Edwin
Stanton
was
born in Steubenville, Ohio, on 19th December, 1814.
After attending Kenyon College he was admitted to the bar in 1836.
He worked in Pittsburgh for nine years before moving to Washington
he built a large practice in the federal courts.
A member of the Democratic Party,
he was appointed attorney general by President James
Buchanan in December 1860. He lost office when President Abraham
Lincoln was elected in 1861. Stanton returned to power when he
agreed to work as a legal adviser to Simon
Cameron, the Secretary of War. This job became more important
on the outbreak of the American Civil War.
In January, 1862, Stanton helped Simon
Cameron write his yearly report. He personally wrote the section
that called for freed slaves to be armed and used against the Confederate
Army. President Abraham Lincoln was
opposed to this policy and ordered Cameron to remove the offending
passage. When he refused he was dismissed. Lincoln, who was unaware
of Stanton's role in the report, appointed him as his new Secretary
of War.
After taking office Stanton took over the management of all the telegraph
lines in the United States. Stanton also censored the press and in
this way kept full control over the news reaching the public. To maintain
this system Stanton doubled the size of the War Department.
Convinced that the war would soon be over Stanton closed down the
government recruiting offices in the spring of 1862. When he realised
his mistake he advocated the recruitment of black
soldiers.
Stanton was privately highly critical of the government and once told
a friend that he could find "no token of any intelligent understanding
of Lincoln, or the crew that govern him". However, Stanton and
Abraham Lincoln worked well together
during the war.
During the summer of 1863 an agreement under which Union and Confederate
captives were exchanged, came to an end. Stanton and Ulysses
S. Grant decided that the Confederate
Army had more difficulty in replacing men than the Union
Army. This included the decision not to take 30,000 soldiers from
Andersonville. When Stanton heard
about the high death-rate in Andersonville he decided to reduce the
rations of captured soldiers by 20 per cent.
In 1863 Stanton recruited Lafayette Baker
as his replacement for Allan Pinkerton,
head of the Union Intelligence Service. Baker was given the job as
head of the National Detective Police (NDP), an undercover, anti-subversive,
spy organization. One of his successes was the capture of the Confederate
spy, Belle Boyd. Later Baker was accused
of conducting a brutal interrogation and despite the inhuman treatment
Boyd refused to confess and she was released in 1863.
Baker was also suspected of being guilty of corruption. He went after
people making profits from illegal business activities. It was claimed
he arrested and jailed those who refused to share their illegal gains
with him. Baker was eventually caught tapping telegraph lines between
Nashville and Stanton's office. Baker was demoted and sent to New
York and placed under the control of Charles
Dan, the Assistant Secretary of War.
As the organizer of internal security, Edwin
M. Stanton was blamed for the assassination of Abraham
Lincoln on 14th April 1865. Stanton immediately summoned Lafayette
Baker, head of the National Detective Police (NDP) to Washington
with the telegraphic appeal: "Come here immediately and see if
you can find the murderer of the President." Baker arrived on
16th April and his first act was to send his agents into Maryland
to pick up what information they could about the people involved in
the assassination.
Within two days Baker had arrested Mary
Surratt, Lewis Paine, George
Atzerodt and Edman Spangler. He
also had the names of the fellow conspirators, John
Wilkes Booth and David Herold. When
Baker's agents discovered had crossed the Potomac
near Mathias Point on 22nd April, he sent Lieutenant Edward P. Doherty
and twenty-five men from the Sixteenth New York Cavalry to capture
them.
On 26th April, Doherty and his men caught up with John
Wilkes Booth and David Herold on
a farm owned by Richard Garrett. Doherty ordered the men to surrender.
Herold came out of the barn but Booth refused and so the barn was
set on fire. While this was happening one of the soldiers, Sergeant
Boston Corbett, found a large crack
in the barn and was able to shoot Booth in the back. His body was
dragged from the barn and after being searched the soldiers recovered
his leather bound diary. The bullet had punctured his spinal cord
and he died in great agony two hours later. Booth's diary was handed
to Baker who later passed it onto Stanton. Baker was rewarded for
his success by being promoted to brigadier general and receiving a
substantial portion of the $100,000 reward.
