Fellow Lincoln cabinet member John Palmer Usher later wrote that Stanton “. . . was devoted to the cause he was striving to serve and gave all his energies to it. Night after night he remained in his office until a late hour and sometimes until daylight; not infrequently would his carriage be found standing at the door waiting for him when daylight came.” Stanton aide Albert E. H. Johnson recalled: “While President Lincoln in everything he did or said was to one purpose, the exercise of power within the scope of the constitution, Mr. Stanton was for saving the Union whether the constitution was saved or not, since war with him could brook no hampering or limiting bounds, and as he said, to save the constitution at the expense of the Union, would only result in destroying both. This point of view also greatly illustrated one of the many differences between the two men, Lincoln, having a heart greater than his head — the other, Stanton, having a head greater than his heart."
The Lincoln-Stanton partnership was an awkward one. “No two men were ever more utterly and irreconcilably unlike,” one of Stanton’s aides recalled decades after the Civil War. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote: “The secretiveness which Lincoln wholly lacked, Stanton had in marked degree; the charity which Stanton could not feel, coursed from every pore in Lincoln. Lincoln was for giving a wayward subordinate seventy times seven chances to repair his errors; Stanton was for either forcing him to obey or cutting off his head without more ado. Lincoln was as calm and unruffled as the summer sea in moment of the gravest peril.; Stanton would lash himself into a fury over the same condition of things. Stanton would take hardships with a groan. Lincoln would find a funny story to fit them. Stanton was all dignity and sternness, Lincoln all simplicity and good nature.”
It was easy to dislike Stanton. He could be rude and overbearing. He did not suffer fools or bores gladly, but he could be charming and courtly, and he could be embarrassingly deferential if it served his purposes. Energetic, forceful, personally honest, a prodigious worker and a master of detail, Stanton was supremely confident of his own ability to cope with any problem. Was he not one of the most successful lawyers in the land, whose fees were averaging $50,000 a year? Had not his tenure in the Buchanan Cabinet, however, brief, proved that he could manage affairs of state as easily as he could dominate a courtroom?” Historian Allan Nevins wrote: “It is not strange that observers, seeing him in one of his sudden rages, hearing him sputter insults or launch unfounded accusations, or watching him in a brief access of panic, concluded that he was partially demented.”
The relationship between Stanton and Mr. Lincoln got off to a bad start in 1855 when Mr. Lincoln was hired to work on the Manny Hanny patent case. Because the case might be tried in Illinois, a local lawyer was hired, but when the case was heard in Cincinnati, Mr. Lincoln was rudely frozen out of the company’s legal team by Stanton who had been hired as the lead counsel. Once, after a long morning of work, Lincoln proposed that the whole gang go out and eat lunch together. Stanton famously fumed and said he had no intention of eating lunch with that monkey. Lincoln and his legal preparation were ignored and he was not even invited to sit at their table in the courtroom.
But despite the ill treatment by Stanton, the experience in Cincinnati was valuable for Mr. Lincoln. Before Mr. Lincoln left the city, he told a friend: “Emerson, I am going home to study law. You know that for any rough-and-tumble case (and a pretty good one, too) I am enough for any man we have out in that country; but these college trained men are coming West. They have had all the advantages of a life-long training in the law, plenty of time to study and everything, perhaps, to fit them. Soon they will be Illinois, and I must meet them. I am just going home to study law, and when they appear I will be ready.”
Furthermore, Stanton’s ill treatment of Mr. Lincoln came to epitomize Mr. Lincoln’s ability to see beyond past insults to future benefits — when President Lincoln had to choose a successor to Secretary of War Simon Cameron in January 1862. Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote: “Unimaginable as it might seem, after Stanton’s bearish behavior, at their next encounter six years later, Lincoln would offer Stanton ‘the most powerful civilian post within his gift’ — the post of secretary of war. Lincoln’s choice of Stanton would reveal, as would his subsequent dealings with Trumbull and Judd, a singular ability to transcend personal vendetta, humiliation, or bitterness.” Lincoln scholar William Lee Miller noted: “Stanton in 1860 and 1861 stood about as far as could be from Lincoln, by party, by ideology, and — especially important — in his personal appraisal and personal relationship.”
