7 Sheridan to Grant, April 21, 1867, Johnson Papers, LC; Badeau, Grant, 65–8.
8 Johnson-Stanton-Grant exchange, May 7–14, 1867, Stanton MSS and Johnson Papers, LC; Stanton to Ord, May 11, 1867, HQA, Box 104, RG 108, NA; Morse, Welles Diary, III, 90–1; “Notes of Colonel W. G. Moore,” loc. cit., 99, 106; Boutwell to Butler, May 16, 1867, Butler Papers, LC; Eisenschiml, Why Was Lincoln Murdered?, 143–4.
9 Stanton’s minutes of the May 23 meeting, written in the flyleaf of a volume of army general orders, ISHL. Other data in Beale, Welles Diary, III, 93–4, 96, 98, 737. In part by 1868 and fully by 1871, Congress accepted Stanton’s standards regarding federal officeholders’ loyalty requirements; see Hyman, Era of the Oath, 121–34.
10 To Sheridan, Badeau, Grant, 66, 102; other data in Stanton to Grant, May 18, 1867, WD, Military Book, LVIII, 342, RG 107, NA; Browning, Diary, II, 146–7; Morse, Welles Diary, III, 99–100.
11 June 3, 1867, Sec. War Correspondence File, Box 325, RG 107, NA; E. R. S. Canby to Stanton, June 2, 1867, Stanton MSS; Morse, Welles Diary, III, 102.
12 To Sheridan, June 7, 1867, Sheridan Papers, LC; Badeau, Grant, 86, 103; Hesseltine, Grant, 85; Morse, Welles Diary, III, 104; Gorham, Stanton, II, 357–8, 381.
13 Sickles to Stanton, June 16, 1867, Stanton MSS; exchange, Sickles, Stanton, and Johnson, June 9–15, 1867, Johnson Papers, LC; Bowers, op. cit., 166–7.
14 Stanton’s ms memos, June 11, 14, 18 meetings, Stanton MSS; Gorham, Stanton, II, 360–1; Morse, Welles Diary, III, 107–11.
15 Ms minutes of June 19–20 meetings, Stanton MSS; and see Gorham, Stanton, II, 362–71; Flower, Stanton, 316–19. Welles wanted no order issued at all, for it implied that Johnson now accepted the validity of congressional reconstruction: Morse, Welles Diary, III, 109–14.
16 To Sheridan, June 24, 1867, Sheridan Papers, LC; Badeau, Grant, 83; Gorham, Stanton, II, 380; Hay, Diaries and Letters, 284.
17 Draft of bill in Stanton’s hand, Stanton MSS; Porter to Sheridan, June 25, 1867, Sheridan Papers, LC; Richardson, Messages and Papers, VI, 536–45.
18 Notes on a memo in Stanton’s hand, undated, of conversations with Grant, ca. July 15, 1867, owned by the estate of Benjamin P. Thomas; ms memo, Grant to Stanton, June 13, 1867, Johnson Papers, LC; Gorham, Stanton, II, 374–5, for Grant’s letter. Other data in Morse, Welles Diary, III, 123, 131–2; Cleveland Herald, July 11, 1867.
19 July 14, 1867, Moore notebook, Johnson Papers, LC; “Notes of Colonel W. G. Moore,” loc. cit., 103–4; July 31, 1867, Bigelow ms diary, NYPL, and see his Retrospections, IV, 92.
20 Thomas to Stanton, July 4, 1867, HQA, Letters Received, Box 105, RG 108, NA; Badeau, Grant, 20–2; Morse, Welles Diary, III, 147–50; O. B. Matteson to Seward, Aug. 7, 1867, Seward Papers, UR; Robert B. Warden, An Account of the Life and Public Services of Salmon Portland Chase (Cincinnati, 1874), 669–70.
21 Welles to Johnson, ca. Aug. 3, 1867, HL; Aug. 5, 1867, Moore notebook, Johnson Papers, LC; “Notes of Colonel W. G. Moore,” loc. cit., 107–8; Morse, Welles Diary, III, 152–8; Blair to wife, Aug. 10, 1867, Blair Family Papers, LC.
22 Stanton to H. Woodman, Aug. 6, 1867, Woodman Papers, MHS; undated entry, ca. Aug. 7–10, 1867, Hitchcock ms diary, GI; Wilson, “Edwin M. Stanton,” loc. cit., 17; Pope to Holt, Aug. 10, 1867, Holt Papers, LC; on Thomas, Stanton to Johnson, Aug. 8, 1867, Johnson Papers, LC.
