Union Portraits: V. Edwin M. Stanton

I

THE problem with Stanton is to find out how a man so thoroughly disliked and apparently objectionable could get the most important administrative position in the country and hold it through the greatest crisis in American life. Here, too, is a man with no political standing and very little executive experience, a clever practical lawyer, nothing more, who is set to handling hundreds of thousands of men and hundreds of millions of money, and does it. How? Why?

That Stanton was thoroughly disliked had better be made plain by beginning with two general quotations, of great vigor and significance. The first represents the result of Mr. John T. Morse’s wide study of the man and his surroundings: 'Stanton’s abilities commanded some respect, though his character excited neither respect nor liking. ... In his dealings with men he was capable of much duplicity, yet in matters of business he was rigidly honest.

. . . He was prompt and decisive rather than judicious and correct in his judgments concerning men and things; he was arbitrary, harsh, bad-tempered, and impulsive; he often committed acts of injustice and cruelty, for which he rarely made amends and still more rarely seemed disturbed by remorse or regret. . . . Undoubtedly Mr. Lincoln was the only ruler known to history who could have coöperated for years with such a minister.’

Beside this verdict of the historian let us place the contemporary judgment of Gideon Welles, — remembering, however, that the Secretary of the Navy viewed all his colleagues with a sternly critical eye. After reading his shrewd but acrid pages, I ask myself how Hamilton and Jefferson would have appeared under similar scrutiny, and more than once I am reminded of the cynical remark of Chancellor Oxenstiern: ' Here you see, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed.’

But on Stanton Welles is more severe than on any one else, even Seward; and the following comments are amplified again and again in the fifteen hundred pages of the Diary.

‘He is impulsive, not administrative; has quickness, often rashness, when he has nothing to apprehend; is more violent than vigorous, more demonstrative than discriminating, more vain than wise; is rude, arrogant, and domineering toward those in subordinate positions if they will submit to his rudeness, but is a sycophant and dissembler in deportment and language towards those whom he fears.'

These general indictments are surely savage enough. But we can support them by much other testimony as to special phases. It is said that the Secretary had an unfortunate habit of interfering in technical military matters; and though his enthusiastic biographer believes him to have been born as great m strategy as in everything else, critics in general are not of this opinion. Moreover, whatever he set out to do, he persisted in, and he had an incredible reluctance to admit that he had made a mistake.

It is said, further, that, independent of excessive confidence in his own military judgment, Stanton liked to exercise authority in all things, big and little. ‘Drunk with the lust of power,’ Piatt calls him, somewhat rhetorically; and Grant, in more sober language, comments on his ‘natural disposition to usurp all power and control in all matters that he had anything to do with.' Equally severe is the comment of Welles. ‘Mr. Stanton was fond of power and its exercise. It was more precious to him than pecuniary gain to dominate over his fellow man.’

The passion for power naturally breeds jealousy of the power of others and dislike of those who resist one’s authority or interfere with it. Seward told Bigelow that Stanton was of a jealous disposition. Blaine declares that the Secretary, with an uncontrollable greed for fame, had its necesary counterpart, jealousy and envy of the increasing reputation of others. Mr. Rhodes thinks that he was 'incapable of generosity to a prostrate foe.' Also, in such a fiercely energetic nature, jealousy and animosity could not remain in the condition of sentiment, but were bound to be translated into accordant action. Those who thwarted the Secretary in his purposes had to suffer, all the more because he usually managed to identify his personal antagonists with the enemies of his country. 'He used the fearful power of the government to crush those he hated, while he sought, through the same means, to elevate those be loved,’ says one who knew him well. Nor did he hesitate at methods, when the object to be attainted was an important one. Thus, he is said to have abstracted bodily certain official records in which one of his favorites was harshly treated.