Stanton quickly took the reins of the War Department and demonstrated that he was nobody’s pawn. Military historian Geoffrey Perret wrote: “Stanton’s will to win was as great as Lincoln’s, and he could pour himself into a fight to the death in a way that no other kind of war would have satisfied. He had a yearning for vengeance that merged seamlessly with the demands of patriotism.”
Stanton and Lincoln also just as quickly developed a working relationship — despite their very different temperaments. In the spring of 1862, they and Secretary of the Treasury Chase actually collaborated in the seizure of a Confederate outpost in Virginia. President Lincoln told future President James Garfield : “By the way, Garfield, do you know that Chase, Stanton, General Wool, and I had a campaign of our own? We went down to Fortress Monroe in Chase’s revenue cutter, and consulted with Admiral [Louis] Goldsborough on the feasibility of taking Norfolk by landing on the north shore and making a march of eight miles. The Admiral said there was no landing on that shore, and we should have to double the cape, and approach the place from the south side, which would be a long journey and a difficult one. I asked him if he had ever tried to find a landing, and he replied that he had not. I then told him a story of a fellow in Illinois who had studied law, but had never tried a case. He was sued, and, not having confidence in his ability to manage his own case, employed a lawyer to manage it for him. He had only a confused idea of meaning of law terms, but was anxious to make a display of learning, and, on the trial, constantly had suggested to his lawyer, who paid but little attention to him. At last, fearing that his lawyer was not handling the opposing counsel very well, he lost all his patience, and springing to his feet cried out: ‘Why don’t you go at him with a capias or a sur-rebutter or something, and not stand there like a confounded old nudumpactum?’ ‘Now, Admiral,’ said I, ‘if you don’t know that there is no landing on the north shore, I want you to find out.’ The Admiral took the hint; and taking Chase and Wool along, with a company or two of marines, he went on a voyage of discovery, and Stanton and I remained at Fortress Monroe. That night we went to bed, but not to sleep, for we were very anxious for the fate of the expedition. About two o’clock the next morning I heard the heavy tread of Wool ascending the stairs. I went out into the parlor and found Stanton hugging Wool in the most enthusiastic manner, as he announced that he had found a landing and had captured Norfolk.”
As they served their country together during some of the most challenging times in our nation's history, their loyalty to each other and the nation was unquestioned. When Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton came under attack in August 1863 for his alleged failure to support General George B. McClellan with more troops, President Lincoln defended him at a war rally at the Capitol: “General McClellan is not to blame for asking what he wanted and needed, and the Secretary of War is not to blame for not giving when he had none to give. And I say here, as far as I know, the Secretary of War has withheld no one thing at any time in my power to give him. I have no accusation against him. I believe he is a brave and able man, and I stand here, as justice requires me to do, to take upon myself what has been charged on the Secretary of War, as withholding from him.”
Historian Allan Nevins contended: “The popular supposition at the time that Stanton complemented Lincoln, supplying a firmness and decision which the President lacked, was untrue, for Lincoln needed no complement. But it is true that Lincoln’s strength did not lie in careful planning and systematic administration — and Stanton’s did. The two sometimes clashed. Stanton not only said cutting things of Lincoln but indulged in contemptuous gestures, as when he tore up a memorandum and tossed it into the wastebasket. But Lincoln was always the master.
Presidential bodyguard William Crook recalled: “The President’s relationship to Secretary Stanton was another instance of Mr. Lincoln’s marvelous self-control. Where the good of the nation was involved he didn’t even see things that related to himself alone. Secretary Stanton was a strong man and devoted to his country. I believe, that Mr. Stanton loved the President. But while he recognized Mr. Lincoln’s greatness and was loyal, those traits of Mr. Lincoln’s which was antipathetic to his character irritated him sometimes almost beyond endurance. Mr. Stanton was not a man of much self-control. The President’s tenderness of heart seemed to him weakness. The fondness for reading and for jesting, which every day restored the balance in the President’s over weighted mind, seemed to Mr. Stanton something approaching imbecility.
