A few days ago, while reading the memoirs of Philip Sheridan, I noted his meeting with Stanton in Washington on the morning of October 17, 1864.  According to Sheridan, he was summoned to Washington by Stanton himself, and “proceeded at an early hour to the War Department, and as soon as I met Secretary Stanton,…

I am trying, in the next two months, to get to some of the libraries near Exeter that have key sources for my Stanton biography. Yesterday I was up on the lovely campus of Bowdoin, in Maine, reviewing the papers of William Pitt Fessenden there.  I was reminded, as I often am, of what incredible…