We do not expect charges of arbitrariness and violence to be combined with accusations of duplicity. It happens, however, with this much-abused man. There is Welles, of course, hacking away, as usual: ‘He has cunning and skill, dissembles his feelings, in short, is a hypocrite, a moral coward, while affecting to be, and to a certain extent being, brusque, overvaliant in words.’ But on this point Welles has many to sustain him. It is charged by some that Stanton entered Buchanan’s Cabinet and then betrayed his chief to his Republican enemies. The general statement of McClellan, that the Secretary would say one thing to a man’s face and just the reverse behind his back, may perhaps be attributed to McClellan’s own state of mind. But it is difficult to set aside entirely the gencral’s account of Stanton’s extreme enthusiasm and even subservience in their early acquaintance, as compared with the steady opposition of a little later period. And it is much more difficult to set aside Stanton’s explicit warning to McClellan that Halleck was probably the greatest and most barefaced villain in America, while at the very same time the Secretary was sending word to Halleck, through Hitchcock, that he had never had any other than the highest respect for him and hoped Halleck would not imagine that he ever had. In Stanton’s suddenly high-handed treatment of Sherman as to his compact with Johnston at the close of the war, Sherman’s brother, the senator, does not know whether to read profound duplicity or, as Mr. Rhodes does, a quick impulse of violent irritation. ' He manifested and assumed the intensest kindness for you,’ John Sherman writes, ‘and certainly showed it to me. I still think that with him it was mere anger — the explosion of a very bad temper.’

And as the accusation of duplicity almost necessarily implies, Stanton was further charged with truckling to those who had power and influence, just as he bullied those who had none. Welles declares that the Secretary of War regarded himself as the protégé of Seward and always treated him with obsequiousness and servility; that he was an adept at flattering and wheedling members of Congress and pandering to their whims and fancies; that he treated Andrew Johnson as fawningly at first as he did roughly at last. Welles adds further that he himself met Stanton’s browbeating with a determined front and from that time on was treated with a deference shown to few members of the Cabinet. Mr. John T. Morse writes vividly, referring to the Sherman quarrel mentioned above:

‘ Stanton had that peculiar and unusual form of meanness which endeavors to force a civility after an insult.’ And Blaine, who in other points praises Stanton highly, admits that he had great respect for men who had power, and considered their wishes in a way quite unusual with him in ordinary cases.

It is even asserted that the Secretary’s bullying manner melted at once before conduct equally aggressive; and other experiences are told similar to that of Colonel Dwight, who went to get a pass for an old man to visit his dying son. The pass was refused, whereupon the colonel said, ‘My name is Dwight, Walton Dwight, Lieutenantcolonel of the One Hundred and Fortyninth Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers. You can dismiss me from the service as soon as you like, but I am going to tell you what I think of you.’ He did, and got his pass.

Some go so far as to maintain that this appearance of moral cowardice was accompanied by a decided lack of mere physical courage. Such a charge is pretty strongly implied in Grant’s accusation that Stanton’s timidity made him keep the armies near Washington, that he could see the Union weakness but not that of the enemy, and that the Confederates would have been in no danger if Stanton had been in the field. Mr. Rhodes speaks quite frankly of the Secretary’s ‘lack of physical courage.’ Welles had no doubt whatever upon the subject. His account of Stanton’s behavior after the assassination of Lincoln should be read with care, though with a clear recollection that Welles did not know his associate at all intimately and saw him, as for that matter he saw himself, through a cloud of prejudice. Still another paragraph from the Secretary of the Navy’s Diary I cannot resist quoting in full, for its vivid picture of Stanton and also its unconscious and thoroughly Pepysian portrayal of the writer. It refers to the wild excitement in the Cabinet, when it was feared that the Merrimac would advance on Washington: —

‘In all that painful time my composure was not disturbed, so that I did not perhaps as fully realize and comprehend the whole impending calamity as others, and yet to me there was throughout the whole day something inexpressibly ludicrous in the wild, frantic talk, action, and rage of Stanton as he ran from room to room, sat down and jumped up after writing a few words, swung his arms, scolded, and raved. He could not fail to see and feel my opinion of him and his bluster, — that I was calm and unmoved by his rant, spoke deliberately, and was not excited by his violence.’

There must be something inspiring in the joyous, salt freedom of the sea which could impel two secretaries of the navy, separated by an interval of two hundred years, to expose themselves to posterity with such incomparable frankness.

