and the disastrous expedition of Gen. Burgoyne. As a comparison between the customs, habits of living, modes of thought and educational interests of New England and New York of eighty years since and to-day, Stansbury's work is valuable.
STANSEL (styled by Spanish and Portuguese
writers STANCEL, ESTANSEL, and ESTANCEL),
Valentine, German astronomer, b. in Moravia
in 1621; d. in Bahia, Brazil, 18 Dec., 1705. He
became a Jesuit in 1637, and taught rhetoric and
mathematics in the colleges of Olmutz and Prague.
He was in Brazil in 1664, and took observations of
the comets that appeared in that and the following
year. He was appointed professor of theology in
the Jesuit college of San Salvador, and continued to
make astronomical observations, the results of which
he sent to Europe. There is a full list of his works
in Backer's “Bibliothèque des écrivains de la
Compagnie de Jesus” (5th series), in which it is also
shown that the dates of his death given in the
“Biographie universelle” and other biographical
dictionaries are incorrect. His principal writings are
“Orbis Alfonsinus” (Evora, 1658); “Legatus
uranicus ex orbe novo in veterem; hoc est. Observationes
Americanæ cometarum factæ conscriptæ ac
in Europam missæ” (Prague, 1683); “Uranophilus
cœlestis peregrinus, sive mentis Uranicæ per
mundum sidereum peregrinantis ecstases”
(Antwerp and Ghent, 1685); and “Mercurius Brasilicus,
sive Cœli et soli brasiliensis œconomica.”
STANTON, Daniel, Quaker preacher, b. in
Philadelphia, Pa., in 1708; d. there, 28 June, 1770.
He began to preach in 1728, travelled in New
England and the West Indies, went to Europe in 1748,
and visited the southern colonies in 1760, preaching
zealously against slavery as well as worldliness
and the vices of society. See “Journal of his Life,
Travels, and Gospel Labors” (Philadelphia, 1772).
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STANTON, Edwin McMasters, statesman, b. in Steubenville, Ohio, 19 Dec., 1814; d. in Washington, D. C., 24 Dec., 1869. His father, a physician, died while Edwin was a child. After acting for three years as a clerk in a book-store, he entered Kenyon college in 1831, but left in 1833 to study law. He was admitted to the bar in 1836, and, beginning practice in Cadiz, was in 1837 elected prosecuting attorney. He returned to Steubenville in 1839, and was supreme court reporter in 1842-'5, preparing vols. xi., xii., and xiii. of the Ohio reports. In 1848 he removed to Pittsburg, Pa., and in 1857, on account of his large business in the U. S. supreme court, he established himself in Washington. During 1857-'8 he was in California, attending to important land cases for the government. Among the notable suits that he conducted were the first Erie railway litigation, the Wheeling bridge case, and the Manney and McCormick reaper contest in 1859. When Lewis Cass retired from President Buchanan's cabinet, and Jeremiah S. Black was made secretary of state, Stanton was appointed the latter's successor in the office of at- torney-general, 20 Dec., 1860. He was originally a Democrat of the Jackson school, and, until Van Buren's defeat in the Baltimore convention of 1844, took an active part in political affairs in his locality. He favored the Wilmot proviso, to exclude slavery from the territory acquired by the war with Mexico, and sympathized with the Free-soil movement of 1848, headed by Martin Van Buren. He was an anti-slavery man, but his hostility to that institution was qualified by his view of the obligations imposed by the Federal constitution. He had held no public offices before entering President Buchanan's cabinet except those of prosecuting attorney for one year in Harrison county, Ohio, and reporter of the Ohio supreme court for three years, being wholly devoted to his profession. While a member of Mr. Buchanan's cabinet, he took a firm stand for the Union, and at a cabinet meeting, when John B. Floyd, then secretary of war, demanded the withdrawal of the United States troops from the forts in Charleston harbor, he indignantly declared that the surrender of Fort Sumter would be, in his opinion, a crime, equal to that of Arnold, and that all who participated in it should be hung like André. After the meeting, Floyd sent in his resignation. President Lincoln, though since his accession to the presidency he had held no communication with Mr. Stanton, called him to the head of the war department on the retirement of Simon Cameron, 15 Jan., 1862. As was said by an eminent senator of the United States: “He certainly came to the public service with patriotic and not with sordid motives, surrendering a most brilliant position at the bar, and with it the emolument of which, in the absence of accumulated wealth, his family was in daily need.” Infirmities of temper he had, but they were incident to the intense strain upon his nerves caused by his devotion to duties that would have soon prostrated most men, however robust, as they finally prostrated him. He had no time for elaborate explanations for refusing trifling or selfish requests, and his seeming abruptness of manner was often but rapidity in transacting business which had to be thus disposed of, or be wholly neglected. As he sought no benefit to himself, but made himself an object of hatred to the dishonest and the inefficient, solely in the public interest, and as no enemy ever accused him of wrong-doing, the charge of impatience and hasty temper will not detract from the high estimate placed by common consent upon his character as a man, a patriot, and a statesman.
Mr. Stanton's entrance into the cabinet, marked the beginning of a vigorous military policy. On 27 Jan., 1862, was issued the first of the president's war orders, prescribing a general movement of the troops. His impatience at Gen. George B. McClellan's apparent inaction caused friction between the administration and the general-in-chief, which ended in the latter's retirement. He selected Gen. Ulysses S. Grant for promotion after the victory at Fort Donelson, which Gen. Henry W. Halleck in his report had ascribed to the bravery of Gen. Charles F. Smith, and in the autumn of 1863 he placed Grant in supreme command of the three armies operating in the southwest, directed him to relieve Gen. William S. Rosecrans before his army at Chattanooga could be forced to surrender. President Lincoln said that he never took an important step without consulting his secretary of war. It has been asserted that, on the eve of Mr. Lincoln's second inauguration, he proposed to allow Gen. Grant to make terms of peace with Gen. Lee, and that Mr. Stanton dissuaded him from such action.
