One of the conspiracy theories frequently discussed in connection with the Civil War runs as follows: Was Secretary of War, Edwin McMasters Stanton, part of the conspiracy to assassinate President Lincoln at Ford's Theatre on the evening of April 14, 1865? This was the question that longtime member Gord Sly asked us to consider when the Civil War Round Table of Greater Kingston gathered on the evening of May 2, 2024.
It is not uncommon, Gord reminded us, for rumours to gather in the wake of the deaths of famous people. An obvious example in our own time is the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, around which speculation and conspiracy theories continue to revolve. In the case of a much beloved public figure such as Abraham Lincoln, it is to be expected that questions would be raised about his death, especially since it occurred under such dramatic circumstances and at such a critical point in the nation's history. Before I forget, let me say that Gord was kind enough to give me an advance copy of his remarks to assist me in preparing this summary of his talk.
The 2011 book by Bill O'Reilly, "Killing Lincoln", provided the stimulus for Gord's investigation into the possible role of Edwin Stanton in the Lincoln assassination. Gord found that O'Reilly was not the most accurate of popular historians, but there was enough information in his book to encourage him to dig deeper into the subject. One item Gord found was a 1986 MA thesis written by a Robert L. Crewdson, then a student at William & Mary University, entitled "Edwin M. Stanton and the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln". Crewdson's thesis included an extensive bibliography from which Gord identified another likely source, a 1939 book by Otto Eisenschiml entitled, "Why Was Lincoln Murdered?". It was Eisenschiml who hinted at Stanton's involvement in the plot against the President.
Gord then digressed a moment to remind us of the tension-filled political climate of America in the mid-19th century, "dominated by fear, insecurity, and paranoia." The Slaveholder South was seen as pitted against the Abolitionist North. The election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860 seemed to sound the death knell for slavery, despite the new President's protests to the contrary.
While Lincoln had been working to fulfill his political ambitions during the 1850s, Edwin Stanton had pursued his own career in the legal field. As with Lincoln, Stanton was self-educated in the law, and was best known for having been part of the team of lawyers who, for the first time in American jurisprudence, invoked the defence of temporary insanity to gain Congressman Dan Sickles-later commander of the III Corps, Army of the Potomac-an acquittal from the charge of having murdered his wife's lover, Philip Barton Key.
Gord described how Stanton and Lincoln first met in a courtroom in Cincinnati, Ohio, in December 1855, where Stanton quickly gave Lincoln a taste of his abrasive personality. Lincoln had arrived at court unaware that the case in question had been transferred to Stanton. "Why did you bring that damned long armed Ape here?" Stanton snarled to a colleague at the sight of Lincoln. As Gord said, it was a mark of Lincoln's humility and common sense that he was able to set aside any animosity he might have felt towards Stanton and later include him in his wartime administration.
Stanton served for a time in the office of Secretary of War, Simon Cameron, where he made his disagreement with Lincoln's policy on slavery clear by advocating the arming of escaped slaves, contrary to the President's position. Nevertheless, when Cameron's incompetence and corruption became too blatant to be ignored, Lincoln dismissed him in January 1862 and offered the post of Secretary of War to the energetic and headstrong Edwin Stanton.
As Gord noted, Stanton was an odd choice for the job. He was neither a Republican nor a Lincoln supporter. He was not a team player and could barely conceal his contempt for Lincoln and his fellow cabinet members. Supremely confident in his own abilities, Stanton had little use for the standard channels of government and often rode roughshod over his colleagues' areas of responsibility. To his credit, however, Stanton did not appear to be overly motivated by money, and he was willing to sacrifice his lucrative legal practice in order to serve in Lincoln's cabinet and help save the Union.
Those who came to know him better, soon found that Stanton's blunt, domineering manner concealed an inner man plagued by anxiety and a pervasive and paranoic fear of conspirators lurking in every dark corner. At times, Stanton's nerves betrayed him into a state of panic, such as in March of 1862 when he was convinced that the new Confederate ironclad the "Merrimac" was going to steam up the Potomac River and bombard Washington.
These personality traits, Gord suggested, could have been partly attributable to Stanton's periodic bouts with asthma, an ailment often associated with those afflicted with anxiety. Stanton was no stranger to death either, having lost not only a dear female friend but also his brother, wife and daughter by 1844. These tragedies cast him into a deep and lasting depression. Perhaps in search of retribution for his personal losses, Stanton came to relish the thought of inflicting death on others as the war progressed. He frequently spoke of his wish to capture and hang all the rebels and did not shrink from the idea of executing even Union soldiers who failed or faltered in their military duties.