II

But as to Stanton. After perusing with attention the above cheerful catalogue of amiable qualities, the reader must be inclined to ask, with Malcolm in Macbeth, ‘If such a one be fit to govern, speak,’and to expect something like Macduff’s answer, ‘Fit to govern! no, not to live!’

We shall try a little later to emphasize some acts and characteristics of Stanton which may seem not wholly compatible with all these charges of his critics. Meanwhile, it must be evident, whether the charges are true, or, still more, if they are exaggerated and untrue, that the Secretary was not a man who went out of his way to be agreeable. He certainly was not. His position in itself forced him to acts that seemed harsh and even cruel. The See retary of War had to tread on many toes and scorch many fingers But it is possible to tread on toes so that the owner of them will remember it with tolerance, if not with a certain amiability. Stanton trod squarely and provoked a groan or an oath.

Indeed, there are many who agree with Grant that the Secretary took positive pleasure in refusing requests and disappointing suitors. If it in difficult to believe this, at least it cannot be denied that in the ordinary transaction of business he paid little attention to social amenities. Dana, who admired him much, admitted that he would have been a far greater man if he could have kept his temper. Chittenden, who admired him somewhat less,but knew him intimately, declares that few masters of literary denunciation were more apt at inflicting a bitter wound in a brief sentence. The same authority adds that attempts to ingratiate by compliment were rarely repeated; for the Secretary would repel the first one by a shaft of satire or a glance of contempt. His daily receptions appear at times to have been of the nature of shindies. In one case, recorded even by the enthusiastic biographer, an interview with a senator rose to such a pitch of vehemence that the Secretary dashed a full inkstand all over the floor, while in another he emerged from the office with his nose bleeding so freely that cracked ice was required to repair the damages.

There is abundant and most curious evidence as to the manifestation of these unamiable peculiarities in the Secretary’s official intercourse with his subordinates. Soldiers are accustomed to treat one another with the precision of military civility, prefacing orders with salutation and politeness. Stanton had bells put into the different rooms of the War Office. When he wanted to call a general, he pulled a cord, as if he were calling a bell-boy. Generals did not like it.

Also, Stanton’s manner of imparting information and receiving requests was not such as to inspire cordiality or gratitude. For instance, Schurz writes, inquiring if he is relieved from command. The Secretary replies, 'General Hooker is authorized to relieve from command any officer that interferes with or hinders the transportation of troops in the present movement. Whether you have done so, and whether he has relieved you from command, ought to be known to yourself.’ When your check is slapped like that, it stings for some time after. Again, a fellow member of the administration politely suggested a young friend as a candidate for office. ‘ Usher,’was the sharp reply,

' I would not appoint the Angel Gabriel a paymaster, if he was only twenty-one.’

Undoubtedly posterity has been most affected by Stanton’s rudeness and violence as they concerned Lincoln.

The display of these qualities began long before the war and before the two men had any official connection with each other. When they were scarcely acquainted, chance brought them together on the same side of a lawsuit, and Lincoln overheard Stanton say that he ‘would not associate with such a d— gawky, long-armed ape as that.’ After the war had begun, Stanton, still keeping up an epistolary connection with his former chief, Buchanan, wrote, in terms more civil, but hardly more complimentary, ‘An irretrievable misfortune and national disgrace never to be forgotten are to be added to the ruin of all peaceful pursuits and national bankruptcy, as the result of Lincoln’s running the machine for five months.’ And to Dix he expressed himself more frankly as to the ‘painful imbecility’ of the President. According to McClellan, his language in private conversation was franker still. Lincoln, he said, was the original gorilla, and Du Chaillu need not have gone to Africa to investigate that animal.

Such utterances are not recorded of the Cabinet officer, who had come to know the President more intimately. But the Secretary was just as ready as any one else to snub his chief in the course of business. Again and again he slighted and disregarded Lincoln’s suggestions and recommendations, in wellauthenticated cases going so far as to tear the President’s notes and fling them into the waste basket before the eyes of the bearer, with an expression of perfect contempt. Also, the Secretary’s admirers, and perhaps the Secretary himself to some degree, felt that he was the President’s chief monitor and by peremptory argument could sway that amiable but somewhat spineless personage into the course dictated by true wisdom and patriotism. An instance of this, important if true, is the vehement persuasion by which Stanton is said to have modified the Second Inaugural, insisting that his superior was too ready to surrender power to the generals in the field. Lincoln, after listening to the Secretary’s arguments, murmured, ‘You are right,’ seized the pen, and made the changes suggested.

