Edwin Stanton Quotes

We are now parents. The love for our offspring has opened up fresh fountains of love for each other. Edwin Stanton to his wife.

became postmaster general, and Edwin M. Stanton, Lincoln’s “Mars,” eventually became secretary

There’s an interesting story about Abraham Lincoln. During the American Civil War he signed an order transferring certain regiments, but Secretary of War Edwin Stanton refused to execute it, calling the president a fool. When Lincoln heard he replied, ‘If Stanton said I’m a fool then I must be, for he’s nearly always right, and he says what he thinks. I’ll step over and see for myself.’ He did, and when Stanton convinced him the order was in error, Lincoln quietly withdrew it. Part of Lincoln’s greatness lay in his ability to rise above pettiness, ego, and sensitivity to other people’s opinions. He wasn’t easily offended. He welcomed criticism, and in doing so demonstrated one of the strengths of a truly great person: humility. So, have you been criticised? Make it a time to learn, not lose.

Lincoln’s liberal use of his pardoning power created the greatest tension between the two men (Lincoln and Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War). Stanton felt compelled to protect military discipline by exacting proper punishment for desertions or derelictions of duty, while Lincoln looked for any “good excuse for saving a man’s life.” When he found one, he said, “I go to bed happy as I think how joyous the signing of my name will make him and his family and his friends.” Stanton would not allow himself such leniency. A clerk recalled finding Stanton one night in his office, “the mother, wife, and children of a soldier who had been condemned to be shot as a deserter, on their knees before him pleading for the life of their loved one. He listened standing, in cold and austere silence, and at the end of their heart-breaking sobs and prayers answered briefly that the man must die. The crushed and despairing little family left and Mr. Stanton turned, apparently unmoved, and walked into his private room.” The clerk thought Stanton an unfeeling tyrant, until he discovered him moments later, “leaning over a desk, his face buried in his hands and his heavy frame shaking with sobs. ‘God help me to do my duty; God help me to do my duty!’ he was repeating in a low wail of anguish.” On such occasions, when Stanton felt he could not afford to set a precedent, he must have been secretly relieved that the president had the ultimate authority.

The advance of a political general to corps command was disturbing enough to the old guard without the additional fact that Dan Sickles was, in a word, notorious. In 1859, in broad daylight a block from the White House in Washington, Sickles had shot down and killed his wife’s lover. Worse, the lover was Philip Barton Key, son of the author of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Sickles’s trial was the most sensational of its day. After lurid testimony he was acquitted by reason of temporary insanity, a pioneering defense that one of his attorneys, Edwin M. Stanton, helped construct. Sickles then proceeded to compound his notoriety by taking Mrs. Sickles back to his bed and board. There were those in the officer corps who shuddered at the prospect of Joe Hooker, Dan Butterfield, and Dan Sickles at the same headquarters.

This guy is the spitting image of Lincoln," Giordino remarked conversationally. "That IS Abraham Lincoln," came Perlmutter's subdued voice from the doorway. He slowly sank to the deck, his back against the bulkhead, like a whale settling to the seabed. His eyes were locked on the corpse in the rocking chair as if hypnotically fixed. Pitt stared at Perlmutter with concern and obvious skepticism. "For a renowned historian, you've taken a wrong turn, haven't you?" Giordino knelt beside Perlmutter and offered him a drink from a water bottle. "The heat must be getting to you, big buddy." Perlmutter waved away the water. "God oh God, I couldn't bring myself to believe it. But Lincoln's Secretary of War, Edwin McMasters Stanton, DID reveal the truth in his secret papers." "What truth?" asked Pitt, curious. He hesitated, and then his voice came almost in a whisper. "Lincoln was not shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre. That is him sitting in that rocking chair.

Edwin Stanton made a point of shutting off inquiry into the Kilpatrick-Dahlgren affair. At war’s end he called on Francis Lieber, keeper of the captured Confederate archives, for the papers found on Dahlgren’s body. On December 1, 1865, these papers were delivered to Stanton at the War Department . . . and never seen again.

A man of fifty is responsible for his face.