Lincoln’s War Minister: A Real Life Horror Story Posted on January 23, 2011 by jgr In December, 1845, Edgar Allan Poe published a short story entitled “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar.” It described a hypnotist’s attempt to forestall a dying man’s impending death. A short time later, a young lawyer in Ohio began experimenting with hypnotism, ostensibly to make a point in a criminal case. He proved so adept that he once put a subject into a trance so deep that he nearly was unable to bring him back. Later, that same lawyer, again ostensibly to prove a legal point, himself took a deadly poison and was revived only by the timely administration of the poison’s antidote. That lawyer would eventually serve throughout the Civil War as Lincoln’s Secretary of War, acquiring near-dictatorial powers during the conflict and coming breath-takingly close to dictator status upon Lincoln’s death. His name was Edwin McMasters Stanton and he is one of the great unknown figures in American history. Who was this man, one not only consumed with a lust for power but also possessed of an overwhelming affinity for death? The events of Stanton’s life read like episodes of a horror novel that might have been written by Poe or Lovecraft. As a young man, Stanton, newly betrothed to a girl in Ohio, left town for a few days. Upon his return, he learned to his shock that the girl had suddenly taken sick, had died and been buried in the town cemetery. Unwilling to accept her death, Stanton stole to the cemetery at night with two friends and dug up the coffin, only to find his fiancee dead as reported. Later, Stanton married, and his wife bore a daughter, Lucy. When the child died, Stanton would not allow her to remain in the ground for long. He soon had her remains exhumed and placed in a metal box which he kept by his bedside for more than a year, though friends worried about disease. The next year, upon his wife’s death, Stanton had the mortician outfit her in her wedding dress, insisting that she be made to appear just as she did when they were married. He then proceeded to sleep with her body for a time before burying her at last–along with Lucy for a second time. Stanton’s brother, Dr. Darwin Stanton, went mad shortly thereafter and cut his own throat, the blood reportedly spurting as far as the ceiling. Edwin became unhinged at the sight and fled into the woods in a fit of hysteria. Friends feared a second suicide before he was located and reason was finally restored. In spite of all these manifestations of incipient madness, Stanton served the Lincoln administration throughout as Secretary of War. It was he, not Lincoln, who was the de facto commander in chief over the Union armies, and he who was responsible in large part for the wholesale erosion of liberties, North and South, during the war, not to mention the deaths of 600,000 of his countrymen. It was the trial of the so-called Lincoln conspirators that eventually led to Stanton’s final horror, however. In particular, he was undone by the injustice done to Mary Surratt, the first woman ever hanged by the U.S. government. Mrs. Surratt, who owned the boarding house where Booth had occasionally met with the other conspirators, had at most an ancillary involvement in the plot (her son John, who clearly was more involved than she was, was eventually acquitted when brought to trial a few years later in less hysterical times). Yet Stanton was adamant for her death, and so she died, on the gallows, on July 7, 1865. A struggle ensued with President Johnson, who had survived the plot that had also called for his own death, a struggle that Stanton narrowly lost in a Senate impeachment trial. Thereafter, Stanton’s fortunes rapidly waned. He died on December 24, 1869. As to the cause of his death, his few biographers and most historians stick to the official line that Stanton, shortly after a surprise appointment to the Supreme Court by a pitying Grant, succumbed to chronic asthma. Yet, a number of sources at the time and later, tell a different story. Here is a newspaper article, published in the Ohio Democrat shortly after Stanton’s death, that tells that version of the tale: God is just! Edwin M. Stanton committed suicide and died by his own hand rather than longer endure the torture which was his to bear from the execution of Mary E. Surratt till the time of his wretched death. The once robust man went to his own death, and though the particulars of his demise are as yet not fully public, enough is known to prove that in a fit of terror, when he trembled like a leaf shaken by the storm at the ghost of the murdered woman, who stood before his vision, he cut his throat, and died to escape his great dread. For years he has lived the life of a conscience-stricken wretch. We personally know that he has told a gentleman in this city–a gentleman high in judicial position, with whom he formerly affiliated politically, and who is known as the soul of truth and honor, that since the murder of Mrs. Surratt he, Stanton, had not known one hour of peace. Said he, when speaking of the matter: “Judge, it is terrible! That woman was murdered to appease the wrath of a party! And I was the coward that struck the blow for those who demanded this wrong. But I have suffered–O! God! how I have suffered–how I do suffer. Every hour of the day I see her and her innocent face. Every night I see her on the scaffold–swinging