Regular association with the President did not eliminate Stanton’s propensity to disagree or even to sharply criticize the President. One day Stanton sharply rebuked Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt for a mission he had undertaken on behalf of the President, saying: “Well, all I have to say is, we’ve got to get rid of that baboon at the White House!’ When the story was repeated to the President, he refused to even consider Stanton’s comment an insult, saying “that is no insult, it an expression of opinion; and what troubles me most about it is that Stanton said it and Stanton is usually right.”
Mr. Lincoln’s indulgence in jokes and stories was not shared by Secretary Stanton, who bridled at Mr. Lincoln’s propensity to tell or read stories at serious moments in the Civil War. Stanton’s anger boiled over on election night, 1864 when the President insisted on reading a selection of Petroleum V. Nasby to Assistant Secretary of War Charles Dana. Stanton was infuriated, telling Dana: “Was there ever such inability to appreciate what is going on in an awful crisis? Here is the fate of this whole republic at stake, and here is the man around whom it all centres, on whom it all depends, turning aside from this momentous, this incomparable issue, to read the…trash of a silly mountebank!”
Lincoln biographer William Hanchett wrote: “Stanton was an easy man to dislike, for he was intense, hard-driving, opinionated, and quick-tempered, but there was a softness underneath that he revealed to few besides Lincoln. The two men sometimes took adjoining cottages at the Solder’s Home in the summer and rode back and forth together in deep discussions about the war. Seward was pretty much left to himself in the State Department, and Lincoln spent more time with Stanton than with any other official. One midnight, when Lincoln was heard climbing the stairs to the War Department telegraph office for news of his armies, someone heard Stanton tell the telegrapher to hide telegrams giving bad news and to find something favorable to that Lincoln would be able to sleep that night.”
Stanton’s friendship with Mr. Lincoln was also deepened in 1862 when they shared the deaths of their sons. Mr. Lincoln’s son Willie died in February and Stanton’s infant son James died in early July.
By the spring of 1865, the victory they sought had been achieved. “Accept my Congratulations on the glorious news of this morning,” Stanton telegraphed President Lincoln from Washington on April 7th, 1865.
Then, eight days later, the unthinkable occurred.
After Lincoln was shot in Ford's theater, he was carried across the street to the Peterson House where family, doctors, and his cabinet gathered to pray and comfort each other. It was reported that after consoling Mrs. Lincoln, Secretary Stanton was briefed on the overall situation. Then, bracing himself, he went to the back bedroom. As he looked down at the president, Surgeon General Barnes whispered the obvious: Mr. Lincoln cannot recover. Acknowledging with a faint nod, Stanton lowered himself into a chair next to the bed. All eyes turned to him in anticipation of some pronouncement, but instead he burst into loud, convulsive sobs.”
Corporal James Tanner recalled: “Stanton’s gaze was fixed intently on the countenance of his dying chief. He had, as I said, been a man of steel, throughout the night but as I looked at his face across the corner of the bed and saw the twitching of the muscles I knew that it was only by a powerful effort that he re[s]trained himself. The first indication that the dreaded end had come was at twenty-two minutes past seve[n] when the Surgeon-General gently crossed the pulse-less hands of Lincoln across the motionless breast, and rose to his feet.” Stanton intoned: “He now belongs to the ages.”
When Stanton died in 1869, Robert Todd Lincoln wrote the Secretary of War’s son, Edwin L. Stanton, that “when I recall the kindness of your father to me, when my father was lying dead and I felt utterly desperate, hardly able to realize the truth, I am as little able to keep my eyes from filling with tears as he was then.”
This most unlikely of partnerships happened because one man put aside his own ego and for the good of the country recruited the most talented person he knew for the position of Secretary of War. But this relationship became far more than just a political alliance, because of Lincoln's propensity to forgive those who hurt him, (which he always attributed to the strength of the Almighty and His Spirit) Lincoln was able to enjoy a friendship that seemed impossible to consider just a few years before Stanton's selection. And this was by no means a unique occurrence in Lincoln's life. If you were to read through his Second Inauguration speech, you would see a startling recognition of the power of forgiveness, of the shared trait of sin that we all possess, and most of all a dependence upon the providence of God and His will for our lives and our nation. It is, in my opinion, one of the greatest sermons ever preached and definitely one of the most powerful speeches any politician has ever uttered. You can read the entire document HERE.