On 1st May, 1865, President Andrew Johnson
ordered the formation of a nine-man military
commission to try the conspirators involved in the assassination
of President Abraham Lincoln. It was
argued by Stanton, that the men should be tried by a military court
as Lincoln had been Commander in Chief of the army. Several members
of the cabinet, including Gideon Welles
(Secretary of the Navy), Edward Bates
(Attorney General), Orville H. Browning
(Secretary of the Interior), and Henry
McCulloch (Secretary of the Treasury), disapproved, preferring
a civil trial. However, James Speed,
the Attorney General, agreed with Stanton and therefore the defendants
did not enjoy the advantages of a jury trial.
The trial began on 10th May, 1865. The military commission included
leading generals such as David Hunter,
Lewis Wallace, Thomas
Harris and Alvin Howe and Joseph
Holt was the government's chief prosecutor. Mary
Surratt, Lewis Paine, George
Atzerodt, David Herold, Samuel
Mudd, Michael O'Laughlin, Edman
Spangler and Samuel Arnold were
all charged with conspiring to murder Lincoln. During the trial Holt
attempted to persuade the military commission that Jefferson
Davis and the Confederate government had been involved in conspiracy.
Joseph Holt attempted to obscure the fact
that there were two plots: the first to kidnap and the second to assassinate.
It was important for the prosecution not to reveal the existence of
a diary taken from the body of John Wilkes
Booth. The diary made it clear that the assassination plan dated
from 14th April. The defence surprisingly did not call for Booth's
diary to be produced in court.
On 29th June, 1865 Mary Surratt, Lewis
Paine, George Atzerodt, David
Herold, Samuel Mudd, Michael
O'Laughlin, Edman Spangler and
Samuel Arnold were found guilty of being
involved in the conspiracy to murder Abraham
Lincoln. Surratt, Paine, Atzerot and Herold were hanged at Washington
Penitentiary on 7th July, 1865. Surratt, who was expected to be reprieved,
was the first woman in American history to be executed.
In January, 1867, Lafayette Baker published
his book, History of the
Secret Service. In the book Baker described his
role in the capture of the conspirators. He also revealled that a
dairy had been taken from John Wilkes Booth
when he had been shot. This information about Booth's diary resulted
in Baker being called before a Congress committee looking into the
assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Stanton
was forced to hand over Booth's diary. When shown the diary by the
committee, Baker claimed that someone had "cut out eighteen leaves"
When called before the committee, Stanton denied being the person
responsible for removing the pages.
This information about Booth's diary resulted in Baker being called
before a Congress committee looking into the assassination of Abraham
Lincoln. Edwin M. Stanton and the
War Department was forced to hand over Booth's diary. When shown the
diary by the committee, Baker claimed that someone had "cut out
eighteen leaves" When called before the committee, Stanton denied
being the person responsible for removing the pages.
After the war Stanton continued as Secretary of War but found it difficult
to get on with the new president, Andrew
Johnson. Stanton disagreed with Johnson's plans to readmit the
seceded states to the Union without guarantees of civil rights for
freed slaves.
In March 1867 Congress passed the first of the Reconstruction
Acts that provided for Negro suffrage. Johnson attempted to veto
the legislation but when this failed, he managed to delay the program
and undermined its ineffectiveness.
Stanton made it clear he disagreed with Andrew
Johnson and in 1867 the president attempted to force him from
office and replace him with Ulysses S. Grant.
Stanton refused to go and was supported by the Senate. Grant now stood
down and was replaced by Lorenzo Thomas.
This was a violation of the Tenure of Office Act and some members
of the Republican Party began talking
about impeaching Johnson.
In November, 1867, the Judiciary Committee voted 5-4 that Johnson
be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors. The majority report
written by George H. Williams contained
a series of charges including pardoning traitors, profiting from the
illegal disposal of railroads in Tennessee, defying Congress, denying
the right to reconstruct the South and attempts to prevent the ratification
of the Fourteenth Amendment.
On 30th March, 1868, Johnson's impeachment trial began. Johnson was
the first and only president of the United States to be impeached.
The trial, held in the Senate in March, was presided over by Chief
Justice Salmon Chase. Johnson was defended
by his former Attotney General, Henry
Stanbury, and William M. Evarts.
One of Johnson's fiercest critics, Thaddeus
Stevens was mortally ill, but he was determined to take part in
the proceedings and was carried to the Senate in a chair.
