Lincoln's Secretary Of War, Edwin Stanton, Book Review

Book Review
Lincoln’s Autocrat: The Life of Edwin Stanton
by William Marvel
University of North Carolina Press
611 pp., $35

[From review]
Stanton rises from obscurity, works his way through law school, marries, fathers two children, and becomes active in local politics. He truly mourns his young wife when she dies in childbirth; almost 16 years go by before he remarries, this time to a 26-year-old heiress who provides emotional and financial support on his ultimate ascent to power. With a combination of infighting, intelligence, and toadying to the prominent, Stanton becomes the lead attorney in a number of high-profile cases. Among these is an early use of the “insanity defense” to secure a not-guilty verdict for Daniel Sickles (later General Sickles) who had killed his wife’s lover. In another trial, Stanton represents the inventor of the McCormick reaper in a patent suit. He wins handily, impressing an ambitious attorney who has watched the adroit legal tactics from his seat in the courtroom. That lawyer happened to be on his own climb from obscurity to ever-higher offices.
[. . .]
When Honest Abe became the sixteenth president, he decided to talk to Stanton about joining his cabinet. He didn’t have far to look. The previous president, James Buchanan, had already appointed Stanton as his attorney general. By then Stanton had settled in Washington, and shortly after the cannons fired at Fort Sumter, Lincoln chose him to be his secretary of war. The results were a mixture of competence and repression. Stanton brought discipline and order to his department, cleaned out the hacks and scapegraces, and saw to it that federal troops were decently clothed and fed.
But he was also in favor of the suspension of habeas corpus and backed his boss in other extra-democratic moves.
[. . .]

President Ulysses S. Grant, who couldn’t abide the man, nevertheless nominated him for the Supreme Court. The Senate gave its approval by a vote of 46 to 11. But the new judge never had a chance to serve. Four days after he was confirmed, Edwin Stanton died of a coronary thrombosis, leaving his career and contradictions to the historians.

http://www.city-journal.org/2015/bc0623sk.html

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