23 On Aug. 10, Stanton confided his fears about Grant in a letter to his wartime associate Watson, but never sent it; copy of this letter owned by the estate of Benjamin P. Thomas. It fits in with and clarifies all other evidence. Other data in Badeau, Grant, 90; Hesseltine, Grant, 97; C. A. Dana and James H. Wilson, Life of Ulysses S. Grant (Springfield, 1868), 379–84 (hereafter cited as Dana and Wilson, Grant); Morse, Welles Diary, III, 167; Aug. 11, 1867, Moore notebook, Johnson Papers, LC, and “Notes of Colonel W. G. Moore,” loc. cit., 109; Gorham, Stanton, II, 405–7.
24 Intelligencer, Aug. 23, 1867; to Ellen, Aug. 12, 1867, owned by Gideon Townsend Stanton; Aug. 12, 1867, Moore notebook, Johnson Papers, LC; “Notes of Colonel W. G. Moore,” loc. cit., 109; Badeau, Grant, 139–40.
CHAPTER XXVII
IN SUSPENSE
UNABLE to believe that Johnson would actually force him from office, Stanton had made no preparations. He had $4.76 in cash remaining from his salary of the preceding month and no other ready money. Desperately needing rest and wanting to escape from the pressures of Washington until the December meeting of Congress decided his fate, Stanton borrowed $3,000 from friends, and with Ellen and Bessie headed north.
They aimlessly toured New England. He enjoyed a steamer excursion on Lakes Champlain and George and a visit to the fashionable spa at Saratoga Springs. Late in August the Stantons reached Congressman Hooper’s Cape Cod home at Cotuit Point and were blessed with perfect weather. Stanton sported like a child in the bracing surf, delighted in picnics on offshore islands and a visit to an Indian village, and basked for hours on the sun-drenched beaches. He slept better than he had in years, and exulted to a hostess: “I can breathe! See, I can breathe!” She recalled that “all the sternness and severity of his countenance passed away. He joked and laughed … and … told us stories of the war.”
Using the excuse of the seaside therapy he was enjoying, Stanton declined the large number of invitations to make speeches that came in. But Hooper guessed that the more important reason for his guest’s reticence was that “there are things he does not wish to say nor omit to say.”1
Better than Hooper, Ellen knew that Stanton was far less happy than he pretended. His hypochondria had returned, and from a morbid interest in afflictions he sought nostrums to cure his own and others’ ailments. Seeking to conceal his inner depression, however, Stanton wrote his son, still employed at the War Department, that he intended to leave public cares to others, and that “every day increases my satisfaction at being out of Johnson’s administration and the mode of leaving it could not have been approved more highly.”
Young Edwin accepted his father’s words at face value. He told Lieber that “it is indeed gratifying to have such thinkers and patriots as yourself … speak well of my father.” To Stanton, Edwin continued, this was “immeasurably better than noisier applause from the crowd.”
Truly, Stanton did not want or need public plaudits. Welles, as usual, misread the man’s character when he happily recorded that Stanton must be sorely disappointed at the absence of “an earthquake” because of his removal from office. Equally incorrectly, Stanton’s biographer Flower described Stanton as being content with the manner in which his successor in the war office was holding the fort on behalf of shared principles.
For Stanton’s uneasiness of spirit was caused by Grant. Feeling cast aside by the stream of events, unsure to the point of illness over Grant’s capacity to withstand Johnson’s wiles, Stanton was bitter over the fact that the general completely ignored him.
“Your father is in very bad spirits,” Ellen admitted to their son late in September; “the least thing upsets him.… I think one interview with General Grant could do more to set matters right than all the letters that could be written.” But there were no letters from Grant, much less a suggestion for an interview.2
Hoping to cheer her husband, Ellen took to censoring his mail, removing the abusive and profane letters that came each day, so that he read only those which might lift his spirits. There were plenty of these, typified by an appreciation from Conkling, who thought that Stanton had managed with “credit and good effect,” and Bigelow’s “hearty appreciation of your course.” Ellen clipped articles from newspapers which extolled Stanton’s wartime achievements and postwar policies, and she made sure that he saw the numerous suggestions that he seek the Republican presidential nomination in 1868. She knew that he would not take the latter seriously, but hoped that they might amuse him.
