Edwin Stanton, died December 24, 1869

On the evening of Friday, April 14, 1865 Stanton visited the home of Secretary of State William Seward before returning home. He and his wife had been invited to join the Lincolns at the theater, but Stanton declined, as he rarely enjoyed theatrical performances.  He was just undressing for bed when two clerks from the War Department came banging at the door, shouting that the president had been shot and Seward had been attacked. Stanton had left Seward only a short time before, and said, "Oh, that can't be, that can't be so!"  When another clerk arrived to inform his of what had happened at the Seward home, Stanton took a carriage back to their house on Lafayette Square. He found Seward, his son and nurse all severely injured and under the care of doctors.  According to Gideon  Welles, the Secretary of the Navy, who arrived at about the same time, blood was everywhere.  Stanton, Welles and Montgomery Meigs then rushed to the Petersen House, where Lincoln had been taken after he had been shot at Ford's Theater. 

Booth biographer Michael W. Kauffman wrote that after Stanton's arrival at Petersen House on the night of President Lincoln's assassination:

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.

Stanton  called for Charles Dana, assistant secretary of war, who, being a good stenographic writer, wrote from dictation telegrams to all parts of the country: 

That night I was awakened from a sound sleep with the news that Mr. Lincoln had been shot and that the Secretary wanted me. I found the President lying unconscious, though breathing heavily, on a bed in a small side room, while all the members of the cabinet and the Chief Justice with them, were gathered in the adjoining parlor. They seemed to be almost as much paralyzed as the unconscious sufferer within the little chamber. Mr. Stanton alone was in full activity.

James Tanner, a clerk in the War Department who had learned shorthand after he lost his legs at the Second Battle of Bull Run, was attending the theater at Grover's that night. Tanner was also recruited to transcribe Stanton's orders, as well as the testimonies of witnesses to the shooting.  By midnight, Stanton had alerted all military forces in the Washington area of the shooting and of what was known about the assassins; railroad passenger trains heading south were stopped, and bridges were closed.  Stanton, realizing that the nation had to be informed of what of what had occurred, dictated a description of the events for release to the press.

Illustration of Death-bed of Lincoln

According to Tanner's recollections, Stanton then

passed back into the room where the president lay. There were gathered . .  . about twenty-or twenty-five in all, I should judge. The bed had been pulled out from the corner and owing to the stature of Mr. Lincoln, he lay diagonally on his back. He had been utterly unconscious from the instant the bullet plowed into his brain. His stertorous breathing subsided a couple of minutes after seven o'clock. From then to the end only the gentle rise and fall of his bosom gave indication that life remained.

The surgeon general was near the head of the bed, sometimes sitting on the edge thereof, his finger on the pulse of the dying man. Occasionally he put his ear down to catch the lessening beats of heart. Mr. Lincoln's pastor. The Reverend Doctor Gurley, stood a little to the left of the bed. Mr. Stanton sat in a chair near the foot on the left, where the pictures place Andrew Johnson. I stood quite near the head of the bed and from that position had full view of Mr. Stanton across the president.

Phineas Gurley

At about 1 :30 in the morning, believing that Lincoln could not last much longer, Stanton wrote a formal notification to Vice-President Johnson. Going into the adjoining room, he handed the paper to General Vincent with orders to make a copy of it.  Mrs. Lincoln screamed "Is he dead? Oh, is he dead?" General Thomas Vincent wrote:

I cannot recall a more pitiful picture than that of poor Mrs. Lincoln, almost insane with sudden agony, moaning and sobbing out that terrible night. Mr. Stanton attempted to soothe her, but he was full of business, and knew, moreover, that in a few hours at most she must be a widow. She entered the room where her husband lay motionless, but the surgeon announced that death was fast descending; she then fainted and was practically helpless.

During the night, a War Department detective searched Booth's trunk in his room at the National Hotel, and discovered a letter about the murder plot.  By 3 a.m., Stanton had become convinced that Booth was the president's assassin, and word went out to arrest him.

According to Colonel A. F. Rockwell, who was present in the room:

During twenty minutes preceding the death of the President, Mr. Stanton stood quite motionless, leaning his chin upon his left hand, his right hand holding his hat and supporting his left elbow, the tears falling continually.

