Stanton was becoming increasingly disgusted by the evidence that the South had learned nothing from its experiment in rebellion, and that the Southerners returning to power intended to continue their exploitation of the Negro. “Every day reveals the deplorable results of war on our own people and the degeneracy that follows in its train,” he wrote in mid-August to a friend. “I am still toiling away in the Department, but hope only for a little while.”
He was desperately tired; his serious attack in July, combined with the emotional strains of the past few months, had worn him down. Ellen, herself not well, badgered him to resign. Speed noted that “Stanton’s friends have been pressing him to go away and take some rest. I think if he does not he is likely to be a great sufferer.”
Stanton decided to take the much needed vacation. It might restore his dissipated strength, and would at least offer him an opportunity to think about his own future. If he decided not to leave the war office, then he must also come to some decision concerning his views on reconstruction.
Ellen’s mother came to Washington to care for the younger children. Eckert and the oldest boy, Edwin Lamson Stanton, received the Secretary’s detailed instructions on maintaining telegraphic communication with him. On August 21, Stanton and Ellen started north in search of cooler weather. A Department telegrapher accompanied the party, for Stanton would not cut himself off completely from his work.
Reconstruction concerns followed him. In Mississippi, Governor Sharkey began to recruit state militia forces from among pardoned former rebels. General H. W. Slocum, commanding in Mississippi, issued orders prohibiting the formation of such units, considering them violations of the paroles of former rebels and patent threats to the freedmen. Johnson supported the governor.
Army officers were angered at this new example of Southern temerity and resented Slocum’s humiliation. General Manning Force, on duty in Mississippi, wrote: “If it were not that good faith to the colored people requires the government to defend their interests a while, the simplest course would be to withdraw all troops at once.” And he wondered: “How far are we bound in honor, to supervise the state laws [in the South] upon the … freedmen?”20
Stanton kept out of this affair. His party remained for a blissful week at a New Jersey seaside resort to enjoy the surf, delaying a scheduled inspection of the Military Academy. “The tyrannical old Turk was hourly expected at the Point … but he did not appear,” recorded George T. Strong. While in New Jersey, Stanton heard from his son that little of importance was transpiring in Washington. But Grant wired him for permission to remove a general from duty with the Freedmen’s Bureau in Georgia because of his “prejudices in favor of color.” Stanton ordered Eckert to comply with Grant’s request; he and the commanding general were by no means committed to radicalism.
By prearrangement, Seward also kept watch on events for Stanton; the two men, though drifting apart in politics, kept a respect for each other based on their shared affection for Lincoln. Eckert called on the President daily to ask for instructions, and then sent on Johnson’s requests for Stanton’s opinions. Stanton, incapable of thorough vacationing, asked Eckert to check with the President and the cabinet on whether anything required him to return to Washington at once; in reply, Eckert assured Stanton that he could finish his trip, for Johnson and Seward thought no crisis was at hand and Speed had said: “Stay and enjoy your rest, while you can.”
Each day, Stanton sent off to Eckert a long wire containing decisions on pending matters and inquiries on others. But Stanton had so impressed himself on the Department that bureau officers held up many matters until he returned. However, despite the numerous items of business that followed them on their vacation, the Stantons enjoyed themselves. They reached West Point on September 4 after inspecting a half-dozen forts around New York City, where the Secretary interviewed imprisoned Stephen Russell Mallory, former Confederate Navy Secretary, and concluded that Mallory still had not altered his convictions. A telegram from young Edwin told them; “All is well.… Bessie very bright. You better not return until this boiling weather subsides, the thermometer is 90 out here at the Point of Desperation in the City.” Another wire, from Seward, assured Stanton: “I am watchful & I shall remain here. You need not return this week.”21
While inspecting the Military Academy, Stanton learned that Montgomery Blair, who had publicly returned to the Democratic party, had scathingly denounced him, accusing him of pro-secession sentiments in 1860 and of now playing butcher at the guillotine whenever Thad Stevens ordered a campaign of decapitation. Along with this news, however, came reassurances from Eckert: Johnson had expressed to Seward full trust in Stanton, saying that “he would not listen to so offensive remarks from Mr. B. or any one else.”
Thus advised, Stanton decided to continue the trip, for Ellen was still not herself. At West Point, Surgeon General and Mrs. Barnes joined the Stantons, and the party moved on to Newport, Rhode Island, where they were lavishly entertained. Stanton enjoyed his first experience at sailing; “a charming ride on a calm clear sea, with bright blue skies above us.” But criticism hit at him even here.