in air–bound–struggling–dying! “Every night of my life I stand face to face with her–I hear her daughter’s prayers for justice–I see her in her coffin–I see the Court which sentenced her dancing like devils in hell and saying to me–”You! You! You did it! You, Edwin M. Stanton–Edwin Murderer Stanton, compelled us to murder your victim, and we will murder you!” Those who knew him from the murder of Mrs. Surratt till the day of his death know how he suffered. He would waken from sleep and cry out like a child for some one to– . “Take her–O! Take her away!” He would sit upright in bed–his very hair on end–his face pale as death itself, and tremble till the great livid drops of sweat would trickle down his cheeks. Then he would moan and call for drink–walk the floor, and at last find relief under influence of opiates, only to start in horror again. His brilliant talents died out. His ambition weakened. His nerves seemed to rot. His soul cried for relief even in hell. At last, by his own hand, to escape the horrid vision of a woman murdered by a tyrant, he cut his own throat, and so passed from earth to the bar of God, the cowardly soul of the tyrant and tool of tyrants, Edwin Murderer Stanton! Who says God is not just? Look at the record of those Republicans, who have died raving maniacs, by suicide or violent death, and tell us if you dare that the Power which has protected us in denouncing tyranny has not punished many and will not punish more of those in the name of liberty, loyalty, and justice, have robbed, murdered, destroyed, and outraged laws, states, people, and even common humanity. And vengeance is not yet satisfied. Let the ones who have met violent death as a reward for their crimes against a country and a people, as they are ushered to their blood-stained doom say — “Coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more!” — N.Y. Democrat The Ohio Democrat, New Philadelphia, Ohio, February 11, 1870 Thus is the story of the deranged lunatic who “saved the union,” of whom all Americans are expected to be proud. This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. ← H.P. Lovecraft on Writing Weird FictionThanksgiving 2022 →Share on Facebook One Response to Lincoln’s War Minister: A Real Life Horror Story Joan Hough says: December 28, 2013 at 11:04 pm It is heartening to read something other than the typical Marxist-Republican high to the heavens praise routinely given to every scoundrel involved in the alteration of our United States from a REPUBLIC into the Democracy so ardently if cruelly sought by the 1848er (the Marxists) and their political sycophants. To really learn the actual truth about this highly disturbed individual, read ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S EXECUTION by John Chandler Griffin. Stanton’s financial support of the mass murderer JOHN BROWN was no secret in D.C. His overwhelming desire to take Lincoln’s place in the White House collided with that of the Vice President Andrew Johnson’s. When Lincoln asked for particular brave soldier guard during the planned evening at the theatre, Stanton refused and provided a neer do well who mysteriously forgot duty and had a beer while the President was being EXECUTED. Interestingly somehow General Grant and his lady were discouraged from fulfilling the President’s invitation to the theatre. Odd indeed, if one is aware that in the military world one’s superior ‘s mere wish is a command and is followed–even the invitations presented an underlings wife by the commander’s cannot be refused. STanton was responsible for the U.S. Senate ordering all U.S. prisons to torture Confederate prisoners–even little 14 year old boys held there. Stanton was an evil man. His efforts to pin Lincoln’s death on President Jeff Davis– and his efforts to have Davis’ murdered– and then to have the old man tortured for two long years–giving Davis no trial by jury- was just one of his crimes. His suicide in no way atoned for the hideous acts he authorized–including the murder of the young Captain Wirz in charge at Andersonville Prison. He arranged death via a kangaroo trial complete with lying witnesses–one in particular claiming deliberate murders by the Captain of people nobody could name and on dates when the Captain was on sick leave and not even in the prison. If the real truth were ever promulgated the populace would know that the South is owed a great excuse by the U.S. government. White Southerners, descendants of Confederates are owed even more compensation that are those descendants of black slaves, although blacks were murdered almost enmasse by the Union soldiers., the whites were gifted with Genocide and a Holocaust by the Stanton-Lincoln Marxist controlled government determined to redistribute the wealth as demanded in the Communist Manifesto, eliminate Christianity, and through public education control the minds of future Southern generations- and then northern ones. Their goals were clearly delineated as “ten commandments” in the Marx and Engels “bible.” Marx, we should all remember, wrote about eight or so years for Americans most widely read newspaper, the New York Tribune owned by Lincoln’s good friends Horace Greeley and Charles Dana. Dana became the U.S. Assistant Secretary of War and was the only openly obvious Communist in Lincoln’s government.
Posted on: Mon, 04 Aug 2014 20:44:31 +0000
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