Stanton
Page 85
But instead, the White House tendered him an unimportant scraping from the diplomatic barrel: an assignment to Mexico to deal with claims arising from wartime border depredations. This was less exalted a post than Buchanan had provided Stanton a decade before, when he was a relatively young, untried man. Since then Stanton had helped to preserve a nation, and only recently had campaigned effectively to put Grant into the presidency. Now the Mexican mission, without prestige or security, was his reward.
Hurt, Stanton curtly rejected the offer. He felt ill treated and was again despondent. Hooper, after talking with Grant in June, advised Sumner: “I am sorry Stanton takes things so much to heart, as it seems to me he would do better to keep his mind at ease—but I fear there is too much reason for him to feel as he does.”1
Feeling that Grant had rebuffed him unjustly, Stanton tried to immerse himself in the few cases he had taken on and in studying others which he was contemplating accepting. But by the end of June he felt constrained to return the papers in several cases he had under consideration, admitting that his health could not stand the strain and that it was unfair to hold off the pleading because of his weakness. Although he asserted to Watson at this time that he had “hope now for a full recovery,” Stanton also admitted that his wife and Barnes were waging a campaign to get him out of Washington during the approaching summer heat. Stanton did not want to leave Washington, however, and the reason he gave to Ellen—that he needed to prepare arguments in cases already committed to his care—was not the whole story.
Stanton’s political stock had begun to rise as Sumner and other Republican leaders followed his line and hammered on the developing negotiations with England. Grant’s Postmaster General, J. A. J. Creswell, welcomed patronage recommendations from the former War Secretary, which would receive “favorable reception.” Best of all, word came from Pierrepont, who, after dining with the Grants, wrote Stanton that the President had taken him aside, and while the other guests grew feverish with curiosity, “spoke several times of you with marked favor.” Mrs. Grant was even more enthusiastic, Pierrepont reported, “saying how much was due to you & that the General had made a mistake in not giving you a place of the highest grade &c, & that it ought to be done now. This was repeated over & over by her in a way so marked and unusual that I of course knew it had some special purpose, being … directed to me, when our relations were by her so well known.” And so for Stanton there was the expectation of better things to come from the enigmatic, taciturn hero in the White House.2
A second reason was his worry over the Smithson lawsuit against him, now due in the District Supreme Court. Young Edwin represented his father, claiming that as War Secretary the elder Stanton was immune from private suits as an agent of the President, as specified by the terms of the 1863 act on habeas corpus suspension and the 1867 reconstruction law. All through July 1869, Stanton waited to hear the verdict of the court concerning the acceptability of this defense. Now he learned that the judges very reluctantly had decided that Smithson’s plea might not be ruled out on those grounds. However, his friend Cartter placed the hearing of the case proper as far back as possible on his calendar, scheduling it for a hearing in the 1870 term; it was never to be pushed to a decision.
This was some comfort to Stanton, but the weight of the Smithson case hung over his spirits like a cloud. In his mind the suit was another symptom of the ingratitude of a nation which he had helped to save, now casting him indifferently aside to receive the rebuffs of unworthy and vicious men. While the Smithson plea was being argued, he could not leave Washington.
Faith in the possibility of a cure was the third reason. For years Stanton had known Dr. John Bayne, a Maryland medical practitioner with novel ideas on the treatment of respiratory ailments. Because his physician, Barnes, was unsympathetic to these theories, Stanton kept secret the fact that he was following dietary modes based on vegetables supplied from Bayne’s farm. By the end of June, Stanton reported to Bayne a general improvement in his health “but the paroxysms of asthma still continue, sometimes lasting all day. General Barnes has at my request and apparently with pleasure, determined to invite you to consult with him & examine my case.… He knows nothing of your having seen me nor is there any necessity for communicating the fact.”
