Stanton Page 4

  Stanton’s evident talent and capacity for work soon widened his practice and his reputation. He received frequent compliments from other lawyers and from judges for his courtroom pleadings and his legal researches. Although some of his contemporaries envied his “intuitions that made effort easy and effect startling,” his quick success came as a result of vast effort. Stanton “worked terribly,” according to a young lawyer who shared quarters with him at this time. Such application took its toll. His health suffered, and though he had become extremely religious his church attendance now fell off.

  He had good reason for this attention to his career. In addition to his own ambitions, his family continued to cause him worry. Stanton helped send his brother Darwin to Harvard University to study medicine, despite the opinion of Steubenville residents that Darwin would never be much of a doctor. In the spring of 1836 the home that Edwin had been renting for his mother and sisters in Steubenville was sold, and they were obliged to move. His mother was severely ill that summer, and Oella left school to serve as housekeeper. Stanton hurried home despite a severe illness of his own and decided to send the family to grandfather Norman’s in Virginia until he had a home in Cadiz to bring them to. He and Mary had decided to wait no longer to marry.

  Stanton arranged with Joseph Hunter, of Cadiz, a cabinetmaker and later mayor of the town, for the use of the room over his shop as a law office, for Stanton intended to set up a separate practice while maintaining a limited association with Dewey. In lieu of rent, Stanton instructed Hunter in law and took some of his meals at the Hunter home, although the latter part of this arrangement ended when he brought Mary to Cadiz.

  On the outskirts of the town Stanton found a house to suit him and his bride. Five days before his twenty-second birthday, he set out for Columbus and his wedding. He and Mary had planned to hold the ceremony in the church where they had first met, but Stanton fell ill, and it was performed in the Reverend Preston’s home on December 31, 1836. The honeymoon was a ride of 125 miles to Cadiz in a stage sleigh, which Stanton recalled as the “brightest, sweetest journey of all my life,” and then a visit at Benjamin Tappan’s home in Steubenville.

  Stanton had known Judge Tappan since boyhood. Benjamin Tappan, Jr., had been one of his schoolmates, and over the years a close relationship had developed between the judge and the fatherless boy. A few months after Edwin’s marriage, in which the Tappan family rejoiced out of fondness for him and enthusiastic liking for Mary, he and Judge Tappan formed a partnership to practice law in Steubenville, though Stanton continued to live in Cadiz and kept his association with Dewey.24

  A member of a devout New England family and one of Ohio’s early settlers, Tappan, now sixty-four, had served in the state senate, on the Ohio canal commission, and as chief judge of the circuit court of common pleas. His support of Andrew Jackson for President earned him an appointment as a federal district judge, but the Senate had refused to confirm him. The judge’s brothers, Arthur and Lewis, both clamorous abolitionists, were the chief financial supporters of the American Antislavery Society. Judge Tappan, too, disliked slavery; but he also distrusted agitators and preferred to keep silent on the subject, a practice which impressionable young Stanton later emulated.

  Soon after forming the partnership with Tappan, Stanton went to Virginia to bring his mother and sisters to Cadiz. He showed the women the sights of Washington on the way home and shared the thrill of their first ride on iron rails, in what Pamphila described as “the wonderful new cars,” from the capital to Baltimore, thence to Frederick, where they transferred to a stagecoach. Once back at Cadiz, he proudly introduced his new wife to his mother and sisters and guided them through the home that they would all share. It was more than a mile from the town, a square brick house of a story and a half. A large porch shaded the front, and there was a wide center hall separating two large rooms on either side. Dormer windows projected from the roof. There was an orchard, a grove of maples, and a pasture with a brook. Stanton discovered that he was skillful with tools; he installed a furnace, then a new contrivance, in the basement. Before setting out for his office in the mornings, he hoed and raked the garden, sometimes singing aloud.

  When he returned home in the evening, he liked to recount the day’s experiences or read aloud to the family. Oella was unable to return to school, as their mother was so often ill, and Stanton encouraged her and Pamphila to read Plutarch’s Lives and other classics, Whittier’s “The Yankee Girl,” and Bryant’s “Thanatopsis,” which he considered “the finest piece of poetry he had ever seen.”

