John Harrison Wilson, The life of Charles Henry Dana

I am sorry to say that my period of intimacy with Mr. Stanton, and of service under him in the War Department, did not really begin until after General McClellan had been removed. For this reason I am not able to speak upon that point from personal knowledge of my own. But upon the general question of Mr. Stanton's purposes, I can say most emphatically that in all my acquaintance with him he never had but one purpose in his mind, and this was to carry the war efficiently forward to a victorious conclusion. He had no friends but those who were of that mind, and he knew no enemies but those whom he regarded as the enemies of his country. Whoever was not for prosecuting the war most vigorously, whoever hesitated, whoever interposed obstacles, whoever in his opinion failed to come up to the high mark of zeal and thoroughness, might be certain to have Mr. Stanton for a critic and an antagonist.

Of himself, of his own personal interests and advancements, no man could be less careful than he was. All mercenary considerations he despised, and the end of the great struggle left him a much poorer man than he was at the beginning. All mere friendships he was ready to disregard and fling away as soon as he came to believe that their object did not share his own high and patriotic enthusiasm for the Union. He was such a man in his day and work as Oliver Cromwell was in his, and they who now propose to judge him by any narrow standard of their own are sure to judge wrongly.

Of course, a great heroic figure like Stanton is not infallible, because he is a man. It was always possible for him to judge wrongly, and to be deceived by erroneous evidence. But one thing was never possible for him, and that was to be unfaithful to the Union or to show any mercy in feeling or in act towards its enemies.

It is very easy for men in this year of 1886 to find blemishes in the conduct or the character of this great man; but we who knew him thoroughly, and whose fortune it was to labor at his side and under his orders, cannot be mistaken in our opinion that without him the Union could not have been saved.