Gord described how Stanton's harsh attitude towards the South and desire for vengeance against those slave holders who had split the nation in two and caused the death of thousands, was starkly at odds with Lincoln's more compassionate and conciliatory policy towards the rebels he saw as fellow Americans, and whom he hoped to restore to their former allegiance to the Union. Gord speculated that there may have been occasions when the highly-strung Stanton slipped into states of temporary insanity, during which he may have been capable of engaging in a conspiracy to eliminate the man he saw as an obstacle to the draconian fire and sword policies he strove to adopt towards the Confederacy and its leaders.
Gord then brought us to Ford's Theatre in Washington on the evening of Friday, April 14, 1865, when famous actor and ardent Southern sympathizer, John Wilkes Booth, quietly entered the theatre and made his way to the unguarded Presidential theatre box where he shot President Lincoln in the back of the head. Booth then made his escape from Ford's theatre and galloped out of the city on horseback while the body of the mortally wounded Lincoln was carried to a boarding house across the street.
If Stanton's name is remembered in popular memory today, it is for his pronouncement-"Now he belongs to the ages"-that he uttered at the moment of Lincoln's death, though Gord pointed out that this quote did not appear in print until about twenty-five years later. What is certain is that the Secretary of War now behaved in a manner that was to attract the scrutiny of later historians and fuel speculation that he was somehow involved in the plot to kill Lincoln.
Turning the boarding house into his headquarters, Stanton immediately began sending out a stream of orders to Union generals and other government officials alerting them to the situation. One person he apparently did not contact was Vice-President Andrew Johnson. Did Stanton know that Johnson was also targeted for assassination and believed he was already dead, or did he dismiss the Vice-President as just another unreliable, hard-drinking, Southern sympathizer? Stanton ordered routes out of the District of Columbia to be blocked off, yet Booth and some of his fellow conspirators managed to escape into Maryland over the Naval Yard Bridge. Did Stanton arrange this?
Also coming under close examination is the decision Stanton made in 1863 to relieve Alan Pinkerton and his detective agency from responsibility for providing Union intelligence and security and replace them with Lafayette Baker and his National Detective Agency. Baker soon proved himself to be corrupt but, rather than being fired from such a sensitive position, he was merely demoted and given another job within the War Department. Gord then described how Stanton made the surprising decision to call upon Baker to head the National Capital Police and take charge of the hunt for Booth and his gang.
Despite Stanton's orders to capture Booth alive, the actor was shot and killed on April 26th after being located hiding in a barn in the northern Virginia countryside. Although Booth did not die immediately, no attempt was made to question him, and his body was buried within hours. These circumstances have fed suspicions that Stanton had Baker ensure that any information Booth possessed about the plot to kill Lincoln went with him to his grave. Some have wondered whether Booth may even have escaped, and a rock-filled coffin buried in his place.
There is also the matter of the diary found on Booth's body when he was shot. According to Gord, Bakker dispatched the diary to Stanton, who then kept it hidden for two years. When the diary saw the light of day again in 1867, eighteen pages were missing, prompting yet more speculation that Stanton removed them because they contained incriminating information about himself.
Eventually, nine of the Lincoln assassination conspirators were captured and seven were sent to stand trial. Although the war was over, Gord described Stanton as still living in a world where spies and traitors were everywhere at hand, with himself a prize target for their fiendish plans. Rather than have the accused conspirators enjoy the legal rights and benefits of trial in a civilian court, Stanton urged President Andrew Johnson to have them dealt with by military commission instead, where they had fewer legal defenses and where verdicts were more speedily obtained.
Accordingly, on June 29, 1865 four of the prisoners, including a woman, Mary Surrat, were found guilty and sentenced to death. The executions took place on July 7th. A request for a reprieve for Mary Surrat was sent to President Johnson beforehand, but it never arrived. Was Stanton responsible? Did he fear what information Mrs. Surrat might have to disclose?
Gord referred to other reports suggesting Stanton was part of a wider conspiracy against Lincoln. These include a postwar poem published in a service magazine which, if properly deciphered, identified Stanton, radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens, Lafayette Baker, and John Wilkes Booth as members of the plot. There were also stories of Lafayette Baker having a stash of secret papers concerning the conspiracy. These have never been found, but there were rumours that Baker died a suspicious death, or perhaps faked his own death in order to assume a new identity.
Gord also told us of a claim by Jim Bishop, author of the 1955 book, "The Day Lincoln Died", that Lincoln's son, Robert Todd Lincoln, was once found burning some documents which he claimed revealed a traitor in his father's cabinet.
To wrap up his presentation, Gord indulged in some alternate history theorizing. What if Stanton was correct in 1865 by advocating a root-and-branch eradication of slavery and all of its effects in the South, and an expulsion-or worse-of all former rebels from political power and public life. Would the United States have experienced the scourge of the KKK and the Jim Crow era if the former Confederate states had been dealt with in a more severe and unforgiving manner during the postwar years? Would our good neighbour to the south be in the social and political turmoil it is in today if Edwin Stanton had been permitted to preside over Reconstruction?
Edited by Tom Brzezicki
