... Charles sleep deprivation rain Thomas Benjamin P American Revolution Beecher Henry Ward Boritt Gabor S Neely Jr Mark E Abraham Lincoln Mary Todd Lincoln Lincoln Assassination John Wilkes Booth Gideon Welles William H. Seward Prophetic Dreams Edwin M. Stanton Some Americans began to see...

...This chapter examines Edwin M. Stanton's California mission and its impact on his career and reputation. As Stanton and Ellen were enjoying their honeymoon, American politics became increasingly volatile. Slavery had come to dominate public debate, especially after 1854, when Senator Stephen...

...This chapter examines Edwin M. Stanton's role as part of the defense team for Congressman Daniel Sickles, who was charged with the murder of Philip Barton Key. In February 1859, Samuel F. Butterworth, a noted figure of New York's Tammany Hall, received an urgent note from Sickles, his old Tammany...

...This chapter examines Edwin M. Stanton's secret communication with the Buchanan administration's political enemies in the North, to whom he routinely revealed the confidential discussions of the president's inner circle. A decade after Stanton entered President James Buchanan's cabinet as attorney...

...This chapter examines Edwin M. Stanton's power as secretary of the War Department during the Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln's visit with General Winfield Scott represented the latest in a series of consultations he had sought as part of his military education. He had a conversation...

...This chapter examines Edwin M. Stanton's propaganda campaign for incumbent Abraham Lincoln in the 1864 presidential election at the height of the Civil War. The Union's summer campaigns of 1861 had flourished and flickered out independently. Two major offensives began together late in April 1863...

...This chapter examines Edwin M. Stanton's efforts to implicate Confederate officials—and to demonize the entire South—in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865. The military trial resumed immediately after the grand review. When each of the witnesses had testified satisfactorily...

...This chapter examines Edwin M. Stanton's appointment to the Supreme Court under President Ulysses S. Grant's administration. Three weeks after Stanton left the War Department, Senator Edwin Morgan asked him to come to New York and speak for the lawmaker's reelection. John Russell Young...

...Edwin M. Stanton (1814–1869), one of the nineteenth century's most impressive legal and political minds, wielded enormous influence and power as Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of War during most of the Civil War and under Andrew Johnson during the early years of Reconstruction. This biography offers...

...This chapter discusses how Attorney General Edwin M. Stanton went to Holt's New Jersey Avenue home near midnight on December 31, 1860 to urge him to accept the position of secretary of war, at least on an interim basis, and to “impress upon him the grave nature of the exigency, and the need...

...This chapter provides an outline of Edwin M. Stanton's early life. Stanton was the grandson of Thomas Norman, who lived just a short distance from Zimmerman's Tavern in Culpeper County, Virginia. Martha Wale, a widow who ran the tavern, suspected that Stanton shared his ancestor's obstinacy...

...This chapter focuses on Edwin M. Stanton's personal life, career, and involvement in politics. Stanton corresponded with Mary Lamson as often as his office schedule and study permitted. Just as Stanton finished his legal education at Kenyon College, President Andrew Jackson was preoccupied with his...

...This chapter examines Edwin M. Stanton's travails as a lawyer and his political fortunes as a Democrat. The presidential campaign of 1844 proved as tumultuous as any since the rise of Andrew Jackson. Texas loomed so large that it virtually decided the race, dooming both the presumptive Democratic...

...This chapter examines the problems that beset the Lincoln administration at the height of the Civil War. Edwin M. Stanton chose the man who would help him smash the coterie of Major General George B. McClellan: Joseph Holt, who would assume the post of judge advocate general. Because of their close...

...This chapter examines Edwin M. Stanton's role as secretary of the War Department in the exchange of prisoners between the Union and the Confederacy during the Civil War. Stanton received a telegram from Charles Dana disparaging Alexander M. McCook. He gave the letter to President Abraham Lincoln...

...This chapter examines Edwin M. Stanton's role in the investigation of those responsible for the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865 as the Civil War continued to rage. As Lincoln's second term was approaching, there was intense speculation over which cabinet officers he would retain...

...This chapter examines President Andrew Johnson's controversial attempt to remove Edwin M. Stanton as secretary of the War Department. Even as he declined Johnson's request to resign, Stanton must have known the president would take further steps to push him out of office. On August 12, 1867, when...

...This chapter examines Edwin M. Stanton's politics and legal practice. It begins by considering Henry Clay's Senate compromise measure for California's admission to the Union; his solution consisted of admitting free California and abolishing the slave trade in the national capital to satisfy...

...This chapter examines Edwin M. Stanton's metamorphosis after he was appointed secretary of war by President Abraham Lincoln. Stanton succeeded Simon Cameron as the War Department's top honcho after the latter resigned in the wake of complaints about his incompetence and cronyism. Having heard...

...This chapter examines Edwin M. Stanton's appointment of his friends and relatives at the War Department. When Stanton presented the cabinet with his preliminary report on the army, on March 11, 1862, his estimate of the number of men under arms came as a shock. His war board had calculated 672,878...