  To Pamphila her beloved brother was always patient and forbearing under his many responsibilities. “But he was imperative where a duty was to be performed,” she wrote, “for with him, where duty and obedience were involved, he knew no dallying, no turning aside.” She remembered, too, how quick he was at repartee, and how his words sometimes cut, although she did not think he meant them to. Pamphila rejoiced at the clear indications that Edwin and Mary were very much in love. Mary made herself part of his family, and his friends were as smitten by her angelic disposition as he was. Her influence on him was immediately noticeable; he completely stopped drinking, cut down on his cigars, and established regular eating habits. Stanton later declared that his reprehensible qualities had been repressed by her presence. He was very happy.25

  Interests apart from his office and home increased in importance in Stanton’s life. He became active in the Cadiz Antislavery Society and helped edit as well as write articles for the Cadiz Sentinel. In 1837 he ran successfully on the Democratic ticket for prosecuting attorney of Harrison County. The salary was only $200 a year, but adding this to fees from his private practice, and a legacy from his grandfather who died early in 1838, Stanton was able to speculate in real estate in Washington County and Cadiz.

  His increasing professional and political stature won him a place on the county central committee of his party, and he supported the successful movement to name Tappan for United States senator. Tappan needed someone to attend to his extensive practice, and his natural choice fell on Stanton. Their ties had been drawn closer by Oella’s marriage to Tappan’s son, who was now practicing medicine in Steubenville.

  In October 1838, Stanton moved back to Steubenville, where he bought a house on Third Street a few doors north of Market, near his office. This time he and Mary set up housekeeping alone. Darwin had finished his medical training and took up residence just across the river from Steubenville, at Hollidays Cove, Virginia. The elder Mrs. Stanton and Pamphila moved there to make a home for him. In July 1839, however, Darwin married Nancy Hooker, of Brook County, Virginia, and once again his mother and Pamphila became part of Edwin and Mary’s household.

  The early months of 1840 were a time of celebration for Stanton. In February he settled his debts with Collier, receiving the grand sum of $4.18 as his share from his father’s estate, after deductions for funds advanced from the family counselor. On March 11, the Stanton’s first child was born at Columbus, where Mary had gone to stay with her sister through the winter. They named the baby Lucy Lamson Stanton.

  Stanton adored the baby, loved his wife, was advancing in the profession he wanted to practice, and was overcoming the financial problems that had beset the family for so many years. He wrote to Mary shortly before their sixth wedding anniversary and reviewed their life together in ecstatic terms. “We six years ago were but lovers,… we are now parents; … I loved you first for your beauty, the grace and loveliness of your person. I love you now for the richness and surpassing excellence of your mind. One love has not taken the place of the other, but both stand side by side.”

  In later years he looked back on this period as the happiest time of his life. Now in his middle twenties, he faced the future with confidence.26 Surmounting the handicaps of early poverty, he had achieved the profession for which he had labored so long, and had proved his proficiency in it. His marriage was successful and his family life was harmonious; he took pride in his support
of his mother and sisters and his subsidizing of his brother’s medical career. Edwin Stanton was a young man on the way up, and he was determined that nothing should stand in his way.

  1 Reminiscences concerning childhood in Edwin M. to William Stanton, ca. Dec. 25, 1865, copy owned by the estate of Benjamin P. Thomas; and Wolcott MS, 1–19. For genealogical data, see William Henry Stanton, A Book Called Our Ancestors: the Stantons (Philadelphia, 1922), 1–82. The first ancestor on Edwin’s father’s side to come to America was Robert Stanton, born in England in 1599. Benjamin was his great-grandson. Robert Stanton settled in Virginia and became a Quaker. Benjamin’s father, Henry, moved to North Carolina.

  2 For more than a century, unfriendly accounts have insisted that Edwin was born “too soon.” See, for example, Rev. Thomas Forbes to J. M. Grinnan, Jan. 12, 1931, quoting a memorandum by his grandfather, John Murray Forbes, written early in 1862 on the margins of a then popular history of the United States, in Forbes Papers, LC. The marriage certificate, located in the Jefferson County Courthouse, Steubenville, through the aid of Miss Lydia M. Miller, should put this canard to rest for all time. See also Wolcott MS, 25–7.

  3 Wolcott MS, 27; letter of Dr. John Andrews in Columbus (Ohio) Morning Journal, May 24, 1866; Frederick C. Waite, “The Professional Education of Pioneer Ohio Physicians,” OSAHQ, XLVIII, 189–97.

  4 David to Benjamin Stanton, April 28, 1821, owned by William Stanton Picher; Henry Wilson to William Lloyd Garrison, Feb. 11, 1864, Anti-Slavery Papers, BPL; Wilson, “Jeremiah S. Black and Edwin M. Stanton,” AM, XXVI, 469–70; Francis P. Weisenburger, The Passing of the Frontier, 1825–1850 (Columbus, 1941), 209.

  5 Wolcott MS, 29–30; reminiscence of A. D. Sharon, Washington Evening Star. March 16, 1900; William Cooper Howells, Recollections of Life in Ohio from 1813 to 1840 (Cincinnati, 1895), 42. Three other Stanton children died before 1825; see Stanton, op. cit., 568.

