Adam Badeau, Military history of Ulysses S. Grant from April 1861 to April 1865. Volume 2

[200] every horse that he could buy, or sometimes seize. He urged the conscriptions, he ransacked the hospitals, he emptied the garrisons. He bought and manufactured and transported supplies of arms and food and clothing; he not only employed the complex and wide-spread machinery of his own department, but he absorbed, and exerted, and directed the whole political influence of the government, for the one purpose of sustaining and reinforcing Grant. He did more than this, and achieved what was doubtless for him a harder task. He subdued his own imperious temper. He refrained absolutely from interference with the strategy in the field. He not only never thwarted, or even opposed any military plan; he never proposed one of his own. He never insisted on retaining any man in prominent place at the front, if Grant positively urged his removal. He never refused to give any man command, if Grant declared it was essential to his schemes. And yet he was by nature greedy of power, and anxious at this very time to retain every atom of control which he did not think it indispensable to yield. But he had convinced himself that in no other way than by strengthening and upholding the general-in-chief was the rebellion to be overthrown; and for this he was willing to sacrifice his own instincts, his own will, his own ambition.

Stanton's ambition, however, was not an ordinary one. He liked power and place, as all men do, who attain them. But his great passion was patriotism. It was to secure the salvation and unity of the country that all his efforts were made; not to gratify either personal ambition, or vanity,