At 7 :22 in the morning of April 15, 1865, Lincoln ceased to breathe. Stanton touched the Reverend Phineas D. Gurley, pastor of the Presbyterian church which the Lincolns had attended, on the arm and said : "Doctor, please lead in prayer."

Tanner later wrote:

The Reverend Dr. Gurley stepped forward and lifting his hands began “Our Father and our God” and I snatched pencil and notebook from my pocket, but my haste defeated my purpose. My pencil point (I had but one) caught in my coat and broke, and the world lost the prayer, a prayer that was only interrupted by the sobs of Stanton as he buried his face in the bedclothes.  As “Thy will be done, Amen” in subdued and tremulous tones floated through the little chamber, Mr. Stanton raised his head, the tears streaming down his face. A more agonized expression I never saw on a human countenance as he sobbed out the words: “He belongs to the angels now.”

Illustration: "Death of President Lincoln, the Nation's Martyr"

The traditional version of Edwin M. Stanton’s quote — “Now he belongs to the ages.” — were the words remembered by Lincoln’s secretary, John Hay, who was near Lincoln’s deathbed on April 15, 1865.  That quote was included in a book Hay wrote about Lincoln with John G. Nicolay in 1890, and was popularized by Ida M. Tarbell’s widely-read biography of Lincoln, published in 1900. 

Reward poster for Booth, Surratt, and Herold

On April 20, Stanton issued a proclamation offering a $50,000 reward for the apprehension of John Wilkes Booth, with $25,000 each for the capture of David Herold and John Surratt.  On April 26, Booth was found and killed.  He and Herold had been hiding in a tobacco barn in Virginia.  

David Herold

Herold was captured alive, but one of the soldiers, contrary to orders, had shot Booth, who died soon after.  Stanton knew that Booth's body and grave would be worshipped by Confederate partisans; one woman had managed to access the body and cut of locks of his hair.  Not wanting Booth's grave to be a shrine to a "martyr," he had Booth's body buried in secret in the Washington arsenal. 

Lock of Booth's hair

Stanton pursued the prosecution of the conspirators involved in Lincoln's assassination, arranging that the proceedings were not handled by the civil courts, but by a military tribunal, and therefore under Stanton's direction. Though John Wilkes Booth was known to be the murderer of Lincoln, scores of suspected accomplices were also arrested and thrown into prison.  As evidence indicated that Confederate officials had been involved in the plot, President John proclaimed that "rebels and traitors" in Canada had conspired with Jefferson Davis to assassinate Lincoln and his cabinet members.  He offered a reward of $100,000 for Davis' capture and $25,000 for each of the others. 

Samuel Arnold

The suspects were finally winnowed to eight: Samuel Arnold, George Atzerodt, David Herold, Samuel Mudd, Michael O'Laughlin, Lewis Powell (aka Lewis Payne or Paine), Edmund Spangler, and Mary Surratt.  

Lewis Powell / Payne

Stanton ordered Payne, O'Laughlin, Spangler and Atzerodt confined below deck on the monitor Montauk, which was anchored near the Nay Yard.  

Michael O'Laughlin

The other male prisoners were placed in the hold of the monitor Saugus.  Each prisoner had an iron ball weighing seventy-five pounds attached to his leg by a heavy chain and wore handcuffs joined by an iron bar.  Later, for more security, Stanton ordered eight heavy canvas hoods made, padded one-inch thick with cotton, with one small hole for eating, no opening for eyes or ears. Stanton ordered that the hoods be worn by the seven men day and night to prevent conversation. 

Canvas Hoods for Prisoners

No baths or washing of any kind were allowed, and during the hot breathless weeks of the trial the prisoners' faces became swollen. The prison doctor began to fear for the conspirators' sanity, but Stanton would not allow the hoods, nor the wrist irons and anklets, to be removed.  

Mary Surratt

Hood number eight was never used on Mary Surratt, the owner of the boarding house where the conspirators had laid their plans.  She was held in the Old Capitol Prison.

Joseph Holt

General Joseph Holt, Judge Advocate General of the Army, was responsible for conducting the trial of the conspirators.  The military commission began on May 9, and reached a verdict on the last day of June. 