In spite of occasional insolence, however, and a tendency to domineer in small matters, there can be no question that Stanton came early to recognize Lincoln’s supremacy, and on all vital points, after due and energetic protest, submitted his own will to that of his chief. When Lincoln had fairly made up his mind to be obeyed, he was obeyed.

Many cases of sharp conflict can be summed up in the crucial one, narrated by Nicolay and Hay, in which the President backed a positive order by a personal interview. ‘Mr. President,’ said the Secretary, ‘I cannot execute that order.’ ‘Mr. Secretary,’ replied Lincoln, with perfect good-nature and with perfect firmness, ‘I reckon you’ll have to execute that order.’ The order was executed.

And Stanton not only obeyed his leader, he admired and loved him. From a man so sparing of commendation, written words like the following mean much. They are full of significance, not only as to Stanton’s own feeling, but as to the relations of the two men. ‘Mr. Lincoln was never a good projector and frequently not a good manager; but his intuition was wonderful. He was one of the best of men to have by the side of a projector or manager. . . . Usually his mind was as free from bias as any I ever knew, and it was a genuine pleasure to consult him on new matters.’ While the eulogy quoted from Chittenden by Mr. Rothschild, in his admirable analysis, is one of the finest ever pronounced by one mortal man upon another. ‘There lies the most perfect ruler of men I ever knew.’

And now how did Lincoln feel about Stanton? It would appear that the President selected this member of his Cabinet more for actual merit than almost any of the others. The War Department was the most important of all. Up to January, 1862, Cameron had failed in it entirely. The new man must be chosen, not for politics, although a War Democrat may have been desirable, nor for personal adaptability, but because he could do the work. Lincoln at the start had certainly no reason to feel any affection for Stanton. He must therefore have picked him out by divining his extraordinary usefulness.

Having chosen him, he proposaed to leave him free, so far as possible. It is said that one disappointed applicant for secretarial favor brought back word that the only response he received was that the President was a damned fool. ‘Did Stanton say that?' was Lincoln’s serene comment. ‘Then it must be true, for Stanton is usually right.' In many other cases it was made perfectly evident that, having appointed a strong man to a difficult place, the President felt that he could best get full measure out of him by letting him have his head almost — not quitecompletely".

And Lincoln not only tolerated his subordinate, he defended him. When it was urged that Stanton’s work might be done quite as well by some one else who would do it less disagreeably, the President replied, ‘Find the man. Show me that he can do it. He shall.'

Also, there was love in that ample heart for the stern Secretary as well as respect and confidence. Does not all Lincoln’s divine tenderness show in Stanton’s own account of their last interview, just before Lincoln’s death, when the Secretary, feeling that his task was done, offered his resignation, and the President refused it? ‘Putting his hands on my shoulders, tears filling his eyes, he said, “Stanton, you cannot go. Reconstruction is more difficult and dangerous than construction or destruction. You have been our main reliance; you must help us through the final act. The bag is filled. It must be tied, and securely. Some knots slip; yours do not. You understand the situation better than anybody else, and it is my wish and the country’s that you remain.” '

It has, indeed, been suggested that Stanton’s main use to his chief was as a shield or buffer. Most men dislike to say no. Certainly Lincoln did. Yet he had to, till he must sometimes have seemed to himself the negative personified. Now to say no is thought to have given Stanton real pleasure. And the President was delighted to have a deputy of such solid qualifications. Grant rejects this view on the ground that Lincoln did not need to borrow backbone from any one. We know he did not. Yet when life was made up so largely of doing disagreeable things, it was surely policy to use a man who did them with masterly ease and a connoisseur’s perfection.

III

Yet probably no one living could have divined more keenly or appreciated more sympathetically the fine qualities of the subordinate than the leader who selected him and got out of him every ounce of his efficiency and usefulness. Let us go below the rough surface and distinguish more closely what some of those fine qualities were.

