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Many Americans can picture the “devoted patriot” Edwin Stanton, close to Lincoln’s bedside as the president lay dying.  After Lincoln breathed his last, a stoic Stanton reportedly said, “Now he belongs to the ages.”

Historian William Marvel has written Lincoln’s Autocrat:  The Life of Edwin W. Stanton (Civil War America series, University of North Carolina Press).  This engaging, well-documented book tells how Stanton, an able lawyer, came to serve Presidents James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, and Andrew Johnson.

This book reveals Stanton’s duplicitous, self-serving character.  The author describes Stanton’s “deep insecurity,” a condition suggested by his “sycophancy, double-dealing, and self-congratulatory storytelling.”

Sources

Marvel preferred to use “the most contemporary primary sources – diaries, letters, official documents, and newspaper observations from the period in question.”  He explains:  “All those sources suffer from personal and political prejudices, but those are usually easier biases to detect than those absorbed unconsciously, over the passage of decades.”

The author does a good job of setting events in context, while maintaining the thread of a story.  I was fascinated to learn about Stanton’s role in suppressing and violating civil liberties in the North during the Civil War.

The power to arrest and imprison

After Fort Sumter, Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus in the North.  This meant that federal authorities could arrest and imprison civilians, without any charges.

Secretary of State William H. Seward was, at first, in charge of arresting civilians.  Secretary of War Stanton assumed this authority in early 1862.

Lincoln signed into law the first draft in U.S. history on July 17, 1862.  Marvel describes what happened less than a month later:

Stanton quickly … nullified much of the Bill of Rights.  Citing no authority but his own, on August 8 he ‘authorized and directed’ all U.S. marshals and chiefs of police – over whom he could claim no constitutional authority whatever – to arrest and imprison anyone who ‘may be engaged, by act, speech, or writing, in discouraging volunteer enlistments, or in any way giving aid and comfort to the enemy, or in any other disloyal practice against the United States.’

Stanton’s orders were significant, from a civil liberties perspective.  Marvel states:

In a single sentence, Stanton abolished the First Amendment, overrode the Fourth, ignored the Fifth, and eviscerated the Sixth.  He essentially criminalized every citizen’s right to criticize the government.

Republican officials would quickly embrace his order as an opportunity to treat criticism of the Lincoln administration and its political supporters as a form of treason, and to punish Democrats – almost exclusively – for daring to voice disagreement.

Bringing it home to Iowa

Shortly after Stanton issued his orders, federal and state authorities arrested and imprisoned about 36 Iowans in August 1862, according to historian Hubert H. Wubben.  Arrestees included Dennis Mahony, editor of the Dubuque Herald, and David Sheward, editor of the Constitution and Union (in Fairfield, Iowa).

The arrestees were imprisoned without any formal charges and without a jury trial.  They were held in prison for as little as two months.  Mahony, “like most of his fellow prisoners,” was forced to sign a pledge that he wouldn’t sue Stanton or other officials for false arrest.

The arrests and imprisonments violated the following civil liberties:

1. Freedom of speech;
2. Freedom from criminal punishment except upon indictment and trial;
3. The right to a speedy trial by an impartial jury;
4. The right to be informed of the nature of an accusation; and
5. The right to confront contrary witnesses.

Marvel comments:

Suddenly it was impossible to utter any effective criticism of the war, or the administration, without at least the threat of arrest.

Republicans faced a backlash during state elections in October and November 1862.  Nonetheless, Marvel writes that Stanton “kept jailing critics, painting all who disagreed as traitors, and the president allowed him free rein.”

Recommendation

I have focused on only one part of Marvel’s lucid and thought-provoking book.  I highly recommend Lincoln’s Autocrat:  The Life of Edwin Stanton.

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What about you?

Have you read any books on these topics that are well-documented and have compelling arguments?  Please leave a comment!  Thank you for reading my blog.