page_title: Edwin Stanton
section_title: Lincoln assassinated
hierarchical_section_title: Edwin Stanton / Lincoln's Secretary of War (1862—1865) / Lincoln assassinated
caption_attribution_description: English: A engraving of President Abraham Lincoln on his deathbed.
context_page_description: Edwin McMasters Stanton was an American lawyer and politician who served as Secretary of War under the Lincoln Administration during most of the American Civil War. Stanton's management helped organize the massive military resources of the North and guide the Union to victory. However, he was criticized by many Union generals, who perceived him as overcautious and micromanaging. He also organized the manhunt for Abraham Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth.
  After Lincoln's assassination, Stanton remained as the Secretary of War under the new US president, Andrew Johnson, during the first years of Reconstruction. He opposed the lenient policies of Johnson towards the former Confederate States. Johnson's attempt to dismiss Stanton ultimately led to Johnson being impeached by the Radical Republicans in the House of Representatives. Stanton returned to law after he retired as Secretary of War. In 1869, he was nominated as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court by Johnson's successor, Ulysses S. Grant, but Stanton died four days after his nomination was confirmed by the Senate.
context_section_description: On April 13, Lincoln invited Stanton, Grant and their wives to join him at Ford's Theatre the next evening. Lincoln had invited Stanton to go with him to the theatre several times, invitations Stanton routinely rejected. Further, neither Stanton's nor Grant's wives would go unless the other went. The Grants used a visit to their children in New Jersey as their excuse. Finally, Lincoln decided to go to the theatre with Major Henry Rathbone and his betrothed. Stanton retired home that night after visiting a bedridden Secretary Seward. He went to bed at about 10 pm. Soon after, he heard Ellen yell from downstairs: "Mr. Seward is murdered!" Stanton rushed downstairs. Upon hearing that Lincoln, too, might be dead, Stanton grew intensely animated. He wanted to leave immediately. He was cautioned: "You mustn't go out ... As I came up to the house I saw a man behind the tree-box, but he ran away, and I did not follow him." Stanton paid little mind to the man; he found a taxi and went to Seward's home.
  At his arrival, Stanton was told that Lincoln had in fact been attacked. Stanton ordered that the homes of all members of the cabinet and the Vice President be put under guard. Stanton pushed through a crowd at the Secretary's home to find an unconscious Seward being attended to by a doctor in a bloody third-floor room. Seward's son, Frederick, was left paralyzed by the attack. Stanton and Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles, who had come to Seward's home moments before, decided to go to Ford's Theatre to see the President. The two secretaries went by carriage, accompanied by Quartermaster General Meigs and David K. Cartter, a justice of the District Court for the District of Columbia.
  Stanton found Lincoln at the Petersen House across from the theatre. Lincoln lay on a bed diagonally, because of his height. When he saw the dying President, several accounts say Stanton began to weep. However, William Marvel states in his book, Lincoln's Autocrat: The Life of Edwin Stanton that "Stanton's emotional detachment and his domineering persona made him valuable that night, as others wallowed in anguish". Thomas and Hyman also state: "Always before, death close at hand had unsettled him close to the point of imbalance. Now he seemed calm, grim, decisive, in complete outward control of himself". Andrew Johnson, about whom Stanton, and the country, knew little, was sworn in as President at 11 am on April 15, in the Kirkwood Hotel. However, Stanton, who had planned to retire at the end of the war, "was indeed in virtual control of the government", say Thomas and Hyman. "He had charge of the Army, Johnson was barely sworn in and vastly unsure of himself, and Congress was not in session."
  Stanton ordered testimony taken from those who saw the attack. Witnesses blamed actor John Wilkes Booth for the assassination. Stanton put all soldiers in Washington on guard, and ordered a lockdown of the city. Rail traffic to the south was to be halted, and fishing boats on the Potomac were not to come ashore. Stanton also called Grant back to the capital from New Jersey.
  On April 15, Washington was, as journalist George A. Townsend said, "full of Detective Police". At Stanton's request, the New York Police Department joined the War Department's detectives' tireless search for Booth and any accomplices. Stanton had the lower deck of the monitor USS Montauk, which was placed near the Washington Navy Yard, host several of the conspirators, Lewis Powell, Michael O'Laughlen, Edmund Spangler, and George Atzerodt. The other plotters, except Booth and Mary Surratt, were confined aboard the USS Saugus. The prisoners on both boats were bound by ball and chain, with handcuffs attached to an iron rod. Stanton also ordered a bag placed over the captives' heads, with a hole in it to allow for eating and breathing. Surratt was kept at Old Capitol Prison, where she had been since her arrest. Booth, the remaining culprit, had been shot at a barn in Virginia, and died soon after. Booth's body was put aboard the Montauk. After an autopsy was performed, and Booth's identity con
caption: Abraham Lincoln lay on his deathbed at the Petersen House in Washington, surrounded by family, friends and government officials.
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