Stanton's Treason
While visiting my parents at Christmas, I began reading Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book on Abraham Lincoln’s political genius, and especially on his ability to unify political rivals, whose talents he desperately needed, into a working cabinet. I checked it out from the library today, in hopes of finishing. As much as the book has to say about Lincoln, the single tale that most stuck with me is the introduction to Edwin M. Stanton, later to be Secretary of War under Lincoln, but then newly appointed Attorney General under Buchanan.
Lincoln had been elected, and southern states were breaking away. From his position in the cabinet, Stanton learned that officers with southern sympathies were diverting arms to the south, and deploying (presumably loyalist) soldiers to innocuous locations. He became convinced of a plot to seize Washington, D.C. should Maryland and Virginia secede, and especially of a plot to assassinate Lincoln before the inauguration. Stanton was at his wits’ end over Buchanan, who could not be made to credit any such fears.
Goodwin continues:
At this juncture, his co-biographers report, Stanton "came to a momentous decision: he decided to throw party fealty and cabinet secrecy to the winds and to work behind the President’s back." With the White House paralyzed and the Democratic Party at loggerheads, he determined that "Congress and its Republican leaders were the last hope for a strong policy, the last place for him to turn." Stanton knew that becoming and informer violated his oath of office, but concluded that his oat to support the Constitution was paramount.”
Stanton began feeding vital information to the incoming cabinet, including then Senator Seward, Congressman Henry Dawes, and Lincoln himself, across party lines—information that would qualify as “top secret,” had that designation existed at the time. And this despite his distrust of Republicans generally, and a low opinion of Lincoln specifically.
That is amazing stuff!
And I really don’t know how to take it. Was he a hero, doing what had to be done? The secrets he betrayed certainly were vital, not just to the future government, but to the nation itself. A decision like that, taken at great personal risk at virtually no personal gain, takes incredible nerve. Doing so to give all possible aid to his political rivals, just because they needed to know, proves Lincoln did not have a monopoly on willingness to place the needs of the nation first.
On the other hand, Stanton knowingly and flagrantly betrayed his office in a volatile moment, when lots of people were reaching similarly extreme decisions with similar conviction towards very different ends, and steady thinking was in short supply. This is, after all, the same guy who barricaded himself in his office when later President Andrew Johnson attempted to remove him from office. Stanton might have been less the clear-headed champion seizing the moment than dangerous maverick who happened to guess right. Maybe both.
One thing I am sure of: the first heady days of secession were a crazy time, bad crazy. I’m glad to be well out of it.