A reporter of the Newport Daily News asserted that a luxurious steamboat had been chartered by the government in order to transport the Stanton party up the coast. The fact was, as the editor of that paper admitted in a retraction the next day, that the ship had been under government charter since 1861; it would have come to Newport in any case. In a personal letter of apology to Stanton, the editor assured him that no one who knew his services to the nation believed this canard.
Despite this unfortunate incident, the Stantons enjoyed Newport. “Mrs. Stanton looked very pretty, while the Secretary [was] … civil to everybody,” wrote Mrs. George Bancroft, and she added that he had told her, concerning her son’s marriage to a Southern girl he had met during his Union Army service: “I am glad that you are extending your ties southward.”22 He was less sure concerning the kinds of ties with which the President was seeking to bind the former rebels to the war-weary nation, and he wondered whether Blair had had “the left-handed assent of Johnson to make the attack” on him, or whether Johnson saw Blair’s speech as an onslaught against the President as well as the Secretary. But Stanton worried most over Johnson’s inconsistencies, and concluded that he was “trying to ride two horses and he probably means to join the party which finally [wins].” If this was true, and Johnson hoped to go along with the prevailing wind once its strength and direction were clear, then, it seemed to Stanton, it was his task to help steer events so that the President would tack the right way.
Whether or not the black man voted in the South would determine the issue.23
1 Mrs. Van Swearingen owns the inscribed Lieber volume. On Mexico, Hamilton G. Howard, Civil War Echoes (Washington, 1907), 226–8; Jay Monaghan, Custer (Boston, 1959), 267; ANJ (May 13, 1865), 600, surveys army problems.
2 Judah to Gen. Grosvenor, Aug. 9, 1865, in Army Commands, IX, 34, RG 98; a survey of provosts’ duties is in Union Provost Marshal File, Miscellaneous, Box 78, RG 109, NA; June 8, 1865, Patrick ms diary, LC.
3 Dunning, “The Impeachment and Trial of President Johnson,” AHA Papers (New York, 1886–91), IV, 479–80; Hyman, “Johnson, Stanton, and Grant; A Reconsideration of the Army’s Role in the Events Leading to Impeachment,” AHR, LXVI, 85–100.
4 Claude G. Bowers, The Tragic Era (New York, 1929), 30; Curtis Nettels, “Andrew Johnson and the South,” SAQ, XV, 55–7.
5 Otis, “The Causes of Impeachment,” CM, LXXXV, 192; Brodie, op. cit., 228; Feb. 19, April 9, 1868, Moore notebook, Johnson Papers, LC; McCulloch, Addresses, Speeches, Lectures and Letters upon Various Subjects (Washington, 1891), 143–6; Eric L. McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (Chicago, 1960), 85–92, passim.
6 Halleck to Lieber, April 18, 1865, HL; James B. Steadman to Johnson, April 15, and A. Lovering to same, April 24, 1865, Johnson Papers, LC.
7 Stanton and Scovel’s testimony, Impeachment Report, 35, 403, 622; Dana to J. S. Pike, May 1
0, 1865, CFL; Brady to Stanton, May 14, 1865, Stanton MSS; McKitrick, op. cit., 42–84.
8 Elizabeth Blair Lee to Adm. S. P. Lee, May 18, 1865, Box XII, Blair-Lee Papers, PU; Welles, “Lincoln and Johnson,” Galaxy, XIII, 521–3, 530–2; Welles to Johnson, July 27, 1869, in Beale, Welles Diary, III, 717–21, and see 733; ibid., II, 301–3; memo, Jan. 22, 1866, Chase Papers, LC; Impeachment Report, 401; O.R., XLVI, pt. 3, 571, 939.
9 Impeachment Report, 831–6; Richardson, Messages and Papers, VI, 310–14; Stevens to Sumner, May 10, June 3, 14, and Hooper to same, May 22, 1865, Sumner Papers, HU; Pierce, Sumner, IV, 235; Stevens to Johnson, May 16, and Johnson to Stanton, June 3, 1865, Johnson Papers, LC.
10 Morse, Welles Diary, II, 318–19; Hyman, Era of the Oath (Philadelphia, 1954), 95–118.
11 Chase to Johnson, May 17, 1865, Johnson Papers, LC; same to Stanton, May 20, 1865, Stanton MSS. See also Walter S. Fleming, Documentary History of Reconstruction (Cleveland, 1906–7), I, 46–62; Francis Butler Simkins, A History of the South (New York, 1953), 255.
12 O. O. Howard, op. cit., II, 207–8; George S. Bentley, A History of the Freedmen’s Bureau (Philadelphia, 1955); IGO, Extracts of Reports, 1865–8, II, 297, RG 159; Army Commands, Department of Georgia, VIII, 11–12, RG 98, NA.
