Lincoln's Secretary of War
Walter Stahr
Simon & Schuster, 2017
743 pp., $35.00
Review by Joseph C. Goulden
Although
overshadowed in history by battlefield titans such as Gen. U. S. Grant, Edwin
Stanton was arguably President Abraham Lincoln’s most valuable ally during the
Civil War.
As Secretary
of War, Stanton faced the awesome task first, of rapidly raising an army, and
keeping it armed and fed in the field. The telegraph and the railroad were
revolutionizing the rules of warfare. Stanton recognized their value, and he
proved a genius at shuffling thousands of soldiers from battlefield to
battlefield to counter the threats raised by advancing Confederate armies.
But Stanton
was also prickly and outspoken, quick to acquire enemies in and out of the White House. One contemporary called him “arbitrary, capricious, tyrannical, vindictive hateful and cruel.” To which biographer Stahr replies, “Yet Stanton was a great man and a great secretary of war.”
Stanton’s Ohio boyhood was marked by hard times. Money woes meant he spent only a year at Kenyon College, then “read law” with an attorney in his native Steubenville. He was involved in an array of complicated cases, from Mexican land claims in California to a seven-year struggle to halt the building of a suspension bridge over the Ohio River as a barrier to steamboat traffic.
A Democrat, he entered government as
attorney general under President James Buchanan, and he initially opposed
Lincoln (although they had worked together on a major patent case). But when war came, his loyalty to the Union
was foremost and he became perhaps the most radical Republican in the war
cabinet. He was one of the few who advocated enlisting former slaves and giving
them the same pay as white soldiers. This Afro-Americans, with 179,000 enlisted,
made up about one-tenth of the Union army.
Nearly 40,000 died in combat.
And he
praised their battlefield performance: “They have proved themselves among the
bravest in fighting for the Union, performing deed of daring and shedding their
blood with a heroism unsurpassed by soldiers of any other race.” (Altruism was
one factor; damaging the Southern economy was also important.)
Although
Stanton had no military experience, Mr. Lincoln trusted his judgment in the
incessant feuding among Union generals. He was instrumental in vaulting General Grant
over more senior officers to take command in the western theater.
And he did not hesitate to make major military
decisions. When a Union defeat at Chickamauga, Tennessee, threatened to obviate
recent gains in the South, Stanton summoned key railroad presidents to
Washington (“Please come … as quickly as you can”) to plan a massive and swift
movement of 20,000 troops from northern Virginia to southern Tennessee.
President Lincoln “mocked Stanton” for his
audacious plan, for the Union army was not noted for mobility. But Stanton’s
plan worked: a combination of several rail lines, supplemented by river boats,
carried out “the largest and fastest movement of troops in history.” Battlefield
disaster was thus averted.
Stanton was also astute in
politics. Mr. Lincoln’s 1864 re-election
was uncertain. With four candidates on
the 1860 ballot, he had received less than 40 percent of the popular vote. To
insure that the president received every possible vote, Stanton ordered that
soldiers from key states be granted furlough to go home and vote – presumably
for the incumbent. The serving military
voted overwhelmingly for Lincoln, who won handily.
Stanton always found a back-channel
means of shaping media coverage of the fighting. He dispatched telegrams about
battlefield developments to John Dix, the general in charge in New York. These
cables were routinely routed through the Associated Press, which happily passed
them along to member newspapers – in effect, distributing government press
releases as news.
Control of the press – and of
anti-war dissent – were key to Stanton, and his actions in these areas prompted
criticisms that tarnished his reputation. Some of his actions – such as curbing
anti-war riots – could be categorized as essential wartime
counterintelligence. But throwing
newsmen and anti-Lincoln politicians in jail was another matter, and remain a
stain on Stanton’s record.
The night of Lincoln’s
assassination, Stanton essentially seized the reins of government. As did most everyone
in Washington, he recognized the shortcomings of the frequently-soused Vice
President Andrew Johnson. He directed the investigation that quickly fingered
John Wilkes Booth as the killer and brought his associates to justice.
As president, Johnson reciprocated Stanton’s
hostility by ousting him from office, touching a dispute that led to his
attempted impeachment.
M. Stahr’s conclusion is to the
point: “Stanton learned on the job. He learned that warfare had changed since
the days of Joshua, and by the end of the wear he was a master of bringing both
technology and public opinion to bear in modern warfare.”
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Joseph Goulden writes frequently on intelligence and military affairs. This review was previously published in the Washington Times. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/oct/24/book-review-stanton-by-walter-stahr/
Joseph Goulden writes frequently on intelligence and military affairs. This review was previously published in the Washington Times. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/oct/24/book-review-stanton-by-walter-stahr/
