Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 / From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860

by James Gillespie Blaine

The unfounded assumption of Mr. Sumner's connection with the arrest sprang perhaps from some censorious remarks in the Senate made by him in December touching General Stone's alleged course in sending back fugitive slaves. Subsequent intelligence indicated that Mr. Sumner had been misinformed on this matter, and that the facts did not inculpate General Stone. But instead of writing to Mr. Sumner to correct the statements made in his speech, General Stone, most unwisely and most reprehensibly, addressed to the senator on the 23d of December an ill-tempered and abusive letter. Mr. Henry Melville Parker of Massachusetts investigated all the facts and incidents of the case, and came to the conclusion that Mr. Sumner, as an act of revenge for the insolent letter, had caused General Stone's arrest. But the facts do not warrant Mr. Parker's conclusion. Aside from Mr. Sumner's public denial on the floor of the Senate— which of itself closed the issue—he was never known to be guilty of an act of revenge. That passion belongs to meaner natures. The dates, moreover, remove the imputation of Mr. Parker. General Stone's hasty and ill-considered letter was placed in Mr. Sumner's hands on Christmas Day, 1861. The arrest was made on the 8th of February, 1862—forty-six days later. The intervening circumstances nowhere involve Mr. Sumner in the remotest degree.

In answer to the call upon the President for information, Mr. Lincoln sent a message to the Senate on the 1st of May, saying, "General Stone was arrested and imprisoned under my general authority, and upon evidence which, whether he be guilty or innocent, required, as appears to me, such proceedings to be had against him for the public safety." The President deemed it "incompatible with the public interest, and perhaps unjust to General Stone, to make a more particular statement of the evidence." After saying that General Stone had not been tried because the officers to constitute a court-martial could not be withdrawn from duty without serious injury to the service, the President gave this public assurance: "He will be allowed a trial without unnecessary delay: the charges and specifications will be furnished him in due season, and every facility for his defense will be afforded him by the War Department." This message on its face bears evidence that it was prepared at the War Department, and that Mr. Lincoln acted upon assurances furnished by Mr. Stanton. The arrest was made upon his "general" authority, and clearly not from any specific information he possessed. But the effect of the message was to preclude any further attempt at intervention by Congress. Indeed the assurance that General Stone should be tried "without unnecessary delay" was all that could be asked. But the promise made to the ear was broken to the hope, and General Stone was left to languish without a word of intelligence as to his alleged offense, and without the slightest opportunity to meet the accusers who in the dark had convicted him without trial, subjected him to cruel punishment, and exposed him to the judgment of the world as a degraded criminal.

Release from imprisonment came at last by the action of Congress, coercing the Executive Department to the trial or discharge of General Stone. In the Act of July 17, 1862, "defining the pay and emolument of certain officers," a section was inserted declaring that "whenever an officer shall be put under arrest, except at remote military posts, it shall be the duty of the officer by whose orders he is arrested to see that a copy of the charges shall be served upon him within eight days thereafter, and that he shall be brought to trial within ten days thereafter unless the necessities of the service prevent such trial; and then he shall be brought to trial within thirty days after the expiration of said ten days, or the arrest shall cease." The Act reserved the right to try the officer at any time within twelve months after his discharge from arrest, and by a proviso it was made to apply "to all persons now under arrest and waiting trial." The bill had been pending several months, having been originally reported by Senator Wilson before General Stone's arrest.

The provision of the Act applicable to the case of General Stone was only a full enforcement by law of the seventy-ninth article of war, which declared that "no officer or soldier who shall be put in arrest shall continued in confinement more than eight days, or until such time as a court-martial can be assembled." It was a direct violation of the spirit of this article, and a cruel straining of its letter, to consign General Stone to endless or indefinite imprisonment. Any man of average intelligence in the law—and Secretary Stanton was eminent in his profession—would at once say that the time beyond the eight days allowed for assembling a court- martial must be a reasonable period, and that an officer was entitled to prompt trial, or release from arrest. The law now passed was imperative. Withing eight days the arrested officer must be notified of the charges against him, within ten days he must be tried, and "if the necessities of the service prevent a trial" within thirty days after the ten, the officer is entitled to an absolute discharge. General Stone's case fell within the justice and the mercy of the law. The eight days within which he should be notified of the charges against him had been long passed; the ten days had certainly expired; but by the construction of the War Department the victim was still in the power that wronged him for thirty days more. From the 17th of July, thirty days were slowly told off until the 16th of August was at last reached, and General Stone was once more a free man. He had been one hundred and eighty-nine days in prison, and was at last discharged by the limitation of the statute without a word of exculpation or explanation. The routine order simply recited that "the necessities of the service not permitting the trial, within the time required by law, of Brigadier-General Charles P. Stone, now confined in Fort Lafayette, the Secretary of War directs that he be released from arrest."

GENERAL STONE FINALLY RELEASED.

