Edwin Stanton never forgot or forgave an insult.

Previously in the novel: War Secretary Edwin Stanton held President and Mrs. Lincoln captive under guard in basement of the White House. He guided his substitute Lincoln through his first Cabinet meeting even though there were some complications.

As Stanton sat back during his carriage ride to his home on Avenue K in Washington, D.C., he assessed how the day had gone, and decided to be quite pleased with himself. A few complications had arisen, like the janitor in the basement, and the fact he was unable to force the Cabinet to remove General McClellan, but perhaps such stumbling blocks made the situation he had created seem more real, less manipulated. Leaning his cheek on the back of the leather-padded carriage seat, he breathed the late night air and tried to relax. Quickly he pulled his head back, remembering he did not want to risk a new asthma attack. Stanton had not experienced one of his seizures for more than a year, and did not want a new episode at the beginning of the most challenging endeavor of his life, saving the Union from destruction.
His eyes closed, the war secretary could not help but think of the first time his lungs had refused to work, at age ten, in Steubenville, Ohio. His mother had held his slender little body as it was wracked by hacking coughs, while his father, a pious Methodist, prayed unceasingly over him. As the seizure subsided and his parents hugged him, he was aware of their moist cheeks pressed against his own, as though a baptism in tears. While the asthma regularly shadowed his early years, its effect was abated by the comforting knowledge that both of his parents loved him dearly. That assurance made the death of his father near Christmas when he was thirteen even more unbearable. Added to that trauma was the discovery that his father had left no money. With four children and generous donations to the church, Stanton’s father had nothing in reserve to protect his family in the event of his death; therefore, being the oldest, Stanton was apprenticed to a bookseller, James Turnbell, who kindly filled in as a father figure and overlooked his bouts of asthma and his tendency to ignore customers while reading.
His Cupid’s bow lips now turning up in a smile, he approached his Avenue K home, acknowledging that, while life had not been easy for him, there had been kind people along the way: Turnbell, his father’s friend, had loaned him money to go to college and, when the money ran out, allowed him to come back to work in the bookstore; his mother’s lawyer had tutored him on the bar exam, and a judge first took him into his practice and then turned it over to him upon being elected to the United States Senate. In a bit of irony, Stanton considered how Abraham Lincoln had favored him and named him secretary of war, a position he used to depose his patron, at least temporarily. He smiled to himself. Well, perhaps not temporarily.
The smile faded as he thought of the death of his first daughter and, three years later, of his first wife, followed two years later by the suicide of his brother and then the shattering blow of the death of his son by his second wife in February 1862. He had the boy cremated and kept the ashes in an urn on the fireplace mantel in his bedroom. Stanton knew he would have to dispose of the ashes sometime and move on with his life, but that deliberate action would be the permanent admission that two of his babies were gone. So until he could bring himself to that realization, the urn stayed in his bedroom, and his second wife dusted and polished it daily.
More than anything, Stanton’s black heart could neither forget nor forgive the sins committed against him. No one lived the good Methodist life better than he—chaste, moral, crusading against the evils of slavery—so no one deserved the ridicule and harassment heaped upon him. His eyes opened and narrowed as he remembered his teen-aged years in Steubenville. Short and slight of build, he could not attract the prettiest girls because they always liked tall, robust boys who ran and played games better than he did. When the daughter of the owner of his family’s boardinghouse paid him attention, he was enamored. At lunch one summer day in 1833, the girl’s brother declared he would rather see his sister dead than in love with Stanton. She had slapped her brother, which pleased Stanton. That night, when he returned home from the bookstore, he learned the girl had died of a quick bout of cholera. Fearing contagion, her family had buried her immediately. In his delirium of sorrow, Stanton believed the brother had buried his sister when the cholera had placed her merely in a state of unconsciousness. He disinterred the girl’s coffin to see for himself. As he stroked her cold cheek, Stanton had to admit she was dead.
In the carriage he clenched his fists as he remembered what had happened next. His ears still rung with the laughter above him when he looked up from the grave to see the brother.
“You have to rob graves to find girls?” the brother said, his face barely lit by the lantern in his hand, creating evil shadows across his face.
“I wanted to make sure,” Stanton said.
“I should beat the tar out of you for desecrating my sister’s grave, but you ain’t worth it. Bury her back proper.”
Even in the carriage in Washington, Stanton felt his neck burn with humiliation. But no longer. Besides winning the war, Stanton was avenging the most humiliating moment of his life, for the girl’s brother who had treated him with such contempt was the father of Private Adam Christy. The father’s letter had come fortuitously to complete Stanton’s plan. Momentarily, Stanton saddened, because the private did resemble his aunt in the face, fresh and innocent, but he resolved that Adam’s father had to pay for his insolence.