LC; Thorndike, Sherman Letters, 249, 365; McAllister, op. cit., 304; William Stanton to H. H. Marlcham, June 1, 1904, Willis Weaver Papers, LC; A. E. H. Johnson in Washington Star, Sept. 3, 1892; O.R., XLVII, pt. 3, 311.
14 W. B. Matchett to Butler, April 22, and J. W. Shaffer to same, May 14, 1865, Butler Papers, LC; Thorndike, Sherman Letters, 247–8; Chase to Johnson, May 7, 1865, Johnson Papers, LC; Wolcott MS, 200–1.
15 Lewis, Sherman, 536–44; Raoul S. Naroll, “Lincoln and the Sherman Peace Fiasco—Another Fable?” JSH, XX, 459–83; Murray, “General Sherman, the Negro, and Slavery,” loc. cit., 125–30; Harry W. Pfanz, “The Surrender Negotiations between General Johnston and General Sherman, April 1865,” MA, XVI, 61–70; Hesseltine, “Abraham Lincoln and the Politicians,” ALQ, VI, 55.
16 O.R., XLVII, pt. 3, 454–5; Sherman to Grant, May 10, 1865, W. T. Sherman Papers, LC; Thomas Ewing, Jr., to Sr., May 12, 1865, Ewing Family Papers, LC; Weed to Stanton, May 27, 1865, Stanton MSS.
17 Fessenden to Stanton, May 23, Chipman to same, May 30, 1865, Stanton MSS; Flower, Stanton, 387; CCW, I, 38, 523–4, III, 4–14; Julian, op. cit., 258; O.R., XLVII, pt. 3, 576, 581–2.
18 Brooks, op. cit., 278; Dana, Recollections, 288–90; Grant, Memoirs, II, 379; O.R., XLVII, pt. 3, 586.
19 Trumbull to Stanton, May 25, 1865, Stanton MSS; Lieber to Sumner, June?, 1865, HL; Barlow to Blair, June 16, 1865, Letterbook XI, 522–5, Barlow Papers, HL.
20 Willis Weaver, Edwin M. Stanton and the Sherman-Johnston Terms of Peace (n.p., 1927), 19, and see the ms memoranda in the Weaver Papers, LC. See also Morse, Welles Diary, II, 309–10; Browning, Diary, II, 30, 40; Wolcott MS, 213; A. E. H. Johnson in Washington Evening Star, Sept. 3, 1892.
CHAPTER XX
JUSTICE
GOVERNMENT AGENTS meanwhile had again swept down on the Surratt boardinghouse and arrested everyone in the place. But the raid netted them only Mrs. Surratt, her daughter Anna, and some female boarders, all of whom, except Mrs. Surratt, were soon released. Just as the agents were about to take their prisoners away, a knock sounded at the door. Standing there was a rough-looking individual dressed like a day laborer, with a pickax on his shoulder. Arrested on suspicion, he proved to be Lewis Payne, the man who had attacked Seward.
Two more suspects were arrested elsewhere—Samuel Arnold and Michael O’Laughlin. Then Atzerodt fell into the net. He had been detailed to murder Andrew Johnson but had lost his nerve. Edmund Spangler, a scene shifter at Ford’s Theater, joined the swelling number of apprehended conspirators. Booth’s pursuers arrested Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, who had set the actor’s broken leg. It was now clear that Booth had headed south, and information from Detective Britton A. Hill confirmed Stanton’s erroneous but persisting belief that the murder plot had originated in Richmond.
Stanton ordered Payne, O’Laughlin, Spangler, and Atzerodt confined below deck on the monitor Montauk, which was anchored close by the Navy Yard. The other male prisoners were placed in the hold of the monitor Saugus, riding near by. Each prisoner had an iron ball attached to his leg by a heavy chain and wore handcuffs joined by an iron bar. Later, for better security, Stanton ordered a canvas bag placed over each man’s head and tied around his neck. A hole in the device allowed the prisoners to breathe and eat, but they were unable to see.
As the summer heat descended physicians attending the prisoners reported that these hoods might drive them insane. Stanton promised to have the hoods removed, to allow the prisoners to exercise daily, and to provide them with reading matter, but none of these promises was kept. Mrs. Surratt was never subjected to the ordeal of the hood, however, nor was she ever placed on a monitor. She remained in the Carroll Annex of the Old Capitol Prison until shortly before the trial.1
Booth was still at large. On April 20, Stanton issued a proclamation offering $50,000 reward for his apprehension, with additional amounts of $25,000 each for the capture of Herold and John Surratt. Information indicated that young Surratt had escaped to Canada, and as the days passed with Booth’s whereabouts still unknown, Stanton became despondent from fear that he, too, had eluded the authorities. He wanted Lincoln avenged.