To begin with, in spite of his harsh, stern exterior, the man had wonderful depths of emotion and nervous sensibility. I think you can see it in his face — when you have discovered it otherwise. It was he who made that most original and subtle observation, — enough in itself to mark an exceptional acuteness, — when some one objected to his criticism of the meanness in a man’s face as being something for which the man was not responsible: ‘Every man over fifty is responsible for his face.’ Apply the criterion to its inventor, and you will see energy and determination in the brow and eyes and lines about the nose, but assuredly you will see sensibility about the large and mobile mouth.

Again, the voice matched the mouth. It is said to have been wonderfully gentle, sympathetic, and responsive, never more so than when uttering savage indignation or bitter criticism.

And back of the voice was a nervous, high-strung, responsive spirit. When good fortune came, the spirit was exuberant, cried out in triumph, embraced friends near and sent official telegrams of boyish exultation to friends distant. ‘Good for the first lick! Hurrah for Smith and the one-gun battery!’ Or when there was simply a relief from strain, the emotion was different but violent still. ‘His real feeling came to the surface. Great tears welled up in his eyes and flowed over his careworn face. ’ With disappointment and failure the shock was no less, whether shown in tears of bitterness or in strange manifestations of excited and overwrought nerves. Such things both accompany and produce physical weakness, and during all the years of his great and strenuous service Stanton was apparently a broken man. It is said that even before the war he had been warned by skilled physicians that unless he pursued a regular and quiet life, he might die at any moment. A regular and quiet life!

One frequent concomitant of sensitive nerves, humor, seems to have been largely absent in Stanton. There are stories of his gayety in early youth, stories of mirth and laughter and social expansiveness. It is most interesting to find him telling Dickens that the novelist’s works were his nightly resource and diversion and that he did not know how he could get through his task without them. We find an occasional jest on his lips, also. But the jests are apt to be bitter. The pettiness of even his vast labors, viewed under the aspect of eternity, did not strike him as constantly as it did Lincoln; and we learn from Chase that when the President prefaced the Emancipation Proclamation with choice extracts from Petroleum V. Nasby, — bells tinkling and clattering in that great tragic scene like the babble of the clown in Lear, — Stanton was the only Cabinet member present who did not laugh.

But if he had not the twinkle of laughter, he had the glow of deep affection. It is true, indeed, that he does not appear to have loved or trusted widely. Some, who had good opportunity for judging, have written that he permitted no one to know him well and that no man so widely known was ever so little known. I find also the assertion — startlingly characteristic about any man — that ‘love was not necessary to him.’

This I do not believe to be true. Indeed, the evidence shows it to be emphatically untrue. Stanton was not one of those who dissipate their affection, but where he bestowed it entire, it was all the more overwhelming. One need only read the history of his first marriage to appreciate this. It was a pure love match, between a boy and girl, and the husband’s devotion was as complete and lasting as was the father’s delight when children came to him. Years afterward Stanton declared that ‘the happiest hours of his life were passed in the little brick house on Third Street, holding [his daughter] Lucy on his knee while Mary prepared the meals.’ The girl-wife’s early death was the bitterest sorrow Stanton ever knew. For months he entirely gave up his legal work, spent hours at her grave, wandered into quaint and melancholy fancies which almost indicated lack of mental balance. His character is even said to have undergone a fundamental change, the natural gayety of his Youth giving place to a settled austerity and gloom. But such changes as this grow in the imagination of those who report them.

One striking incident of a later time illustrates well the blend of intense passions in the heart of this volcanic creature. During his secretaryship he was sitting one day in his study, with his little daughter on his knee. A friend thought it a good opportunity to plead for a Southern father under sentence of death. The petitioner pointed out to Stanton the joy of his own fatherhood and the child’s complete dependence upon him. Stanton assented with enthusiasm. ‘But there are daughters in the South who cherish their fathers just as much.’ ’I suppose there are,’ was the indifferent reply. ' Now there’s Pryor—’ The Secretary instantly pushed the child from his knee and thundered, ‘He shall be hanged! Damn him!’