George Atzerodt

It found all the prisoners guilty of conspiring to murder Lincoln, Johnson, Seward and Grant.  O'Laughlin,  Mudd and Spangler were sentenced to hard labor; Payne Herold, Atzerodt and Surratt were sentenced to death by hanging.

   

July 7, 1865
The Hanging
Photograph by Alexander Gardner

Stanton continued to hold the position of Secretary of War under President Andrew Johnson. While the Union army as a fighting force needed to be dismantled, there was still a need for its forces in the South, where Confederate governments were inadequate or non-existent.  In the first weeks and months of peacetime, Union provosts disarmed Confederate soldiers, established food distribution, organized military policing, set up provost courts to try ordinary criminal cases, enforced liquor prohibition decrees, supervised the repair of municipal facilities, put Negroes to work on roads and bridges, and more.

Johnson was committed to the doctrine of states' rights.  He believed that reconstruction amounted to no more than a resumption by the rebelling states of their rights and duties under the Constitution, and he stressed rights more than duties.  Stanton strongly disagreed with Johnson's plan to readmit the seceded states to the Union without guarantees of civil rights for freed slaves. Stanton initially thought that the Freedmen's Bureau, established as an autonomous unit of the War Department by Congress, would give the Southern Unionists and Negroes adequate protection.  The Bureau became a kind of welfare agency for blacks, and it also took over the administration of justice in cases where the rights of Negroes were involved. By the summer of 1865, however, Stanton was coming to believe that Johnson's pardon policy was return to power in the south the same men who were responsible for the war, and for shedding the blood of the Union army.  Southerners chose their wartime leaders to represent them in Congress, and some called for Congress to grant compensation for emancipated slaves, appealed for a general amnesty, and restitution of confiscated property.  Equally disturbing were the "Black Codes" being enacted: now that blacks were no longer property, new laws were put in place to keep the "freedmen" in their place.  Stanton was increasingly disgusted that the South intended to continue with the same beliefs, leaders, and powers that had led to the war.  

On April 2, 1866, Johnson proclaimed that the rebellion was ended and that the Southern states were now back in the Union.  At the end of April, the Congressional Joint Committee on Reconstruction introduced a proposed Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.  One section was designed to prevent racial discrimination by states.  In another section, the committee had acceded to Johnson's contention that suffrage was a matter for the states to decide, and did not impose Negro voting on the South.  However, the war increased the South's representation in the House of Representatives by making the three-fifths clause in the Constitution obsolete.  The slaves who were formerly counted as 3/5 of a person for representation now would be counted as one person - and yet, not being permitted to vote, the South would be rewarded with increased representation and power for its white representatives in Congress.

Johnson and Stanton clashed over implementation of Reconstruction policy.  In May 1866, Johnson leaked information to the Associated Press about a contentious cabinet meeting, and it appeared in newspapers the next morning.

In 1866, both Stanton and his wife were ill, and she made him promise to resign.  In October he wrote Ellen, who was staying with family in Pittsburgh, 

As yet I have said nothing about leaving the Cabinet to the President, but am only waiting to finish some business.

Johnson's political purges of officeholders had prompted the Senate to retaliate with a tenure-of-office bill in early 1867, providing that persons holding appointments from the President and Senate should continue in their posts until the Senate sanctioned their removal by the President.  Johnson vetoed both this and the reconstruction bill passed by Congress; both vetoes were overridden by Congress.

Cartoon of Andrew Johnson

On August 5, 1867, Johnson asked for Stanton's resignation, intending to replace him with Ulysses Grant.  Stanton refused to resign.  On August 12, the president suspended him from office.  Grant took over the post temporarily, pending the reconvening of the Senate in December.    

Cartoon featuring Grant, Stanton, Thomas and Johnson

At the time of his suspension from office, Stanton was penniless as far as cash was concerned, and in poor physical condition. He borrowed money in order to travel with his family to New England to recuperate.  They went to St. Albans, Vermont, to visit ex-Governor and Mrs. Gregory Smith. Ann Eliza Smith said:

Mr. Stanton's enjoyment of the surroundings astonished me. The evening of his arrival he immediately went out of the house and ran across the garden like a boy, exclaiming: "How delightful the air is. I can breathe! See, I can breathe!" His terrible enemy, asthma, retired for a moment and the weary war-worn veteran threw aside his armor and, forgetting the nightmare horrors from which he had so recently emerged, drank in the repose and recreation he so greatly needed. All the sternness and severity of his countenance passed away. He joked and laughed with the children; rode often with my young daughter in a single carriage; walked alone in the grove and garden and when, late in the evening, we gathered in the library, discussed various subjects or told us stories of the war. 