13 Bureau of Freedmen, Refugees, and Abandoned Lands, AAG, Vol. XLIV, 202, 290, RG 105; Army Commands, Provost Marshal, Virginia, Vol. XXXVI, 29–30, RG 195; Union Provost Marshal File, Miscellaneous, Box 70, RG 109, NA; Sheridan to Holt, April 28, 1866, Sheridan Papers, LC.
14 Badeau to Gen. J. H. Wilson, July 24, 1865, Wilson Papers, LC; IGO, Extracts of Reports, 1865–8, II, 331, RG 159, NA; Chase to Johnson, May 23, 1865, John Russell Young Papers, LC; Stanton to Johnson, June 18, 1865, Johnson Papers, LC; Jonathan T. Dorris, “Pardon Seekers and Brokers: A Sequel of Appomattox,” JSH, I, 276–92; Hyman, “Deceit in Dixie,” CWH, III, 65–82.
15 Chase to Sumner, Aug. 20, 1865, Chase Papers, 2d ser., LC; Lieber to same, July 28, 1865, HL; for reports, see Sec. War Correspondence File, Box 318, RG 107, NA; and on party alignments, McKitrick, op. cit., 70–6.
16 Sumner to Stevens, July 12, 1865, Sumner Papers, HU; Barlow to M. Blair, April 21, May 10, 1865, Letterbook XI, 284, 369–71, Barlow Papers, HL; Jacob D. Cox to Garfield, July 21, 1865, Garfield Papers, LC; Pierrepont to Stanton, April 27, 1865, Stanton MSS.
17 Milton, op. cit., 249–65; Rhodes, op. cit., V, 535–9; W. D. Shipman to Barlow, Aug. 29, 1865, Barlow Papers, HL.
18 Stanton to Dana, August 10, 1865, copy owned by the estate of Benjamin P. Thomas; Hyman, Era of the Oath, 83–8; Fleming, op. cit., I, 229–30; O.R., ser. 2, VIII, 818.
19 Lieber to Stanton, July 30, 1865, Stanton MSS; Fleming, op. cit., I, 273–312.
20 Speed to Lieber, July 5, 1865, HL; Stanton to J. L. Bates, Aug. 14, Schurz to Stanton, Aug. 29, Slocum to same, Aug. 29, and Sharkey to Johnson (copy), Aug. 30, 1865, Stanton MSS; Force, ms Private Journal, II, 220–2, UW; Force to Bliss, Aug. 25, 1865, Bancroft-Bliss Papers, LC; on the trip, Bates, op. cit., 401–2; ANJ (Sept. 16, 1865), 49; McKitrick, op. cit., 163–4, 192–5.
21 Strong, Diary, IV, 30; Edwin L. Stanton to Stanton, Aug. 29, Sept. 4, Grant to same, Aug. 3, Stanton to Eckert, Sept. 1, 2, and to Seward and reply, Sept. 4, 1865, Stanton MSS; Hardie to Col. F. I. Lippitt, Sept. 4, 1865, Hardie Papers, LC.
22 ANJ (Sept. 16, 1865), 57; Eckert to Stanton, Sept. 5, 9, Stanton to Mrs. I. Bell, Sept. 12, and G. T. Hammond to Stanton, Sept. 15, 1865, Stanton MSS; Newport Daily News, Sept. 14, 15, 1865; Mrs. Bancroft to “Lundy,” Sept. 15, 1865, Bancroft-Bliss Papers, LC; Blair, op. cit., 15–16.
23 W. D. Shipman to Barlow, July 14, Aug. 29, and Barlow to Shipman, Oct. 25, 1865, Barlow Papers, Letterbook XI, 226–8, HL, recounting conversations with Stanton at Newport.
CHAPTER XXII
DECISION
CONTINUING their trip, the Stantons came to Boston at the beginning of the third week in September, and stayed at the home of Congressman Samuel Hooper. Sumner was an intimate of the Hooper family, and the Secretary and the senator saw a great deal of each other in those long autumn days. Through Sumner, Stanton came to a crucial judgment concerning his course.
Although he had created a reputation for independent thought and action, Stanton had always been suggestible to stronger personalities. In his youth the preachments of Kenyon professors had firmly set his attitudes toward religion. Subsequently his impressionable nature was further demonstrated by the impact that the elder Tappan, Chase, Black, and, above all others, Lincoln, had on his professional career and on his social views. Now Sumner irrevocably affected him.