But it must not be inferred from this that Stanton’s tenderness was confined to the domestic circle. Far from it. He may not have made friends widely, but he had a broad and generous kindliness, if one knew how to get at it and separate it from his temper and his prejudices. Above all, when his heart was touched, he would make any effort to relieve suffering. As a mere boy, he organized a charity league to watch with the sick and to relieve the poor. Once, when he was traveling to Pittsburg by boat, he found a poor Irishman with a broken leg on the way to have it set. The man was suffering cruelly, but no one paid much attention. Stanton went to the carpenter for tools, made a splint, set the leg and put the splint on with proper bandages, and sat by the patient, bathing his forehead, until the boat arrived.

Even in his official duties the Secretary tempered roughness with sympathy in a most notable manner. He was harsh to generals in epaulets, but when he saw a poor crippled soldier waiting patiently, he would listen to him first and speak gently, even if he could not say yes. In the same way, while he was often bitter to his subordinates, he at times also regretted his bitterness and would show his regret by some special kindness or unusual display of confidence. It is most curious to note, however, that he rarely apologized directly or admitted that he had been wrong, seeming to feel that such admission would compromise his dignity. In this he surely showed a most significant trait of character and stamped himself as something below the greatest.

It is interesting to have, not only the testimony of others to Stanton’s mixture of sympathy with severity, but his own personal confession of the strain involved in the execution of his duty. Thus, he is said to have protested with the utmost solemnity, ‘In my official slat ion I have tried to do my duty as I shall answer to God at the great day, but it is the misfortune of that station that most of my duties are harsh and painful to some one, so that I rejoice at an opportunity, however rare, of combining duty with kindly offices.’ Still more interesting is the dramatic account of one who was intimately familiar with the workings of the Department, and who one day, after watching the Secretary’s stern, cold dealings with petitioners and resenting them as almost inhuman, followed without announcement into his private office and there found him bent over his desk, his head buried in his hands, shaken with sobs, and wailing in anguish, ‘God help me to do my duty; God help me to do my duty.’

It seems hard to reconcile these things with the legend of Stanton’s pleasure in saying no. Yet perhaps they are not wholly incompatible, after all. If so, such contradictions certainly make him a figure of extraordinary interest.

IV

Nevertheless, it may be granted that Lincoln did not select Stanton as minister of war for his sympathy or his gentleness. What, then, were the other qualities which made the President pick out this sturdy agent and stand by him?

First, he was a worker, an enormous worker. Welles denies this and proves by doing so that he did not know Stanton. For his inclination and his capacity for labor are beyond dispute. In his early law practice, at his Ohio home, he toiled early and late to get the facts, all the facts, even those irrelevant, with the hope of finding something neglected which would solve a difficulty, as he often did. When he was sent to California by the government, to investigate the old Mexican land-titles, it is confessed that his researches into records and documents were as farreaching as they were fruitful. In the War Department he looked into everything himself, went into case after case with exhaustive and exhausting thoroughness, mastered the details of contracts, of supply, of equipment, of transportation, and saw that those details were attended to. Executive genius often consists in knowing how to make others work, and no doubt Stanton was expert in this function; but when anything was to be gained by doing work himself, he did it, as in the case, mentioned by Flower, of the cotton investigation in Savannah, in1865. Stanton selected twenty witnesses out of a vast number present and wrote down the testimony of each, unabridged, though his assistants offered to do it for him. He held that by doing it himself he would get a knowledge of the subject which could not be filtered through any clerk.

Even more important than labor, and essential to fruitful labor, is method, system, organization. Stanton possessed this business instinct in the highest degree. From the moment he took hold of the war machine, he saw that every part was in order, so that his own work and others’ work would not be thrown away. His procedure in this line was often vexatious, as when he arranged to have every telegraphic war dispatch from general to general, and even from the President to other members of the Cabinet, pass through his office and come under his eye, if necessary. But it was immensely thorough and effective. An exact routine governed his daily labors. During certain hours he stood at his desk and accorded a systematically proportioned allowance of minutes to the numerous visitors, who had each to state his business with absolute clearness and brevity and in a tone to be heard by the bystanders.

