Walter Stahr's Stanton

[RJNorton]

For folks wishing to read about Stanton and the rest of the Cabinet (without reading individual biographies of each one) I would recommend Lincoln's War Cabinet by Burton J. Hendrick. The book was published in 1946.

Does the book include some "peculiar"" information about Stanton? Yes, it does. Here are three examples from Hendrick's book:

(1) In his early days Stanton developed a semi-romantic relationship with the daughter of his landlady. The girl's name was Anna Howard. She died suddenly from cholera and was buried quickly. Stanton was horrified and refused to believe it. He refused to believe she was dead and thought she was buried alive. He rushed to the graveyard and exhumed the body. He convinced himself by personal inspection that the girl was indeed dead.

(2) The death of his first child, a baby girl, so affected him that after she had been buried for a time, he had her disinterred, enclosed in a metal casket, and placed on the mantelpiece in his bedroom where it was kept for several years.

(3) After his first wife's death, the Supreme Court had to suspend its sessions for a month. Stanton was arguing several cases before the court. But the court was suspended because Stanton would not leave his dead wife's grave. Every night he would put her nightcap and gown on her bed and sit beside them weeping for hours.

I had trouble finding a review of Lincoln's War Cabinet on the Internet. But I did find one. Here it is:

"Wow. I'm the only one to review this book. Special. So anyway, I'd highly recommend this book. I'd say it was better than Doris Kearns Goodwin's book Team of Rivals, although that book may drawn on more recent Lincolnian scholarship. This book did an amazing job of capturing the essence of Lincoln and the egos and personailities he surrounded himself with. How a supposedly hick lawyer from Illinois managed to take the most domineering and brilliant minds of the day and move them around like pieces on his chessboard is a story that has been sorely neglected (at least until recently)."

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3397...er_reviews