But late in July a relapse occurred; Barnes suggested that Stanton draw up his will. Then, somewhat recovered, and with the Smithson case in suspense, Stanton wearily acceded to Ellen’s demands that he leave the city for a more healthful climate.3
He wrote to his mother that he and Ellen had considered spending the summer touring the Rocky Mountains country, “but the distance is too great I fear for either of us to undertake it now, and the Indian troubles are not over.” Stanton was dissembling here out of concern that his mother should learn how ill and penniless he was. At the time he wrote his mother he had already heard from General Sherman, who was in Washington and was willing to end in amity the feud that had festered between them, and he knew that Indians were no problem to a traveler protected by cavalry escort, as he could have been.
Sherman, offering his friendship and aid to the sick man, mapped out a detailed route entailing “as little fatigue as [going to] Ohio by dividing up the country according to your strength.” The western trip would prove beneficent, Sherman cajoled. “Atmosphere purity itself, and one that I think offers a better chance to suit your particular state than any I know—Say the word and I will call to see you, and elaborate the details.”
It was a generous gesture, but Stanton could not afford the trip, and so the two men did not meet. But Sherman’s letter was a harbinger of hatchet burying. Hearing that Jeremiah Black had suffered an accident, Stanton had rushed off an inquiry concerning the health of his long-time friend and erstwhile enemy. Black responded with cautious cordiality, and in like spirit Stanton sent him his best wishes for a speedy recovery. The accord between Sherman and Stanton was to be permanent for both men. Black, however, was to show himself as an unconverted enemy.4
Meanwhile, Ellen had to stay in Baltimore to continue dental treatments. “Everything about town & in the house is so still and quiet that there is scarce material for a daily letter,” Stanton wrote her; the boys playing croquet, Ellie involved in a girlish feud with her friends, “and this affords all the excitement that is going on K Street.” Each evening he sent Eddie to the depot in the hope that Ellen might return on the last train. But though he missed her intensely, he hoped she would stay on to complete the treatment. For himself, he asserted his health was no worse. “Last night I had too much company,” Stanton admitted, “& had to take the potash but it did not do as well as heretofore & I have been in bed all day.”
She returned home as July ended; on August 3 he wrote to his friend Hooper that “under her escort” he was departing that day for New Hampshire. “I am suffering so much,” he admitted, “as to require me to leave without delay.” But unlike his experience two years earlier, the mountain weather now proved unsuitable for his condition; he sat immobile on the piazza of a hotel, gazing vacantly at playing children, a “wreck” of a man according to the description of a journalist who observed him. Ellen decided against their remaining there, and they moved on to Boston, where they were guests of wealthy friends through the remainder of August.
They intended to return to Washington at the end of the month, but Hooper came to Boston with Eddie Stanton at this time, and Ellen wrote to the younger children that “as soon as Mr. Hooper saw us … he persuaded your Father to try Cotuit [Point] and see what effect the sea air would have.” Ellen and Stanton arranged for Anna Barnes, the wife of the Surgeon General, to care for the younger children in Washington now that the reopening of the schools was at hand, and Ellen’s mother and sister came from Pittsburgh to lend their assistance.
Stanton could not help knowing that he was in the position of being dependent upon the charity of friends and the co-operation of relatives. Sickness of spirit and shame added their weight to the deterioration of
his body. Once at Hooper’s Cape Cod home, he tried to isolate himself from the outside world, hoping to cut himself off from communication with everyone but his children, his mother in Gambier, and a very few trusted intimates.5 Roscoe Conkling, wanting the Stantons to visit at his home next, and offering “all belonging to me” to aid in the sick man’s recuperation, had to send a dozen telegrams to locate them.
Good news came in from Wheeling of the favorable verdict in the land claim which he had pleaded earlier that year. But his bodily sickness was not routed. For the first time, Stanton admitted to his mother how unwell he was. “I have this summer been diligently seeking health on mountains and the seashore,” he wrote her on September 18, “hoping to find some place where we could be free from asthma. But my search has been in vain and tomorrow I start home scarcely as well as when I set out.” The next day, however, Stanton seemed close to death. Remaining of necessity at Hooper’s home, he commenced a slow recovery and attributed his retention of life to the “pure air and fresh surroundings” of this “sweet oasis.”