Her efforts were futile. As momentous events transpired in Washington, and were reported and distorted in newspaper accounts, Stanton’s despondency over Gra
nt increased. Stanton learned only of the most forbidding omens, and in his pessimistic way he accepted them.3
He was left in ignorance of the fact that Grant was trying to thwart the President by every means at hand, including, as before, some surreptitious ones. Now that Stanton’s oversight over army communications was unavailable, Grant distrusted the military telegraph. On the day he took over the war office, he had a friend, General James Forsyth, advise Sheridan to hurry an impending election in Louisiana, “in case the President insists upon your removal, that whoever may be assigned to your command, can be directed by General Grant to carry out the Military Reconstruction Acts as interpreted by you, and foreshadowed by your orders—in fact, General Grant wants things in such a condition of things in Louisiana that your successor (in case you are relieved) will have to carry out the Law as you have viewed it; and without the opportunity to change your programme.”
Then, two days later, Forsyth transmitted to Sheridan Grant’s prediction that the President had “about given up the idea of relieving you.” Grant believed that Johnson, by letting Sheridan stay on, was trying to show that he was deferring to his new War Secretary.
But Grant had guessed wrong. The President, sharing the contempt that Welles and Browning felt toward Grant, decided to remove Sheridan despite Grant’s protest and the opposition of all the cabinet. Grant flashed a secret warning to Sheridan, along with the advice “to go on your course exactly as if this communication had not been sent you, and without fear of consequences. That so long as you pursue the same line of duty that you have followed thus far … you will receive the entire support of these Headquarters.”
By “these Headquarters” Grant meant himself as commanding general. In this capacity he felt independent of the President by virtue of congressional laws, and responsible to Congress for the safety of “its army” in the South. As War Secretary, however, Grant was far less buffered from the White House, as Stanton had learned. Nothing he could say could persuade Johnson not to transfer Sheridan from reconstruction duties.4
Sickles was next to fall under the President’s ax. The generals’ homeward ways after Johnson relieved them became triumphal processions in Northern cities. Grant’s backers interpreted these tributes as rebukes to their favorite for serving Johnson in the war office. The general, fretful over his dimming political prospects, was also angry because Johnson had not bothered to consult him about Sickles, or when he summarily dismissed the archivist Lieber. “You know that I have been eliminated,” Lieber informed Sumner. “Young Stanton … knew nothing of this thing until he saw it in the papers. He feels indignant.” So did Grant.
And yet the President believed that this treatment was making a friend of Grant. Johnson agreed with Frank Blair, Jr., that “Grant will ultimately come to us.”5
Gaining inside information about these events only in letters from his son and from Sumner, which Ellen’s censorship rendered more incomplete and fragmentary, Stanton became even more discouraged. He was increasingly positive that Grant was ineffectual as a block to presidential policies, and worried over Democratic boasts that Grant approved the removal of Sheridan, Sickles, and Lieber and supported the White House’s attacks on Holt. Reading newspaper accounts of Hancock’s relatively lenient course as Sheridan’s successor, and of the growth of Klan outrages everywhere in the South, Stanton felt that his own removal had inspired Johnson’s supporters with new courage. To the weary, dispirited man trying to rest at Cape Cod, further hurt came from reports that Grant was “ripping out Stanton’s toadies and parasites” from the War Department, as one of Butler’s correspondents described it.6
Stanton did not stop to think that Grant kept Edwin Lamson Stanton on as an assistant. Early in September, Stanton advised his son: “While you remain in the Department it is proper to render such aid as you can, and without taking any responsibility give General Grant what assistance may be in your power, but do not overtask yourself, or relieve others from such responsibility as properly belongs to them.” Thus Stanton cut off by his own injunction a source of inside information which Grant had made no move to close.
In truth, Grant’s accession to the war office produced changes only in superficial matters. Now that Grant sat in Stanton’s chair, the Department’s personnel relaxed. Courtesy replaced Stanton’s notorious impatience. Subordinates no longer feared an inquisition when reporting to the Secretary. The general was quiet, undemonstrative, and patient. He substituted a small hand bell for the ferocious-sounding one that Stanton had used to summon officers and clerks. “I got along better with Grant,” clerk Benjamin recalled years later.