Then, on April 26, while Stanton was at home, resting on a sofa, Colonels Baker and E. J. Conger rushed into the house. “We have got Booth,” Baker shouted.
Stanton slowly put his hands to his eyes, and for a long moment remained silent. Then he rose deliberately and put on his coat. Meanwhile, Baker had placed a number of articles on a table—a belt, pipe, knife, compass, diary, two pistols, and a few other effects which had been taken from Booth’s body.
The murderer had been taken near Port Conway, Virginia; Booth and Herold had been hiding in a tobacco barn, where a cavalry detachment had found them. When the fugitives refused to come out, the soldiers had set fire to the barn. Contrary to orders, one of the soldiers, Sergeant Boston Corbett, had shot Booth, who died shortly afterward. Herold was captured alive, and in company with Booth’s body, was aboard the steamer John S. Ide headed for Washington. Conger, on a faster ship, had brought the effects of the dead man which Baker showed to Stanton.
The Secretary ordered Baker and Eckert to intercept the Ide and take her directly to the Navy Yard. There, under cover of night, Herold and the body of Booth were transferred to the Montauk. Early the next morning, Baker, Holt, Dr. Barnes, and other officials boarded the Montauk. Word of the capture had spread rapidly and a crowd watched them from the shore. On a carpenter’s bench under an awning on the Montauk’s deck, lay Booth’s body, wrapped in canvas. Barnes directed an autopsy on the dead man, and identified Booth beyond a possibility of doubt.
Stanton knew that every hair of Booth’s head would be prized by Confederate partisans. One worshipful woman had already succeeded in boarding the Montauk and snipping off a strand. The Secretary resolved that Southern sympathizers should have no opportunity to transmute the murderer into a martyr. On a promontory where the Eastern Branch emptied into the Potomac, stood a onetime federal penitentiary that had become part of the Washington arsenal. Near the western end of this building was a large room with a brick floor. After studying a plan of this structure, Stanton directed the commander of the arsenal to bury Booth there in secret.
Late at night, as enlisted men dug a grave, other soldiers placed Booth’s body in a musket case and transported it to the arsenal. Eckert and Baker were in the building as Stanton’s representatives, but neither of them witnessed the interment, which was conducted without ceremony. The arsenal commander reported to Stanton that Lincoln’s murderer was buried in a secret, unmarked, and unhallowed grave.2
While the dragnet had been closing, Holt, who was also head of the Army’s Bureau of Military Justice, had been busily collecting evidence against the conspirators. Some of it confirmed Johnson and Stanton’s belief that high-placed Confederate officials had been involved in the murder plot, and on May 2 the President proclaimed that Jacob Thompson, Clement C. Clay, “and other rebels and traitors … harbored in Canada” had conspired with Jefferson Davis to commit the outrage. Thereupon Johnson offered a reward of $100,000 for Davis’s apprehension
and $25,000 for the capture of each of the others.
Though many Northerners were astounded at the proclamation, Stanton always believed that the evidence Holt had shown him justified the action, even though it might not satisfy the requirements for conviction in a civil court. Dana, privy to all this, realized that Stanton, Holt, and Johnson—already convinced that Davis and his subordinates had been guilty of starving Union prisoners, plotting to poison the water supplies of Northern cities, setting fires in New York City, and sending hostile forces into the North from Canada, as in the raid at St. Albans—became easily assured that they had inspired the murder of Lincoln; and Stanton and Holt never changed their minds.3
Clay surrendered to the Union Army on May 11, having learned of Johnson’s proclamation, and on the same day federal troops arrested Alexander H. Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy. Two days later electrifying news reached Washington. Jefferson Davis, supposedly the archconspirator, had been captured in southern Georgia, and rebel Postmaster General Reagan also fell into the government’s hands. John Campbell, who had tried to negotiate with Lincoln after the fall of Richmond, was being held under arrest at his home. Destitute and broken in health, Campbell elicited the sympathy of loyal men, owing in part to his known hostility to Davis during the last part of the war. Campbell now petitioned for a parole, and Halleck asked what should be done with him.
Stanton was sure that Campbell had deceived Lincoln at Richmond, and he had seen a letter addressed to Campbell while he had been Confederate Assistant Secretary of War, in which the writer proposed to assassinate Lincoln. On Stanton’s orders, and with the President’s assent, Campbell, as well as Davis, Clay, Stephens, Reagan, R. M. T. Hunter, and James A. Seddon, went to prison.
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