  6 Bennett’s memorandum in Schuckers Papers, LC; Pamphila’s and other recollections in Wolcott MS, 1–27. Other data in District of Columbia, Supreme Court, Eulogies on the Death of Hon. Edwin M. Stanton (Washington, 1870), 9 (henceforth cited as Supreme Court, Eulogies); Gorham, Stanton, I, 9–10; Flower, Stanton, 23; Edward T. Heald, Bazaleel Wells: Founder of Canton and Steubenville, Ohio (Canton, 1948), 182, and Henry Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio (Cincinnati, 1904), II, 265–6.

  7 Alan James Glasser, Personality Attributes Related to Bronchial Asthma in the Adult Male (Ph.D. thesis, Boston University, 1953); J. W. L. Doust and D. Leigh, “Studies on the Physiology of Awareness: the Interrelationships of Emotions, Life Situations, and Anoxia in Patients with Bronchial Asthma,” Psychosomatic Medicine, XV, 302.

  8 Howells, op. cit., 45–6, 73–5, 84–5; recollection of Rev. John Lloyd to Stanton, April 10, 1865, Stanton MSS, LC (hereafter this collection will be identified as Stanton MSS); Steubenville Republican Ledger, April 9, 1828, on Mrs. Stanton’s store.

  9 Sharon in Washington Evening Star, March 16, 1900; Reid, “People of Distinction I have met,” ms, owned by Alexandra Sanford. See also Howe, op. cit., I, 972, II, 262; Heald, op. cit., 181–2; Supreme Court, Eulogies, 7; Flower, Stanton, 23; J. H. Hunter, “The Pathfinders of Jefferson County,” OAHS Publications, VI (1898), 249; Harold E. Davis, “Economic Basis of Ohio Politics, 1820–1840,” OSAHQ, XLVII, 296–7; William T. Utter, The Frontier State, 1803–1825 (Columbus, 1941), 166, 245.

  10 Account with Collier owned by Gideon Townsend Stanton; Walter G. Shotwell, Driftwood: Being Papers on Old-Time American Towns and Some Old People (London, 1927), 70.

  11 Ms “Autobiography of Henry Winter Davis,” 27–8, MdHS; Flower, Stanton, 27; Gordon Keith Chalmers, The College in the Forest, 1824 (New York, 1948), 21; William B. Bodine, The Kenyon Book (Gambier, 1891), 44, 206, 219–21, 234–5, 317; Rev. C. W. Leffingwell, “Bishop Chase and Jubilee College,” ISHS Transactions (1905), 87.

  12 George F. Smythe, Kenyon College, Its First Century (New Haven, 1924), 79, 86, 113n., 171; Wyman W. Parker, “Edwin M. Stanton at Kenyon,” OSAHQ, LX, 237–8; Heman Dyer, Records of an Active Life (New York, 1886), 55–62; John James Piatt, Pencilled Fly-Leaves (Cincinnati, 1880), 169–98.

  13 Parker, “Edwin M. Stanton at Kenyon,” loc. cit., 235, 238, 243–5; Wolcott MS, 40; Dyer, op. cit., 71–3.

  14 Philomathesian Minute Book, Kenyon College Library; Parker, “Edwin M. Stanton at Kenyon,” loc. cit., 239–42; Smythe, op. cit., 323–4; Wendell P. and Francis J. Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805–1879 (New York, 1885–9), IV, 152; Gorham, Stanton, I, 16; Willard L. King, Lincoln’s Manager, David Davis (Cambridge, 1960), 10–14 (hereafter cited as King, Davis).

  15 Parker, “Edwin M. Stanton at Kenyon,” loc. cit., 242, 245–7; Wolcott MS, 36, 41–4; Bodine, op. cit., 288–9.

  16 Stanton to McClintock, June 5, 1834, CHS; McClintock to E. L. Stanton, Dec. 5, 1869, Stanton MSS; Bodine, op. cit., 286; The Kenyon Collegian, XXXII, is devoted to Stanton’s continuing support of the college, which granted him an LL.D. in 1866.

  17 Parker, “Edwin M. Stanton at Kenyon,” loc. cit., 245, 247–8; ms account with D. L. Collier, owned by Gideon Townsend Stanton; Jonathan Forman, “The First Cholera Epidemic in Columbus, Ohio (1833),” Annals of Medical History, n.s., VI, 413–5; Weisenburger, op. cit., 21–4.

  18 W. Pinckney to Edwin L. Stanton, ca. Jan. 1870, Stanton MSS; Parker, “Edwin M. Stanton at Kenyon,” loc. cit., 250; Wolcott MS, 46, 112–3; Forman, “First Cholera Epidemic …,” loc. cit., 419–20; Flower, Stanton, 30.

