Edwin McMasters Stanton (December 19, 1814 – December 24, 1869) was an American lawyer, politician, United States Attorney General in 1860-61 and Secretary of War through most of the American Civil War and Reconstruction era.
Stanton was born in Steubenville, Ohio, the eldest of the four children of David and Lucy Norman Stanton. His father was a physician of Quaker stock. Stanton began his political life as a lawyer in Ohio and an antislavery De...
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Edwin McMasters Stanton (December 19, 1814 – December 24, 1869) was an American lawyer, politician, United States Attorney General in 1860-61 and Secretary of War through most of the American Civil War and Reconstruction era.
Stanton was born in Steubenville, Ohio, the eldest of the four children of David and Lucy Norman Stanton. His father was a physician of Quaker stock. Stanton began his political life as a lawyer in Ohio and an antislavery Democrat. After leaving from Kenyon College in 1833 to get a job to support his family, he was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1836. Stanton built a house in the small town of Cadiz, Ohio, and practiced law there until 1847, when he moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
In 1856, Stanton moved to Washington, D.C., where he had a large practice before the Supreme Court. In 1859, Stanton was the defense attorney in the sensational trial of Daniel E. Sickles, a politician and later a Union general, who was tried on a charge of murdering his wife's lover,...
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