The crisp autumn days passed slowly for him as he lay, almost a complete invalid, near a warm hearth, listening to the surf. On fine days Ellen sat with him on the porch overlooking the ocean as he watched the patient maneuvers of sea birds and breathed deeply of the inspiriting breezes wafted inshore from tidal flats. In the evenings, as strength returned to him, Stanton sat gazing into the flickering pattern of the parlor fire; a rare visitor found him thus one September night.
John C. Ropes was a guest at a neighboring home. Disappointed because he could not fight in the Civil War, young Ropes had conceived an interest in military history. Learning that Stanton was close by, he came to see him, hoping to record some facts about wartime for future use, and to pay his respects to the famed Secretary.
He found Stanton slumped in a chair set by the hearth, flabby limbs and heavy body wrapped in blankets to fend off the autumn chill, seeming to be a decade or even two past the fifty-three years that were rightfully his. Deep lines etched his brow and furrowed from flaring nostrils, set off petulant lips and sagging cheeks, and emphasized broad features framed by thinning gray hair and a scraggly beard. The presence of sickness received testimony from a heavy odor of medicines that lay in the close-shuttered room and from the anxious efforts of his wife to quiet him. But on this night Stanton wanted to talk. The admiring attitude of young Ropes and his intense curiosity concerning past events triggered an unprecedented flow of reminiscences from Stanton.
Words tumbled from his lips as though they had been too long pent up. Stanton pushed aside the medications that Ellen brought and insisted that lamps be placed to relieve the deepening shadows of the room. Hours passed by as his rasping voice cut through the mutter of the nearby surf and the whisper of the wind. Only uncontrollable spasms of asthmatic coughing interrupted him, but they ran their course and he went on.
As Stanton spoke, the shadows of men who had shaped the destiny of the nation since 1860 took shape in the minds of his listeners. But soon after midnight the coughing became too severe for him to continue, and Ropes took his leave. Stanton’s declining health prevented another meeting between him and Ropes, which both men wanted.6
September drew to a close, and Hooper reported to Sumner that Stanton’s convalescence was slow and uneven; he was too weak even to take up a pen. “He gets along well by day but suffers at night,” Hooper wrote, and Stanton later specified to Dr. Bayne that “the cough paroxysm begins about 5 PM, and lasts until 2 in the morning after which hour I sleep well.”
Over his host’s protests, Stanton, though dreading the journey, decided to start his return to Washington on September 28, for he now professed to feel far better and there was a case pending before the Supreme Court which he dared not drop. Back in Washington after a tedious trip, he lay in a stock of medicines, including the novel oxygen inhalators. There were the unending expenses of his family to deal with as well—dental bills, and tuition for Lewis, Ellie, and Bessie.7
Stanton had hoped to be able to handle the defense of the Crédit Mobilier against certain state regulations of Pennsylvania; the corporation had sent him a good retainer, which he desperately needed. But too ill to work on the matter, he returned the money. By late November he admitted to Watson that he was again in need of cash. It was by now obvious that Stanton could not expect any immediate large income from practicing law, and Barnes was insisting that he rest completely. To “drive the wolf from the door,” he was therefore forced to ask Watson again for any part his friend could spare of the loan advanced to him years before.
In Washington, Stanton kept a braver face, and almost no one there outside his family knew how straitened his finances were. He asserted to Conkling that his health had improved considerably; although “I shall perhaps never regain my former vigorous strength the improvement encourages me to hope for still further amendment.” His appetite was larger, which he attributed to the seaside environment that he had enjoyed in the autumn. Friends were pleased to learn that only the unending coughing remained as a visible symptom of his asthmatic ailment. Stanton had Eddie inquire about reputed cures for asthma, and a number of wonder-working remedies were suggested, none of which seemed to help the ailing man.8
It was time for him to take stock. With his mind unimpaired and his body evidencing some improvement, Stanton for the first time in his life set out to beg for an official position. He felt, as Robert Anderson of Fort Sumter fame told him, that he had earned it.
