He informed the nation of the President's death, summoned General Grant to protect the Capitol, and started collecting the evidence from those who had been with the Lincolns at the theater in order to prepare a murder trial. On the night of April 14, 1865, Stanton rushed to Lincoln's deathbed and took over the government since Secretary of State William Seward had been critically wounded the same evening. He served briefly as President Buchanan's Attorney General and then as Lincoln's aggressive Secretary of War. Stanton was a Democrat before the war and a prominent trial lawyer. He was a stubborn genius who was both reviled and revered in his time. Stanton was so controversial that some accused him at that time of complicity in Lincoln's assassination. He arrested and imprisoned thousands for "war crimes," such as resisting the draft or calling for an armistice. ![]() He directed military movements from his telegraph office, where Lincoln literally hung out with him. Stanton raised, armed, and supervised the army of a million men who won the Civil War. Of the crucial men close to President Lincoln, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (1814-1869) was the most powerful and controversial. ![]() "Walter Stahr, award-winning author of the New York Times bestseller Seward, tells the story of Abraham Lincoln's indispensable Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, the man the president entrusted with raising the army that preserved the Union.
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