Edwin Stanton was born in Steubenville, Ohio, on 19th December, 1814. After attending Kenyon College he was admitted to the bar in 1836. He worked in Pittsburgh for nine years before moving to Washington he built a large practice in the federal courts. A member of the Democratic Party, he was appointed attorney general by President James Buchanan in December 1860. He lost office when President Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1861. Stanton returned to power when he agreed to work as a legal adviser to Simon Cameron, the Secretary of War. This job became more important on the outbreak of the American Civil War. In January, 1862, Stanton helped Simon Cameron write his yearly report. He personally wrote the section that called for freed slaves to be armed and used against the Confederate Army. President Abraham Lincoln was opposed to this policy and ordered Cameron to remove the offending passage. When he refused he was dismissed. Lincoln, who was unaware of Stantons role in the report, appointed him as his new Secretary of War. After taking office Stanton took over the management of all the telegraph lines in the United States. Stanton also censored the press and in this way kept full control over the news reaching the public. To maintain this system Stanton doubled the size of the War Department. Convinced that the war would soon be over Stanton closed down the government recruiting offices in the spring of 1862. When he realised his mistake he advocated the recruitment of black soldiers. Stanton was privately highly critical of the government and once told a friend that he could find no token of any intelligent understanding of Lincoln, or the crew that govern him. However, Stanton and Abraham Lincoln worked well together during the war. During the summer of 1863 an agreement under which Union and Confederate captives were exchanged, came to an end. Stanton and Ulysses S. Grant decided that the Confederate Army had more difficulty in replacing men than the Union Army. This included the decision not to take 30,000 soldiers from Andersonville. When Stanton heard about the high death-rate in Andersonville he decided to reduce the rations of captured soldiers by 20 per cent. In 1863 Stanton recruited Lafayette Baker as his replacement for Allan Pinkerton, head of the Union Intelligence Service. Baker was given the job as head of the National Detective Police (NDP), an undercover, anti-subversive, spy organization. One of his successes was the capture of the Confederate spy, Belle Boyd. Later Baker was accused of conducting a brutal interrogation and despite the inhuman treatment Boyd refused to confess and she was released in 1863. Baker was also suspected of being guilty of corruption. He went after people making profits from illegal business activities. It was claimed he arrested and jailed those who refused to share their illegal gains with him. Baker was eventually caught tapping telegraph lines between Nashville and Stantons office. Baker was demoted and sent to New York and placed under the control of Charles Dan, the Assistant Secretary of War. As the organizer of internal security, Edwin M. Stanton was blamed for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln on 14th April 1865. Stanton immediately summoned Lafayette Baker, head of the National Detective Police (NDP) to Washington with the telegraphic appeal: Come here immediately and see if you can find the murderer of the President. Baker arrived on 16th April and his first act was to send his agents into Maryland to pick up what information they could about the people involved in the assassination. Within two days Baker had arrested Mary Surratt, Lewis Paine, George Atzerodt and Edman Spangler. He also had the names of the fellow conspirators, John Wilkes Booth and David Herold. When Bakers agents discovered had crossed the Potomac near Mathias Point on 22nd April, he sent Lieutenant Edward P. Doherty and twenty-five men from the Sixteenth New York Cavalry to capture them. On 26th April, Doherty and his men caught up with John Wilkes Booth and David Herold on a farm owned by Richard Garrett. Doherty ordered the men to surrender. Herold came out of the barn but Booth refused and so the barn was set on fire. While this was happening one of the soldiers, Sergeant Boston Corbett, found a large crack in the barn and was able to shoot Booth in the back. His body was dragged from the barn and after being searched the soldiers recovered his leather bound diary. The bullet had punctured his spinal cord and he died in great agony two hours later. Booths diary was handed to Baker who later passed it onto Stanton. Baker was rewarded for his success by being promoted to brigadier general and receiving a substantial portion of the $100,000 reward. On 1st May, 1865, President Andrew Johnson ordered the formation of a nine-man military commission to try the conspirators involved in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. It was argued by Stanton, that the men should be tried by a military court as Lincoln had been Commander in Chief of the army. Several members of the cabinet, including Gideon Welles (Secretary of the Navy), Edward Bates (Attorney General), Orville H. Browning (Secretary of the Interior), and Henry McCulloch (Secretary of the Treasury), disapproved, preferring a civil trial. However, James Speed, the Attorney General, agreed with Stanton and therefore the defendants did not enjoy the advantages of a jury trial. The trial began on 10th May, 1865. The military commission included leading generals such as David Hunter, Lewis Wallace, Thomas Harris and Alvin Howe and Joseph Holt was the governments chief prosecutor. Mary Surratt, Lewis Paine, George Atzerodt, David Herold, Samuel Mudd, Michael OLaughlin, Edman Spangler and Samuel Arnold were all charged with conspiring to murder Lincoln. During the trial Holt attempted to persuade the military commission that Jefferson Davis and the Confederate government had been involved in conspiracy. Joseph Holt attempted to obscure the fact that there were two plots: the first to kidnap and the second to assassinate. It was important for the prosecution not to reveal the existence of a diary taken from the body of John Wilkes Booth. The diary made it clear that the assassination plan dated from 14th April. The defence surprisingly did not call for Booths diary to be produced in court. On 29th June, 1865 Mary Surratt, Lewis Paine, George Atzerodt, David Herold, Samuel Mudd, Michael OLaughlin, Edman Spangler and Samuel Arnold were found guilty of being involved in the conspiracy to murder Abraham Lincoln. Surratt, Paine, Atzerot and Herold were hanged at Washington Penitentiary on 7th July, 1865. Surratt, who was expected to be reprieved, was the first woman in American history to be executed. In January, 1867, Lafayette Baker published his book, History of the Secret Service. In the book Baker described his role in the capture of the conspirators. He also revealled that a dairy had been taken from John Wilkes Booth when he had been shot. This information about Booths diary resulted in Baker being called before a Congress committee looking into the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Stanton was forced to hand over Booths diary. When shown the diary by the committee, Baker claimed that someone had cut out eighteen leaves When called before the committee, Stanton denied being the person responsible for removing the pages. This information about Booths diary resulted in Baker being called before a Congress committee looking into the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Edwin M. Stanton and the War Department was forced to hand over Booths diary. When shown the diary by the committee, Baker claimed that someone had cut out eighteen leaves When called before the committee, Stanton denied being the person responsible for removing the pages. After the war Stanton continued as Secretary of War but found it difficult to get on with the new president, Andrew Johnson. Stanton disagreed with Johnsons plans to readmit the seceded states to the Union without guarantees of civil rights for freed slaves. In March 1867 Congress passed the first of the Reconstruction Acts that provided for Negro suffrage. Johnson attempted to veto the legislation but when this failed, he managed to delay the program and undermined its ineffectiveness.
Posted on: Sat, 08 Nov 2014 23:14:52 +0000
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