Gregory Smith

His health was so poor that he was unable to resume his law practice, and his financial problems were dire.  He traveled to Ohio to see if he could sell some real estate there.  While in Ohio, his nephew, the son of his brother Darwin, died, and he had to arrange the funeral and burial.  He wrote Ellen,

Your love is the only solace that supports me in despondency, and ill health, and many cares.

After the funeral, Stanton went to Gambier to spend his 52nd birthday with his mother and Pamphila, before returning to Washington. 

In January, the Senate ordered that Stanton return to the War Department and cabinet.  On January 14, Grant left the War Department and Stanton returned.  He drew the $3,000 due as his salary for the period of suspension, and got back to work.  He intended to resign soon after resuming office, but was convinced by Republicans to stay and resist Johnson.  He wrote his sister, Pamphila,

I do not want to remain . . . but do not feel at liberty to give up immediately.

Lorenzo Thomas

He received no direct communications from the White House, and attended no cabinet meetings.  In February, Johnson called General Lorenzo Thomas to the White House and gave him two orders: one demanding that Stanton vacate the war office, and the other naming Thomas to succeed him as Secretary of War ad interim.  Thomas went to the War Department to deliver the instructions to Stanton.  Stanton sent messengers to Capitol Hill with his account of Johnson's actions, and a resolution was made in the House to impeach the President.  The Senate resolved that Johnson could not legally oust Stanton or replace him with Thomas.  Stanton announced his intention to stay in the war office night and day until a decision was reached about the situation.  On March 1, the House presented articles of impeachment to the Senate.  The 11-point indictment stated that Johnson had illegally ousted Stanton, broken the tenure law, and sought to sue the Army for his own purpose.

The trial went on for weeks; finally, senators voted on May 16, 1868: 35 voted to convict.  Thirty-six votes were needed to carry the verdict.  Stanton relinquished the office and sent his letter of resignation to the president.

Stanton was almost without funds at this time.  They sold what assets they could, and cut back on expenses.  In spite of his poor health and finances, Stanton spoke in support for Grant in the presidential race that fall.

Late in July 1869, Stanton, who had continued to suffer from severe asthma, had a relapse; his doctor suggested that Stanton draw up his will.  He and Ellen went to New Hampshire, then to Boston, where they were guests of wealthy friends during August.  In September they stayed at the Hoopers' home in Cape Cod.  He wrote to his mother on September 18, 

I have this summer been diligently seeking health on mountains and the seashore, 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.  

Samuel Hooper

The next day, however, Stanton seemed close to death, and remained at the Hoopers.  On September 28, they finally began their trip back to Washington.

Stanton's health continued to fail.  One of his last letters was to his longtime colleague, Peter Watson:  

Washington, November 25, 1869. 

P. H. Watson, Esq.

My dear Friend:

Contrary to my hope when I last saw you, my health was not restored so that I could engage in business for a livelihood. My strength rapidly declined in the summer, and with reluctance I was compelled to leave home.    

Some months on the mountains and seashore of New England, with absolute rest, effected some improvement, and I am now better than for the last twelve months, and am steadily but slowly improving. My medical advisers, everywhere, enjoin abstinence from any employment taxing my physical strength, so that I have been forced to decline numerous professional engagements that, had I been strong enough, would have provided for my necessities.

I am entirely out of money. Traveling, educating, and providing for my children, and other necessary expenditures, have quite exhausted my last winter's supply furnished by Mr. Witt's kindness, so that I am compelled to apply to you for aid. I know you will be glad to aid me if in your power. I have valuable property here and in Ohio, and on the Monongahela, not encumbered, but unproductive. I have not been able to give my attention towards disposing of it, and my protracted and serious illness has cut off my professional supplies. 

Please let me know whether you can help me or not. Five thousand dollars would carry me through another year; even less would drive the wolf from the door. 

With kindest regards to you and Mrs. Watson and the children, I remain, 

Ever yours,  Edwin M. Stanton.