But often the visitor found his business stated for him. For the Secretary had little patience with many words, and had a marvelous gift of divining what was wanted; had, indeed, the most quick and piercing fashion of getting at the heart of any piece of business, before another would have stripped off even the husk of it. It was just this keenness of insight which enabled him, when not led astray by prejudice, to detect men of swift practical ability for the execution of his purposes.

And back of the labor, the system, the insight, was the animating soul, — an enormous, driving energy, which thrust right on through obstacles and difficulties, would not yield, would not falter, would not turn back. Sometimes this energy was misdirected and overzealous, as in some of the arbitrary arrests for treason, which may have done more harm than good. But lesser men, who stop to hesitate and question, cannot but wonder at its splendid, forthright, overpowering accomplishment. As Thurlow Weed wrote, divining the future, in 1861, ‘While I was in the White House I looked over that new Attorney-General of ours. He is tremendous.’

This abounding vigor showed in the Secretary’s words, written and spoken. ‘The very demon of lying seems to be about these times, and generals will have to be broken for ignorance before they will take the trouble to find out the truth of reports.’ It showed, too, constantly in his actions. When he went West at onetime to push a military movement, the train was driven as it had never been driven before. ‘ Shall we get there?’ asked Stanton, anxious to drive harder. ‘Great God!‘ answered the engineer, ‘you’ll get through alive if I do.'

As you follow the different phases of Stanton’s activity, you will be amazed to see this clear-eyed, ordered energy displayed in all of them. Supplies? He gets supplies on honest contracts, of the stipulated quality, and furnishes them, when and where needed. A navy? If he wants a navy on the western rivers, and Father Noah or Father Neptune—Welles, of the patriarchal beard, was known by either titlefrets and fidgets over difficulties, he just makes a navy, out of nothing. Railroads? The very life and heart of the war depend on railroads. Stanton sees it and gets men like Haupt and McCallum out of civil life to do feats of engineering which commanded the admiration not of America only, but of the world.

Or, in another connection, take Stanton’s handling of the state governors, so justly praised by Mr. Rhodes. Tact and patience were needed here to adjust endless tangles of red tape. The Secretary showed that, if required, he had the tact and the patience as well as the energy.

That a man of this stamp should have been a personal coward is very difficult to believe. I am inclined to think that any charges made against Stanton on this line are based on the vagaries of a highly excitable temperament, which may have momentarily betrayed its possessor in the quick presence of certain kinds of physical peril. However this may be, the man gave many proofs of complete indifference to death, while he was doing his duty. Thus, when defending a poisoner, in order to test the drug used he took a good dose of it himself and was dangerously ill in consequence. Again, when cholera was prevalent, he stepped right in and worked among the sick after priest and doctor had deserted them, and went so far as to open the coffin of a young girl, because he had some fear that she might have been buried alive. These are not exactly the actions of a coward.

Whether physically brave or not, Stanton assuredly did not in general lack the moral courage to say no. Graft, corruption, and dishonesty withered when they came within his touch. Welles, always resourceful and brought up in good traditions of New England thrift, declarer that his colleague was Utterly wasteful of public money and that anybody could be a great war minister who did not care what he spent.

Perhaps the absurdity of the latter assertion may help to discredit the former, which is not generally made or accepted. At any rate, neither Welles nor any one else ever accused the Secretary of direct or indirect peculation, or even ventured to imply that the war brought him personal profit. On the contrary, he left office and died poorer than he was at an earlier period. Indeed, before his death he was in actual distress and obliged to borrow money for his immediate necessities. Yet he obstinately refused a large sum subscribed by his friends, not as charity, but in simple recognition of his splendid service to his country.

Thus it is evident that he was capable of great personal sacrifice, and this is true, not only as regards money, but as regards other things. During the time of his public service he gave up all social diversions, all amusement of any kind, that every minute might be devoted to the duties of his office. That his acceptance of a cabinet position was as entirely a matter of sacrifice as he asserted may be open to some doubt. The love of power and the ambition to exercise it were vital to his temperament, and to be the motive force in such an event as the Civil War was an opportunity no lover of power could despise. But it may be said with justice that Stanton was one of the few men of his caliber who never gave a thought to the presidency; and it is probable that, as the war progressed, every conscious personal preoccupation became merged in the daily and nightly struggle to perform tasks too mighty for any human brain or shoulders.

v

In the performance of these tasks we see Stanton rather as doer than as thinker. His keen intelligence was the servant of his will, not the master of it.