Charles Sumner,
another long-time opponent of Andrew Johnson
led the attack. He argued that: "This is one of the last great
battles with slavery. Driven from the legislative chambers, driven
from the field of war, this monstrous power has found a refuge in
the executive mansion, where, in utter disregard of the Constitution
and laws, it seeks to exercise its ancient, far-reaching sway. All
this is very plain. Nobody can question it. Andrew Johnson is the
impersonation of the tyrannical slave power. In him it lives again.
He is the lineal successor of John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis;
and he gathers about him the same supporters."
Although a large number of senators believed that Johnson was guilty
of the charges, they disliked the idea of Benjamin
Wade becoming the next president. Wade, who believed in women's
suffrage and trade union rights, was considered
by many members of the Republican Party
as being an extreme radical. James Garfield
warned that Wade was "a man of violent passions, extreme opinions
and narrow views who was surrounded by the worst and most violent
elements in the Republican Party."
Others Republicans such as James
Grimes argued that Johnson had less than a year left in office
and that they were willing to vote against impeachment if Johnson
was willing to provide some guarantees that he would not continue
to interfere with Reconstruction.
When the vote was taken all members of the Democratic
Party voted against impeachment. So also did those Republicans
such as Lyman Trumbull, William
Fessenden and James Grimes, who
disliked the idea of Benjamin Wade becoming
president. The result was 35 to 19, one vote short of the required
two-thirds majority for conviction. The editor of The
Detroit Post wrote that "Andrew Johnson is innocent because
Ben Wade is guilty of being his successor."
A further vote on 26th May, also failed to get the necessary majority
needed to impeach Johnson. The Radical Republicans
were angry that not all the Republican
Party voted for a conviction and Benjamin
Butler claimed that Johnson had bribed two of the senators who
switched their votes at the last moment. Stanton was now required
to give up his Cabinet post.
Edwin Stanton returned to his
private law practice but when Ulysses S. Grant
became president he appointed Stanton to the U.S. Supreme
Court. Unfortunately, Stanton died four days later on 24th December,
1869.
In his book, Why Was Lincoln
Murdered? (1937). The historian, Otto
Eisenchiml, suggested that Stanton had engineered the plot to
assassinate President Abraham Lincoln.
The evidence for this theory included the employment of John
Parker to guard Lincoln, Stanton's
failure to close all the roads out of Washington,
the shooting of John
Wilkes Booth, tampering with Booth's diary,
and the hooding of the conspirators to stop them from talking.
(1) Section of the report written
by Edwin Stanton that led to Simon
Cameron
losing his job as secretary of war (January, 1862)
Those who make war against
the Government justly forfeit all rights of property and, as the labour
and service of their slaves constitute the chief property of the rebels
of their slaves constitute the chief property of the rebels, such
property should share the common fate of war. It is as clearly the
right of this Government to arm slaves when it may became necessary
as it is to use gunpowder or guns taken from the enemy.
(2) Frank A. Flower, Edwin
Masters Stanton (1905)
Lincoln
was unaware that the iron-willed giant he was putting it was more
stubbornly in favour of arming the slaves than the man he was putting
out. Lincoln was also unaware that the recommendation which, with
his own hand, he had expunged from Cameron's report and which was
the means of forcing its supposed author out, was conceived and written
by the very man now going in and so it may be said that Stanton wrote
his own appointment.
(3)
George
McClellan,
McClellan's Own Story (1887)
Stanton
told me the great aim of the war was to abolish slavery. To end the
war before the nation was ready for that would be a failure. The war
must be prolonged, and conducted so as to achieve that.
(3) Edward
Bates diary entry (1864)
Stanton
believes in mere force, so long as he wields it, but cowers before
it, when wielded by any other hand. If
the President had a little more vim, he would either control or discharge
Stanton.
(4)
Edwin Stanton, proclamation concerning the assassination of Abraham
Lincoln (20th April 1865)
All
persons harboring or secreting the conspirators or aiding their concealment
or escape, will be treated as accomplices in the murder of the President
and shall be subject to trial before a military commission, and the
punishment of death.
(5)
Edwin Stanton, order issued concerning the captured conspirators (23rd
April 1865)
The
prisoners for better security against conversation shall have a canvas
bag put over the head of each and tied around the neck, with a holes
for proper breathing and eating, but not seeing.