Learning from Justice Grier, of the Supreme Court, that he planned to retire, Stanton set out to secure the place. He worked through his old friend Bishop Simpson, whom he knew Grant trusted, asking him to intervene with the President on his behalf, insisting that he was physically able to manage the high judicial responsibility and that his mental resources “are as acute & vigorous as any period of my life—and perhaps more so.” This appointment, he felt, would be mere justice to him, and Grant could be sure that as a judge “there is no man who would uphold the principles of the war … with more or equal vigor from the Bench.” Accurately predicting that the Court would rise in importance from the depths to which it had plunged in the decade spanned by the Dred Scott and Milligan cases, Stanton argued that his appointment would please all Republicans. He had implied nothing of his desire to Grant, and would not. But he hoped Simpson would talk with the President. “To me it may in considerable degree be a question of life—it certainly is of health, for I must go to the Bench or the Bar. His [Grant’s] name & fortune he owed at critical moments to me. He can preserve me to my family under Providence.”
Grant at first reacted favorably to Simpson’s suggestion until George W. Childs, a Philadelphia banker with whom the President was now on intimate terms, discouraged him by implying that Stanton’s health was inadequate to sustain him on the Court. Stanton wrote Simpson to thank him, and said that he wanted no more efforts made on his behalf. He noted that soon after becoming War Secretary he had canceled a contract made between Childs and Cameron, and now the financier was achieving revenge. A shaft of bitterness showed through his careful language only at one point; “as respects General Grant he will be influenced by his judgment as to his own interest,” Stanton wrote.9
Despite Stanton’s injunction that his hope for the Court appointment was ended so far as he was concerned, Simpson continued to press Grant, who needed to appoint two judges rather than one because Congress had reset the total membership of the Court back to nine after having prevented Johnson from naming anyone to its roster. Unknown to Stanton, others of his friends were also trying to obtain for him the Court seat he coveted. Chandler was lobbying among the Republican senators to bring pressure on Grant, and quite independently, Wade was insisting to the President that Stanton was less ill than reports indicated. Grant was pleased to learn this. But Stanton’s bitterness increased meanwhile at what he felt was Grant’s inexcusable aloofness toward him.10
In the first week of December 1869, Stanton put
aside the political concerns and against his physician’s orders prepared to plead an important patent case before the Supreme Court. He exhibited his old skill and energy, matching and surpassing the legal arguments of his opponent, Benjamin R. Curtis. Returning from the Court building on the twelfth, Stanton stopped at the White House in response to a summons from Grant, and then, jubilant, returned home. The nomination to the supreme bench was his.
Next day he was too weak, from excitement, Barnes believed, to brave the wintry weather and go to court, and Justice Swayne came to the Stanton home to hear his argument. Meanwhile, rumors were abroad that Stanton was due for the Court nomination, and the New York World, under the guidance of Manton Marble, who never missed a chance to hit at Stanton, pleaded with the President to pass over this “sick spoilist and asthmatic patriot.” Marble crudely and erroneously charged that Stanton’s illness was a dodge designed to protect him from damage suits for excesses committed as War Secretary: “Now when a life office is vacant, his health is all right.”
Stanton’s friends rallied. In the Senate, Carpenter secured in less than twenty minutes the signatures of 38 colleagues to a petition for Stanton’s nomination; 118 representatives added their signatures to the appeal. Carpenter and Chandler brought the document to Stanton. The sick man was unable to speak. Tears coursed from his eyes. The senators withdrew to take the petition to Grant, who promised to send in Stanton’s name the next day.
On December 19, Stanton’s fifty-fourth birthday, Ellen was at her husband’s bedside when a servant announced a visitor and presented a card, graciously inscribed: “Mrs. Judge Stanton, with compliments of Gen. U. S. Grant.” The President was there with Colfax to inform them officially of the nomination.11