The order simply turned him adrift. He was a Colonel in the Regular Army and a Brigadier-General in the volunteer service; and the Secretary, according to the rule of the War Department, should have given him some instruction,—either assigning him to duty or directing him to report at some place and await orders. Thinking it might be an omission, General Stone telegraphed the War Department that he had the honor "to report for duty." He waited five days in New York for an answer, and receiving none repaired to Washington. Reporting promptly at the office of the Adjutant-General, he was told they had no orders for him, and knew nothing about his arrest. He then applied to General McClellan, on the eve of the Antietam campaign, for permission to serve with the army. General McClellan on the 7th of September wrote to Secretary Stanton that he would be glad to avail himself of General Stone's services and that he had "no doubt as to his loyalty and devotion." No answer was returned by the War Department. On the 25th of September General Stone, still eager to confront his accusers, applied to General-in- Chief Halleck for a copy of any charges or allegations against him, and the opportunity of promptly meeting them. He reminded the general that two hundred and twenty-eight days had elapsed since his arrest, and that if he were to be tried for any offense those who had served under him must be the witnesses of his conduct, and that from battle and disease these witnesses were falling by hundreds and thousands; the casualties were so great indeed that his command was already reduced one-half. General Halleck replied that he had no official information of the cause of General Stone's arrest, and that so far as he could ascertain no charges or specifications were on file against him.

Several weeks later, on the 1st of December, 1862, General Stone applied to General McClellan, calling his attention to the Act of July 17, under which any officer arrested had the right to "a copy of the charges against him within eight days." He therefore respectfully requested General McClellan, as the officer who ordered the arrest, to furnish him a copy of the charges. General McClellan replied on the 5th of December that the order for arrest had been given him by the Secretary of War, who told him it was at the solicitation of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, and based on testimony taken by them. He further informed General Stone that he had the order, in the handwriting of Secretary Stanton, several days before it was carried into effect, and added the following somewhat remarkable statement: "On the evening when you were arrested I submitted to the Secretary of War the written result of the examination of a refugee from Leesburg. This information to a certain extent agreed with the evidence stated to have been taken by the Committee, and upon its being imparted to the Secretary he again instructed me to cause you to be arrested, which I at once did." This discloses the fact that General McClellan was cognizant of the character of the testimony submitted against General Stone, and so rigidly withheld from the knowledge of the person most interested. On receipt of General McClellan's note, General Stone immediately asked him for the name of the Leesburg refugee and for a copy of his statement. A member of General McClellan's staff answered the inquiry, stating that the general "does not recollect the name of the refugee, and the last time he recollects seeing that statement was at the War Department immediately previous to your arrest." General Stone, victim of the perversity which had uniformly attended the case, was again baffled. He was never able to see the statement of the "refugee" or even to get his name, though, according to General McClellan, the testimony of the refugee was the proximate and apparently decisive cause of General Stone's arrest.

General Stone applied directly to the President, asking "if he could inform me why I was sent to Fort Lafayette." The President replied that "if he told me all he knew about it he should not tell me much." He stated that while it was done under his general authority, he did not do it. The President referred General Stone to General Halleck who stated that the arrest was made on the recommendation of General McClellan. This was a surprise to General Stone, for General McClellan had but recently written him that he had full confidence in his devotion and loyalty. General Halleck replied that he knew of that letter, and that "the Secretary of War had expressed great surprise at it because he said that General McClellan himself had recommended the arrest, and now seemed to be pushing the whole thing on his [the secretary's] shoulders." The search for the agency that would frankly admit responsibility was rendered still more difficult by the denial of the Committee on the Conduct of the War that the arrest had ever been recommended by them, either collectively or individually. They had simply forwarded to the Secretary of War such evidence as was submitted to them.

RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ARREST.

General Stone appeared before the Committee on the Conduct of the War on the 27th of February, 1863—nearly five months after his release from imprisonment. He was allowed to see the testimony which had hitherto been withheld from him, and answered all the accusations in detail with convincing candor and clearness. As he proceeded in his triumphant response to all the accusations against him, the committee said "Why did you not give us these explanations when you were here before?"—"Because," replied General Stone, "if the chairman will remember, the committee did not state to me the particular cases. . . . I gave general answers to general allegations." General Stone stated further to the committee that he ought himself to have asked for a Court of Inquiry after the reverse at Ball's Bluff. "The reason why I did not," he continued, "was this: While General McClellan was at Edward's Ferry, he showed me a telegram which he had written to the President to the effect that he had examined into the affair at Ball's Bluff and that General Stone was entirely without blame." "After the expression of that opinion," said General Stone, "it would not have been respectful to ask for a Court of Inquiry. It was given by the highest authority and sent to the highest authority, and as a soldier I had no right to ask for justification except of my superiors." Subsequently, on the occasion of Mr. Conkling's speech "severely criticising" General Stone's conduct in connection with the affair at Ball's Bluff, the General applied to the aide-de-camp of General McClellan, as likely to be informed of the Commander's wishes, to know if he "should ask for a Court of Inquiry," and the reply was "No." He then asked if he should make a statement correcting the mistakes in Mr. Conkling's speech. The reply was "Write nothing; say nothing; keep quiet." The committee asked General Stone, as a military man, "Who had the power to bring you to trial?" He answered "When I was arrested, the General-in-Chief, General McClellan, had that power. I know I should claim that power if any man under my command were arrested."