(6)
Samuel Arnold, The Baltimore American
(1902)
The
covering for the head was made of canvas, which covered the entire
head and face, dropping down in front to the lower portion of the
chest. It had cords attached, which were tied around the neck and
body in such a manner that to remove it was a physical impossibility.
It was frequently impossible to place food in my mouth.
(7)
George Milton, The Age of Hate (1930)
The
country could not understand why Johnson did not discharge the faithless
Secretary of War. Radicals were as amazed as Conservatives. Doolittle,
the senator from Wisconsin, wrote that: "For six long months,
I have been urging the President to call on Grant temporarily to do
the duties of the War Department. But Stanton remains, and so the
report has spread all over the State, that there is something sinister.
It started through the Milwaukee Sentinel printing the letter of a
correspondent from Washington, which says that Stanton is not removed
because it is rumoured and believed that Stanton has testimony to
show that Mr. Johnson was privy to Lincoln's assassination."
(8)
In his autobiography, Men and Measures, Henry
McCulloch, Andrew Johnson's Secretary of the Treasury,
wrote about the president's decision to keep Edwin Stanton in power
for so long.
The
failure of the President to exercise his undoubted right to rid himself
of a minister who differed with him upon very important questions,
who had become personally obnoxious to him, and whom he regarded as
an enemy and a spy, was a blunder for which there was no excuse.
(9) Edwin Stanton, comments
made to Charles
Sumner (1869)
I know General Grant better than any other person in the country can
know him. It was my duty to study him, and I did so day and night,
when I saw him and when I did not see him, and now I tell you what
I know, he cannot govern this country.
(10)
Lafayette G. Baker, chief of the National
Detective Police Force, wrote a report on the assassination of Abraham
Lincoln in code in a bound edition of Colburn's United Services
Magazine. It was found and deciphered by Roy Neff in 1960.
It was on the 10th April, 1865, when I
first knew that the plan was in action. I did not know the identity
of the assassin, but I knew most all else when I approached Edwin
Stanton about it. He at once acted surprised and disbelieving. Later
he said: "You are a party to it too. Let us wait and see what
comes of it and then we will know better how to act in the matter."
I soon discovered what he meant that I was a party to it when the
following day I was shown a document that I knew to be a forgery but
a clever one, which made it appear that I had been in charge of a
plot to kidnap the President, the Vice-President being the instigator.
Then I became a party to that deed even though I did not care to.
There were at least eleven members of Congress involved in the plot,
no less than twelve Army officers, three Naval officers and at least
twenty-four civilians, of which one was a governor of a loyal state.
Five were bankers of great repute, three were nationally known newspapermen
and eleven were industrialists of great repute and wealth. Eighty-five
thousand dollars were contributed by the named persons to pay for
the deed. Only eight persons knew the details of the plot and the
identity of the others. I fear for my life.
(11) Otto
Eisenchiml, Why Was Lincoln Murdered?
(1937)
There was one man who profited greatly
by Lincoln's death; the man who was his secretary of war, Edwin M.
Stanton. Brusque, insolent, cruel, Stanton was without doubt the most
unpopular member of Lincoln's administration; but the President in
spite of strong pressure, had been loath to let him go while the conflict
was raging; he seemed to think that no one else could do the work
as well.
After the war was over, however, it seemed only a question of time
when Lincoln would divest himself of a secretary who was fast becoming
both a personal and a political liability to him. It was to his advantage
to have the President out of the way; it would mean a continuance
in office, increased power over a new and supposedly weak Chief Executive
and a fair prospect of replacing the latter at the next election.
As secretary of war Stanton failed in his duty to protect the President's
life after he was convinced that there was danger in the air. He bluntly
denied Lincoln's request to be protected by Major Eckert and did not
provide a proper substitute.
It was probably due to the efforts of Stanton that all evidence of
negligence on the part of John F. Parker was carefully suppressed.
He directed the pursuit of Booth and allowed it to be conducted in
a manner that, but for the assassin's accidental injury, would have
allowed his escape.
The actual pursuit and subsequent capture of Booth were silenced by
unusual methods and were subsequently removed from contact with the
public, either by infliction of the death penalty or by banishment
to a desolate fortress. Other prisoners, of at least equal guilt,
escaped punishment.
Plausible as such an indictment may seem, it would stand no chance
of surviving a legal attack. There is not one point in this summary
than can be proven; it is all hypothesis. Circumstantial evidence,
at best, is a dangerous foundation upon which to build.
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