Back in April, Sumner had convinced him that Congress would demand Negro participation in the rebuilding of the Southern state governments, though Stanton had chosen not to press the matter then. During the intervening months, the deficiencies he had observed in the working out of the President’s reconstruction plan had altered Stanton’s views on the Negro as a citizen. Earlier he had distrusted the black man’s ability to function as a voter and officeholder. Although he was by no means converted to an appreciation of the freedman as a social equal, Stanton now inclined to the belief that Sumner had been prophetically correct on the need for the Negro to vote in the South if the North’s victories on a hundred battlefields were to be perpetuated.
During Stanton’s visit in Boston, Sumner delivered the keynote address at the Massachusetts Republican state convention at nearby Worcester. His theme was the right of all Negroes to “irreversible guarantees” of equal status with whites and a condemnation of the policy of the President. Congress should control the reconstruction process. Ample time should be taken to determine the terms to be offered, he said, but in all events the Constitution should be amended so as to prevent the denial of the suffrage to anyone on grounds of race or color.
Referring directly to Stanton, the senator said that there was still need for his energy in the government. The region that had been won to Union and liberty by the victory he had organized must not be abandoned to its ancient masters. “Let it be held by arms until it smiles with the charities of life,” he urged. “A righteous government cannot be founded on any exclusion of race.” According to Sumner, the Secretary told him that he had read the address and approved every word of it, thanked him for his complimentary references, and “asked him to do only what he wanted to do.”1
Thus, in September 1865, Stanton apparently accepted Sumner’s goals. But he wanted to hold to a middle course in achieving them.
With Ellen visibly improving in health, he decided to cut their trip short. The Stantons had to decline a good many invitations, and he hated to miss a chance to see William Lloyd Garrison, but he began to feel anxious to return to Washington. During a stopover in New York City, they were sumptuously entertained by Senator Morgan, who gave a party attended by more than 400 guests, and the New York Times noted “the entire absence of political dodgery and popular fishing” by the Secretary. Stanton, the writer rather incredulously concluded, was after nothing but a good time.
Seward was told that Stanton was “entirely restored to health. He has received great attention and marks of respect every where.… He says he goes home now to give you an opportunity to come.”2
True to his word, Stanton’s return to Washington permitted Seward to go on vacation, and Stanton kept in touch with him as Seward had done while Stanton was away, by means of the War Department telegraph. Late in October, Seward publicly extolled Stanton as the Danton of the Civil War. Stanton rather enjoyed reading the criticisms of the hyperbolic speech and of himself which quickly appeared in the press, and he asked Ellen to keep these poetic comments:
STANTON AND DANTON
If souls transmigrate, as we are told,
By all the Pythagorians old,
I’m sure the bloody soul of Stanton
Came from the carcass of old Danton.
STANTON THE IMITATOR
What a grotesque tyrant is Stanton,
Who with infinite, la
ughable pains
Imitates all things in Danton,
Except the old butcher’s brains.
Stanton could afford to be amused. His current annual report summed up the impressive achievements of the war, and he felt rightly confident that informed opinion would credit his accomplishments.3
Once settled again in the war office, he started to put into practice his new conviction of the need for protecting the Negro. When Schurz proposed to make an inspection tour of the South on Johnson’s invitation, but also under secret radical auspices, Stanton urged him to go. Schurz’s reports, said the Secretary, though they might not change the President’s views, would be of vital interest to the next Congress. This comment could only mean that Stanton hoped that Congress would intervene to modify Johnson’s policy. He similarly tipped his hand in a letter to Schuyler Colfax, scheduled to be the next Speaker of the House of Representatives, welcoming him back to Washington—“The next session will be of deep interest and fraught with consequences to the Government.”
The wisdom of Stanton’s decision received another confirmation when Provisional Governor Parsons, of Alabama, came to Washington in November to consult with political leaders on sectional reconciliation. He had been one of the most co-operative of the temporary governors, and Stanton commended him to Sumner and to other New England Republicans as “a loyal and patriotic man.” But Parsons told Sumner that he would emigrate rather than allow Negroes to vote. “What can we expect for the future when such a spirit leads?” Sumner asked Stanton. It was a question which the Secretary had already been propounding to himself.4
His mind now made up, Stanton proceeded to support the Freedmen’s Bureau in its contest with the army provost marshals for jurisdiction in the South. He had long known that the provost organizations were inefficient, for they lacked a single head. As a result, in the words of Provisional Governor Perry, of North Carolina, “the Provost Marshals decide the same questions differently in almost every district.” Perry as well as other Johnson appointees had pressured Stanton to suppress the Topsy-like provost apparatus, though not, of course, to assign its manifold functions to the Freedmen’s Bureau.
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