Ebenezer Hoar

On December 14, 1869 President Ulysses Grant nominated Attorney General Ebenezer Hoar to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, but he was not confirmed by the Senate. Conservative Republican Senators were indignant about Hoar's previous opposition to the impeachment of Andrew Johnson. Senator Benjamin Butler had also long been at odds with Hoar in both social and political life. Butler led the effort to vote down Hoar's nomination. Grant did not want or intend to nominate Stanton to the Supreme Court, but he sent Stanton’s name to the Senate; his friends rallied to the cause, and the Senate confirmed Stanton by a 46-11 vote that same day.

Ulysses Grant, 1869

On December 19, Stanton's 54th birthday, President Grant called at their home to inform them of the nomination.  On the 21st, after his doctor had refused to permit him to go personally to the White House to thank Grant, Stanton wrote a note of acceptance to the president:

It is the only public office I ever desired and I accept it with great pleasure.

On the evening of December 23, 1869, the Stanton family went to bed, leaving Stanton in care of his nurse, David Jones. An hour later Jones was startled by extreme paroxysmal respiration in his patient and aroused the household. Dr. Barnes was called to the house, and, after examining his patient, sent for the Reverend Thomas A. Starkey, rector of Epiphany Church. Between convulsions, Stanton expressed the belief that he would recover. Dr. Barnes, however, was convinced to the contrary, and the rector chanted the solemn service for the dying at 2 o'clock in the morning. In the middle of the night, he was surrounded by his entire household, including his mother and sister who were in town for the Christmas holiday, his wife, his children (Edwin, Eleanor, nine-year-old Lewis and six-year-old Bessie), as well as the servants, David Jones, Dr. Barnes, and the Reverend Mr. Starkey.  Stanton, who had been semi-comatose for a time, died on the morning of Christmas Eve, 1869. 

His funeral was held on December 27th.  From his home, the funeral cortege went to Oak Hill Cemetery. The hearse was drawn by four gray horses draped in black and the coffin and the grave were heaped with floral tributes.  More than 100 carriages of mourners followed.  Onlookers lined the streets; President Grant ordered the public offices closed and flags flown at half-staff.

Stanton Grave, Oak Hill Cemetery

Robert Todd Lincoln wrote Stanton's oldest 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.

Rumors circulated that Stanton had committed suicide out of remorse for hanging Mrs. Surratt, cutting his own throat as his brother Darwin had, and that his wife had sealed the coffin to prevent anyone seeing the wound.

Stanton had taken a large pay cut to serve as Secretary of War, and his finances were in bad shape when he died. The court appointed as appraisers General J. K. Barnes and General Thomas M. Vincent, who listed the property of the estate so as to enable the executors to turn over one-third to Stanton's mother and two-thirds to his widow. The Steubenville house sold for $7,500 ; the K Street house in Washington for $41,000 ; other property for approximately $5,000.  Congress voted to Mrs. Stanton a sum equal to the annual salary of an associate justice — $5,000 — and there was $10,000 life insurance, which was promptly paid. A testimonial fund of nearly $100,000 was raised, mostly in New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Chicago.

In the 1930s, a book written by Otto Eisenschiml accused Stanton of arranging the assassination of Lincoln; his signature work, Why was Lincoln Murdered?, was published to mixed reviews and a national furor. In it, he postulated that Stanton had plotted to kill Lincoln due to marked political and personal differences. He used circumstantial evidence to build his case, including Stanton's hiring of a bodyguard named John Parker to protect the president.  Parker was absent from his post when assassin Booth entered the presidential box at Ford's Theater.

Eisenschiml also speculated that Stanton had deliberately left one key bridge across the Potomac River open, the same bridge Booth actually used to escape, and that he ordered Booth to be shot and killed by the Union Army. Another controversial suggestion was that Stanton tore several incriminating pages from Booth's diary. His theories have become popularly known as the "Eisenschiml Thesis," but have generally been discredited by leading historians.

"In my official station 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 - a misfortune that no one else can comprehend the magnitude of - that most of my duties are harsh and painful to someone, so that I rejoice at an opportunity, however rare, of combining duty with kindly office."
~ Edwin Stanton, in a letter to Isabella Beecher Hooker

“Stanton had the loveliest smile I ever saw on a human face.”

~ Charles A. Dana