Stanton: The Basics

Edwin McMasters Stanton (1814-69), was Ohio born and raised, the son of a middle class physician and his wife. His father died when Edwin was only thirteen, leaving the family nearly destitute. Plagued by severe asthma, he found it difficult to engage in the usual rough-and-tumble activities of childhood. Instead he focused on reading, study and poetry and managed to attend Kenyon College, join in the debate clubs and similar organizations.

Always religiously inclined, Stanton came from Quaker stock but was raised Methodist. He attended a Presbyterian grammar school, but went to an Episcopal College, where his religious affiliations solidified. His strong anti-slavery sentiments led him to law, and he was admitted to the Ohio Bar in 1835. He also became interested in politics. Mostly Democratic.

By 1860, Edwin Stanton was on an A-list of prominent business attorneys with access to high places in the Democratic Party – including an end-of-term appointment as Attorney General in the Buchanan Administration.

Short and stocky, EMS was gruff, steely and tactless. And humorless. He was difficult to like, unless you hung in and got to know him well. But he was unflagging in his professional dedication, his integrity and his ability to juggle thousands of balls in the air, dropping very very few. He panicked easily at first, but once calmed down, he managed capably and coolly.

The Lincoln Connection:

Stanton was a well-established and well paid attorney when he first met Abraham Lincoln in 1854. Lincoln was an up-and-coming “local” fellow from Springfield IL, originally assigned to be part of a legal team concerning the patent infringement rights of Cyrus McCormick, the inventor of the reaper. The monies and prestige involved were considerable. Stanton led the legal team, and his impression of Lincoln was dismissive. Lincoln participated only as an “observer” on the case. 

By 1860, Edwin Stanton was an anti-slavery Democratic member of Buchanan’s failing administration; Abraham Lincoln, now a Republican, was President-Elect, always anti-slavery, but intuitively aware of the complex political repercussions and the need to tread cautiously. 

Lincoln had admonished his campaign managers “not to make promises in his name” at both the 1860 nominating convention and election. But Pennsylvania’s electoral votes were essential, and its powerful “Republican” boss Simon Cameron was assured of a Cabinet position whether Lincoln approved or not. Putting party affiliation and even personal experience behind him, Lincoln decided to replace Cameron as Secretary of War a year later, and turned to Stanton as his replacement.

Mars and Neptune and The President

There were only seven Cabinet positions in 1860: State, Treasury, War, Navy, Attorney General, Interior and Postmaster General. Several of the new Secretaries had been candidates for the Republican nomination, and likely believed they would have been better choices than Abraham Lincoln, a little-known midwestern lawyer with scant formal education.

All of them were well regarded attorneys, with the exception of Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles from Connecticut. Welles had originally trained as a lawyer, but practiced journalism instead. When Lincoln chose his cabinet, he needed representation from New England, preferably someone who was not a vitriolic abolitionist. Welles had performed important services for the new Republican Party, was unquestionably anti-slavery-but-moderate (like Lincoln), and seemed a good choice, except for the fact that he know very little about the Navy. Knowledge, of course, is learnable. Lincoln nicknamed him “Neptune” – for the god of the sea.

In choosing Edwin Stanton, as Secretary of War, Lincoln went against all political wisdom. Stanton was still a Democrat. He was an Ohioan, and the Midwest was already well represented. And perhaps, on a personal level, he knew that Stanton neither regarded him well, nor liked him personally. It may have been intuitive with Lincoln: Stanton, an implacable man with Herculean energies. Personalities aside, he was the man for the job. AL nicknamed him “Mars” – for the god of war.

Changing Hearts and Minds

A recently appointed Edwin Stanton considered Gideon Welles weak and ineffectual. That changed on March 8-9 1862, when two odd-looking ironclad contraptions fought to a standstill in the Chesapeake Bay, and changed naval warfare forever. Stanton had been pacing frantically in the telegraph room of the war department bemoaning an impending catastrophe, and issuing rapid-fire orders to brace for the sacking of Washington. Welles, who had issued the orders to build the Monitor, was calm. He had faith in the genius of its designer. 

When the battle was over, considered a technical draw, the bottom line was a Union victory. They had the means to build more and would. The South did not and could not.

Stanton gained new regard for his fellow bewhiskered Cabinet counterpart. 

The change toward Lincoln was gradual. He had been sarcastic about “the original gorilla” in his personal correspondence, and regarded the POTUS as an imbecile. And couldn’t bear his “droll stories.”

But when both Lincoln and Stanton lost sons within a few months of each other, the exchange of heartfelt condolence helped. So did the fact that Lincoln never mentioned their previous encounters which were embarrassing or even insulting to him. Lincoln could not spare Stanton, whose energies and devotion were incalculable. And Stanton grew to love and admire his great and good Commander-in-Chief, to a point of brotherly devotion.

Stanton took charge of the assassination aftermath with the vigor and tenacity of a bulldog. It is doubtful that anyone could have been as diligent, aggressive, tireless and competent in apprehending the conspirators as quickly as he did and bringing them to justice.

And it was Stanton’s words in epigram: Now he belongs to the ages.

Sources:

Donald, David H. – Lincoln – Simon & Schuster, 1995

Goodwin, Doris Kearns – Team of Rivals – Simon & Schuster, 2015

Edwin M. Stanton (1814-1869)

https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/edwin-m-stanton