  19 Parker, “Edwin M. Stanton at Kenyon,” loc. cit., 249–52; Wolcott MS, 40–3, 46–7, 112–13.

  20 To McClintock, June 5, 1834, CHS; Wolcott MS, 47, 53–4; Parker, “Edwin M. Stanton at Kenyon,” loc. cit., 249, 251–2.

  21 Wolcott MS, 51; Wilson, “Jeremiah S. Black and Edwin M. Stanton,” loc. cit., 469; Benjamin P. Thomas, Theodore Weld: Crusader for Freedom (New Brunswick, N. J., 1950), 70–121; F. Fowler to Weld, Feb. 19, 1887, Weld MSS, WLCL.

  22 Wolcott MS, 103–5, 108–9; Flower, Stanton, 31; Shotwell, op. cit., 72.

  23 Wolcott MS, 55; Shotwell, op. cit., 72–7; Howe, op. cit., I, 896, 976, II, 177.

  24 Wolcott MS, 52–5, 105–6; John L. Miner to Stanton, Nov. 18, 1835, Benjamin Tappan, Sr., to Jr., Dec. 28, 1836, March 8, 1837, Tappan, Jr., to Stanton, Feb. 26, 1837, Tappan Papers, LC; Flower, Stanton, 32; Dard Hunter, My Life with Paper: An Autobiography (New York, 1958), 16; Parker, “Edwin M. Stanton at Kenyon,” loc. cit., 242–3; Hunter, “Pathfinders of Jefferson County,” loc. cit., 219; Howe, op. cit., I, 972, II, 265; Steubenville American Union, May 31, 1837; T. B. Thorpe, “Edwin M. Stanton,” Harper’s, XLV, 375.

  25 Stanton to Salmon P. Chase, Dec. 2, 1847, Chase Papers, HSP; Wolcott MS, 60–70, 119–20; Weisenburger, op. cit., 218, 279–80; James Thompson to Stanton, Nov. 23, 1838, Tappan Papers, LC.

  26 Stanton to Benjamin Tappan, Sr., July 24, 1837, Tappan Papers, LC; Wolcott MS, 71–3; Steubenville American Union, June 26, 1838; Stanton to Mary, ca. Dec. 1842, owned by Edward S. Corwin; same to William Stanton, March 13, 1859, owned by William Stanton Picher; ms account with Collier, owned by Gideon Townsend Stanton; Thomas Norman will, Culpeper County Will Book O, 1836–9, VSL.

  CHAPTER II

  JAGKSONIAN REFORMER

  IN HIS partnership with Tappan, Stanton was allied with a man of keen legal judgment and potent influence. The young lawyer plunged into greater activity in Democratic politics. It was the height of the Age of Jackson, and the doughty old President’s attack on the Bank of the United States was being carried forward under his successor in the White House, Martin Van Buren. Wages, working hours, corporation charters, the tariff, taxes, and qualifications for voting were coming under scrutiny as the Jacksonians assailed all forms of special privileges.1

  Ohio Democrats centered their assault on privilege on the private banks, chartered by the state legislature, and their control of credit and the currency. The radical Democrats insisted that these banks had recklessly issued pape
r money, causing a ruinous inflation that resulted in the panic of 1837 and the hard times that followed it. They heartily applauded President Van Buren’s establishment of an “independent Treasury” in which government funds formerly entrusted to state banks were now deposited, and insisted that the Ohio legislature curtail the financial and political power of the state banks.

  Many conservative Democrats, on the other hand, advocated caution, and wanted merely to regulate the amount of notes a bank might issue. The bank question created such factional bitterness within Democratic ranks that Stanton predicted in 1839: “If the Whigs had a thimble full of sense or honesty they would carry this state next fall. And as matters stand now it is by no means certain that Ohio will not be lost to Mr. Van Buren.”

  Under Ohio law, each bank in the state had been chartered by a special act of incorporation passed by the state legislature. This practice led to confusion in banking standards, as well as corruption in granting charters, and caused the banks to regard their corporation charters as contracts enforceable in the courts and beyond the power of lawmakers to modify. A major purpose of the radical Democrats was to enact a general banking law which would, it was hoped, break the corrupt favoritism practiced at Columbus, so that any bank which could qualify might be incorporated.

  The rift within the Democratic party made it impossible to enact such a sweeping law, but in February 1839 a compromise measure passed providing for strict limitation of note issues and for closing any banks which failed to redeem its notes in specie on demand. Ohio Whigs interpreted the bank law as a radical attack on property in general and planned to make the state election of 1839 a referendum on Democratic policy. The Whigs knew, however, that most Ohioans retained their frontier prejudices against banks and bankers, and that their sole hope of victory lay in Democratic disunity, against which Tappan and Stanton fought vigorously and successfully.