Otto Eisenschiml

[brtmchl]

I do not subscribe to Eisenschmil's theory regarding Stanton. While Lincoln and Stanton may have been rivals at one point, by my understanding they grew to be close friends.

“Not everyone knows, as I do, how close you stood to our lost leader, how he loved you and trusted you, and how vain were all the efforts to shake that trust and confidence, not lightly given and never withdrawn,” wrote John Hay to Stanton after Lincoln's death. William Hanchett, Out of the Wilderness, p. 88.

“By the war’s end, few men were on such intimate terms with Lincoln as the Secretary of War. Few men could write the President such chatty, personal letters as those Stanton dispatched while Lincoln visited the Virginia front in 1865,” wrote Lincoln biographer Stephen B. Oates. Stephen B. Oates, Abraham Lincoln: The Man Behind the Myths

Stanton tried to resign shortly after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox in April 1865, but his resignation was rejected by President Lincoln. “‘Stanton,’ you cannot go. Reconstruction is more difficult and dangerous than construction or destruction. You have been our main reliance; you must help us through the final act. The bag is filled. It must be tied and tied securely. Some knots slip; yours do not. You understand the situation better than anybody else, and it is my wish and the country’s that you remain.'” - Fletcher Pratt, Stanton: Lincoln’s Secretary of War, p. 411.

David E Long wrote, “Stanton would become furious and fly into fits of rage at Lincoln time and time again. Thus many fail to consider the friendship of these two men…they were simply two professional politicians who tolerated one another in order to achieve a common goal. It seriously underestimates the respect and affection they actually felt toward one another.” According to Long: “Their common devotion to the cause of the Union, and their relentless determination to preserve it, created a bond that did not take the form of backslapping humor and thigh-pounding stories amidst relaxed banter that Lincoln shared with William H. Seward. But their hours and days spent together at the Soldiers’ Home, the relationship of their children, the tears that flowed from the eyes of the stolid Stanton when Lincoln took his last breath." -David E. Long, “A Time for Lincoln,” Lincoln Lore, Spring 2006, p. 16.

Stanton had a continuing concern for the President’s safety and the inadequacy of his security arrangements. He tried to keep President Lincoln from going to the theater on April 14, 1865. After Mr. Lincoln died, Stanton announced: “Now he belongs to the ages.” He immediately organized the response to Lincoln’s assassination, the pursuit of assassin John Wilkes Booth, and the prosecution of the assassination conspirators.