CALIFORNIA

CHAPTER I.

MOUNTAIN PEAKS.

An adequate picture of the mountain never comes from one of its own dwellers. His vision is so thoroughly cut off by the great crags and crevices among which he is hidden that he is unable to measure the height to which its icy peak shoots into the clouds, or the extent to which its broadening base stretches down to the sea. He cannot consider truly how far its jagged shoulders overtop or are flanked and supported by the surrounding hills, nor point out how its everlasting walls cause rivers to shift their courses to the ocean and, by changing the pathway of advancing storms, create alternate droughts and floods in the wide plains below.

So with a panorama of the Rebellion. It connot be true in proportion or color until the limner, by the ripening lapse of time, shall have become so far removed from its mighty outlines that he can correctly distinguish between little things and big; between events which were vital and those which were merely bulky; between movements which were decisive and those which were nonessential; between man and man, general and general, plan and plan, luck and foresight.

Already enough of that time has elapsed so that indisputably the most majestic civil figure observable in the Rebellion horizon is that of Edwin McMasters Stanton, Attorney-General in the cabinet of James Buchanan and Secretary of War in the cabinets of Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson.

He was the dominating spirit and power in the quaking Republic during nearly seven of its most tumultuous and eventful years. Everybody knew and felt it then-not only the masses but courts, executive departments, Congress, the markets, maritime operations, disloyal not less than loyal States, and the White House.

Those of to-day will have the same feeling when they become fully cognizant of the facts set forth in the following condensed summary of the greatest of Stanton's great achievements:

1. He established, by the ever-famous Wheeling Bridge Case, national sovereignty over all internal navigable waters;

2. Settled, by the Pennsylvania State Canal and Railway Cases, the right of the people to control all methods of public transportation;

3. Prevented the army of California claimants from looting the Pacific coast;

4. By main strength upset President Buchanan's negotiations with the secession "commissioners" and wrecked the well-matured plans of the South to peaceably dismember the Union;

5. In 1862, as Secretary, caused the War Department to be born again;

6. Induced Lincoln to assert the supremacy which the constitution gave to him as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy;

7. Created the prodigious industrial era which made America what it is, by canceling all contracts for foreign-made goods and prohibiting the purchase of any except home-made articles for the military forces;

8.

Inaugurated military promotions for merit;

9. Flung so-called "neutral" and disloyal employes out of the public service;

10. Smote corrupt contractors, hip and thigh, and relentlessly whipped thieves and robbers out of the army;

11. Organized the Military Telegraph and Military Railway Systems as independent despotisms;

12. Suggested a plan to General B. F. Butler to capture New Orleans, and it was captured;

13. Conceived and personally commanded at the capture of Norfolk and the blockade of the James River;

14. Conceived, created, and sent forward the independent navy of thirty-eight rams and mortar boats which cleared the upper Mississippi of insurgent craft and captured and held Memphis; 15. Conceived the Confiscation Act;

16. Armed and employed the slaves of rebellious masters to save the Union despite the opposition of Lincoln, the cabinet, and the officers of the regular army;

17. Crowded Lincoln until he was compelled to sign the Emancipation Proclamation;

18. Rescued the starving Army of the Cumberland at Chattanooga and saved the Middle West;

19. Resolutely provided for the safety of Washington and thus insured a stable Government to prosecute the war for the Union;

20. Adhered to and protected Grant when the clamor was furious against him and promoted him continually until he became president;

21. Conceived the Trumbull amendment of the constitution, which wiped out slavery forever;

22. Adroitly prevented Lincoln from being snared by the insurgent commissioners at the Hampton Roads "peace conference"; 23. Prevented Lincoln and Grant from giving away the fruits of victory in the terms of surrender to Lee;

24. Prevented the rehabilitation of secession by causing the recall of Lincoln's permit to reassemble the insurgent legislature of Virginia after the surrender of Lee;

25. Prevented the recrudescence of secession on a civil basis by annulling the Sherman-Johnston-Davis terms of surrender;

26. Acted as President, Secretary of War, Secretary of State, Commander-in-Chief of the armies, Chief of Police, Dictator, and national muezzin at the murder of Lincoln, and slept not until the assassins were captured;

27. So put Grant, Meade, and other commanders on record under oath and in writing and so preserved the official history of the Rebellion that calumny and falsehood were rendered innocuous to him forever;

28. Conceived and successfully began reconstruction along the lines finally adopted by Congress and confirmed by the courts; 29. Prevented President Johnson from seizing the army and bringing on another revolution and then, having saved the country from disaster thrice and thrice again, laid down in poverty, worn. out, and died.

CHAPTER II.

A PUNY BABE-HEROIC SURROUNDINGS.

At Steubenville, Ohio, on Monday, December 19, 1814-a day turbulent, chilly, and full of driving snow-the first child was born to Dr. David and Lucy Norman Stanton, and, in honor of Mrs. Stanton's god-father (the Reverend David McMasters), was named Edwin McMasters Stanton. It was a small and puny babe, too weak to suckle, and, the mother's life being in danger, was transferred through the drifting snows to her own home by Mrs. Warner Brown.

For three years the babe continued to be scrawny and bloodless. His stunted stature and sickly organization, contrasting strangely with the robust physiques of his ancestors, seemed, however, to add to the brightness of his unusually mature mind.

At four he was more rugged; at seven he began attending a private school; at eight he was transferred to a seminary conducted by Henry Orr, in the rear of his father's residence; at ten, having made good progress, he was admitted to the Reverend George Buchanan's Latin school, where he learned Latin, Greek, history, and some of the higher branches. The father took great interest in his son's education, assisting him to collect a museum of insects, frogs, small animals, birds, etc.

"While gathering his natural-history museum, Eddie Stanton learned to train snakes," says Lewis Anderson of Steubenville. "In fact, he became a snake-charmer. Once, when he came into our house with a couple of long snakes wound around his arms and neck, mother screamed and the children fled. Father rushed in and hustled Ed and his horrible snakes into the street. Ed's father wished him to become a physician, and articulated a human skeleton and hung it in the barn back of the house for him to study. Ed gave lectures on this skeleton which I attended. He put a lighted candle inside of the skull and gave some of us the horrors. He also gave lectures on God, the Bible, Moses, and the Flood in