But in substantive matters Grant continued Stanton’s policies; indeed, he stressed economy even more than his predecessor. Like Stanton, Grant kept a tight clamp on damage claims, and men such as Barlow, Ward, Lamon, and Butler, who had thought that Grant’s accession would mean opportunity to press claims that Stanton had rejected, were disappointed.7
If Stanton had known of Grant’s adherence to his political ideas and administrative standards, he would have been vastly relieved. But Grant left him ignorant and Stanton’s injured pride made him judge the general too harshly. Hooper communicated to Sumner the sense of Stanton’s pessimism regarding Grant, and the senator added this judgment to the growing number of reports which asserted that the general had plotted with Johnson to oust Stanton and the others.
Grant’s friends took alarm. Washburne hurried to Boston, and at Senator Wilson’s home insisted that Stanton and Grant had “a perfect understanding.” Stanton, learning of this, denied the existence of any formal agreement between himself and the general. This was picked up by the newspapers as another indication that Grant was now a White House servitor.
It was unfair to both men and dangerous for the nation. Since Stanton’s suspension, sectional and partisan tempers had risen markedly. Hooper judged that Lieber was not far wrong “when he says that the Governors at the North may have to call for armed Loyalty to sweep down on Washington & Maryland.” And it was through Hooper that Stanton received most of his information.
Meanwhile, Johnson worried over the fact that Grant, as commanding general, still felt himself to be the agent of Congress rather than the executive. Grant shrugged off the patronizing lectures on constitutional law, designed to persuade him to an opposite conclusion, which he suffered from Welles and the President.8 On September 2, Grant, as chief general, issued an order to Southern army units forbidding appointments to state offices of men whom previous military commanders had removed. This obviously referred to Sheridan and Sickles, and implicitly criticized their successors, Hancock and Schofield, and the President.
In Texas, General Griffin removed civil officials “because of their known hostility to the General Government.” Grant sustained Griffin and refused Johnson’s request to restrict him from further removals. With Grant’s secret encouragement, General Ord, boasting that he was following the path Stanton had earlier set, ordered registrars in Mississippi and Arkansas to bar all past rebels from voting. Assuring Chandler that Johnson could not cow him so long as the War Department was immune from Democratic control, Ord promised the Republican leader that “there will be a convention in both my states & then you gentlemen will control results.”
Grant confided to intimates that he had taken Stanton’s place only to prevent Johnson from making a clean sweep of the occupation commanders and substituting “obstructionists” like Hancock. Accepting this assertion, John Sherman, Lieber, and Holt spread the word around that Grant was fixed on Republican principles after all. Lieber advised Sumner that since this was the case, Stanton could rest assured. Grant would hold the war office in a proper manner until Congress assembled in December, in order to prevent Johnson from filling it with anyone else. Then Stanton could pick up the portfolio again. Stanton’s spirits soared at the news.9
Though happier, Stanton could no longer remain in seclusion. He was running out of money and was restive from inaction. Through his friend
Albert Gallatin Riddle, who had earlier served him as a special War Department counsel, Stanton secured a client to plead for before the United States Supreme Court. For the first time since 1862 he began to prepare a private case. He and Ellen planned to return to Washington by the last week of September so that he might rest before the arguments began, but while en route southward he again fell ill. They stopped at Pierrepont’s home near New York City for recuperation. On October 8 the Stantons reached Washington, and there was more good news for him.
Earlier that day Grant had invited Hooper for a drive. Talking with complete candor, the two men ranged over many subjects, including the presence in Washington of General Sherman, who had come at the President’s request, perhaps to take over the War Department. They also discussed Grant’s opinion of the President and his high estimation of Stanton. That evening, visiting Stanton to welcome him home, Hooper revealed the gist of Grant’s disclosures. Writing later that night to Sumner, Hooper noted that Stanton “seems well and in good spirits,” even though Grant still did not seek him out personally.10
At the same time that Grant was convincing Stanton’s Republican friends that he was trustworthy, he was depicting himself to General Sherman as a storm-tossed victim of unprincipled men who cared for neither the Army’s nor the nation’s interests. He regretted the day he had taken on the war office, Grant insisted to his wartime companion, and confided to Sherman that he wished to be rid of the responsibility. Sherman advised him to keep himself and the Army clear of politics.
Learning of this through Sherman, the President, still resentful at Grant’s recent behavior, again offered Sherman the post of War Secretary. Sherman made it clear that he would not climb over Grant’s shoulders. At Sherman’s suggestion that a meeting of minds was needed, the President talked with Grant.
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