And though he would have much preferred thinking on abstract problems to being quiet, his abstract thinking has little interest except as developing his character. In youth he ardently desired to write a book on the Poetry of the Bible, calling attention to the fact ‘that God, in all his communications with man, clothed his language in the highest imagery.’ I am very glad that he did not, as I should have had to read it.

Also, his intellectual quality, from the religious point of view, is well indicated in the account of his settlement of speculative difficulties. ‘Mr. Stanton always had a profound reverence for the Supreme Being, but at one time he was disinclined to regard the Bible as an inspired work. Finally he took a copy of it into a room in his dwelling, and, turning the key, resolved not to come forth until he had satisfied himself on that point. He continued in his room so long a time that his young wife became alarmed, fearing he was going crazy. He emerged at last fully satisfied that the Bible is what it purports to be, the Word of God, and he never thereafter doubted.’

This is surely an edifying example of ‘the will to believe.’

Stanton’s general intellectual force is well gauged by the extraordinary paragraph in his letter to Dana, written in February, 1862. ‘Much has been said of military combinations and organizing victory. I hear such phrases with apprehension. They commenced in infidel France with the Italian campaigns, and resulted in Waterloo. Who can organize victory? Who can combine the elements of success on the battlefield? We owe our recent successes to the spirit of the Lord that moved our soldiers to rush into battle and filled the hearts of our enemies with dismay.'

This sort of thing recalls the talk — not the action — of Stonewall Jackson, and in some respects there was a striking resemblance between the two men. Neither was attractive in his ordinary relations with his fellows. Neither treated his subordinates with tact or tenderness. Each had the energy, the resistless rush, of a natural force, overcoming all obstacles in the indomitable effort to attain a simple end. That the likeness does not extend to actual military genius, it is hardly necessary to point out. Stanton’s biographer does, indeed, maintain that his favorite showed himself a great general by capturing Norfolk. I am not aware that the conclusion is shared by any other writer about the Civil War. On the contrary, many hold that the Secretary had a singular gift for thwarting the military inspirations of others.

There can be no doubt as to the simple end toward which all Stanton’s energies were directed. It was not personal advantage; it was not party triumph; it was not even the abolition of slavery; it was, constantly and above everything, the preservation and restoration of the Union. That he was always discreet or diplomatic in laboring for this end will be maintained by no one. Sometimes there was an element of pig-headed obstinacy in his effort, as in the contest with Andrew Johnson over the War Department in 1866, when the Secretary may have been right in principle, but appears almost as undignified as the President in actual method. Yet under all tactlessness and all indiscretion there lay the one passionate, masterful, consistent purpose, to fight over all things and through all things and beyond all things, that there might be on this North American Continent but one indissoluble, prosperous, peaceful nation, the United States of America.

' if the Cause fails, you and I will be covered with prosecutions, imprisoned, driven from the country,’said Morton to Stanton. And Stanton answered, in his softest voice, ‘If the Cause fails, I do not care to live.’

Also, his own written words give a noble, an imperishable reiteration and elaboration of the same idea. ‘I hold my present position at the request of the President, who knew me personally, but to whom I had not spoken from the 4th of March, 1861, until the day he handed me my commission. I knew that everything I cherished and held dear would be sacrificed by accepting office. But I thought I might help the country and for that I was willing to perish. If I wanted to be a politician or a candidate for any office, would I stand between the treasury and the robbers who are howling around me? Would I provoke and stand against the whole newspaper gang in the country, of every party, who to sell news would imperil a battle? I was never taken for a fool, but there would be no greater madness than for a man to encounter what I do for anything else than motives that overleap time and look forward to eternity. I believe that Almighty God founded this government, and for my actions in the effort to maintain it I expect to stand before Him in judgment.’

It is perhaps permitted to a man to be exceedingly disagreeable, when he feels and speaks and acts like that.