height of 1493 ft. above the sea-level on a plain at the north foot of the conical Stanserhom (6238 ft). It is, by electric railway, about 2 m. from Stansstad, its port on the south shore of the lake of Lucerne, and 12 m. from Engelberg (with its great Benedictine monastery, founded about 1120), now a much-frequented summer resort, while there is also an electric rail- way from Stans up the Stanserhorn. In 1900 Stans had a population of 2798, all German-speaking and Romanists. Stans was the home of the Winkelried family (q.v.) and has a modern monument to the memory of Arnold von Winkelried, the legendary, hero of the battle of Sempach (1386). In 1481 the holy Nicholas von der Flüe composed at Stans by his advice the strife between the Confederates, while in 1798 many persons were massacred here by the French. (W. A. B. C.)
STANSFELD, SIR JAMES (1820-1898), English politician,
was born at Moorlands, Halifax, on the 5th of October 1820,
the son of James Stansfeld, a county-court judge. Educated
at University College, London, he was called to the bar in 1849.
In 1847 he was introduced through his father-in-law, W. H.
Ashurst, to Mazzini, with whom he formed a close friendship.
In 1859 he was returned to parliament as Radical member for
Halifax, which town he continued to represent for over thirty-
six years. He voted consistently on the Radical side, but his
chief energies were devoted to promoting the cause of Italian
unity. He was selected by Garibaldi as his adviser when the
Italian patriot visited England in 1862. In 1863 he moved
in the House of Commons a resolution of sympathy with the
Poles, and two months later was made a junior lord of the
admiralty. In 1864, as the result of charges made against him
by the French authorities, in connexion with Greco's conspiracy
against Napoleon III., Disraeli, in the House of Commons,
accused him of being " in correspondence with the assassins
of Europe." Stansfeld was vigorously defended by Bright
and Forster, and his explanation was accepted as quite satis-
factory by Palmerston. Nevertheless he only escaped a vote
of censure by ten votes, and accordingly resigned office. In
1865 he was re-elected for Halifax, and in 1866 became under-
secretary of state for India. In the first Gladstone admin-
istration he held a variety of public offices, finally becoming,
in 1871, the first president of the local government board.
The remainder of his life was mainly spent in endeavouring to
secure the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, and in 1886
this object was attained. In the same year Stansfeld again
became president of the local government board. He died
on the 17th of February 1898.
STANTON, EDWIN M'MASTERS (1814-1869), American
statesman, was born at Steubenville, Ohio, on the 19th of
December 1814. He attended Kenyon College at Gambier,
Ohio, from 1831 to 1833, was admitted to the bar in 1836, was
prosecuting attorney of Harrison county in 1837-1839, and
practised in Cadiz, O., until 1839, when he returned to Steu-
benville. In 1847 he removed to Pittsburg, Pennsylvania,
where he took a leading place at the bar. One of his most
famous cases was that of The State of Pennsylvania v. The
Wheeling and Belmont Bridge Company (1849-1856), in which,
as counsel for the state, he invoked successfully the aid of the
Federal government in preventing the construction of a bridge
over the Ohio river at Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia) —
on the ground that the structure would interfere with the navi-
gation of that stream by citizens of Pennsylvania. His large
practice before the United States Supreme Court caused him to
remove to Washington in 1856. In 1858 he was sent to
California by the United States attorney-general as special
Federal agent for the settlement of land claims, and he succeeded
in breaking up a conspiracy by which the government would
have been defrauded of vast tracts of land of almost inestimable
value. Before the Civil War Stanton was a Democrat, opposed
to slavery, but a firm defender of the constitutional rights of
the slaveholders, and was a bitter opponent of Lincoln, whose
party he then hated and distrusted. In the reorganization
of President Buchanan's cabinet in i860 Stanton became
attorney-general, and he did what he could to strengthen the
weak policy of the president in the last months of his admin-
istration. Although he had often violently denounced
President Lincoln, the latter thought he saw in Stanton
a good war minister, and in January 1862 invited him
into his cabinet. In his administration of the war office
Stanton was vigorous, rigid, and often harsh, and his peremp-
tory manner, in speech and correspondence, was the cause
of considerable friction between the war department and the
generals, one of the last and most conspicuous instances being
his controversy with General Sherman over the terms of
surrender granted to J. E. Johnston's army. But he removed a
horde of fraudulent contractors, kept the armies in the field
well equipped, and infused energy into procrastinating generals.
Not the least of his achievements was the peaceable disbandment of 800,000 soldiers at the end of the war. Remaining
in the cabinet of President Andrew Johnson, Stanton exerted
all his energies toward thwarting the policies of that executive,
especially those related to the reconstruction of the Southern
states. He expressed disapproval of the Tenure of Office
Act, making the consent of the Senate necessary for the removal
of civil officers, and drafted the supplementary act on Recon-
struction, passed over the president's veto on the 19th of July
1867. Stanton was finally asked to resign, and on his
refusal to do so the president suspended him (Aug. 12) from
office and appointed General Grant (who had disapproved of
the secretary's removal) secretary ad interim. When the
Senate, however, under the terms of the Tenure of Office Act,
refused (Jan. 13, 1868) to concur in the suspension, Grant
left the office and Stanton returned to his duties. On the
2 1 st of February 1868 Johnson appointed General Lorenzo
Thomas secretary of war ad interim, and ordered Stanton to
vacate, but on the same day the Senate upheld Stanton, and
by way of reply the secretary made oath to a complaint against
Thomas for violating the Tenure of Office Act, and invoked
military protection from General Grant, who placed General
E. A. Carr in charge of the war department building, while
Congress came to Stanton's rescue by impeaching the president, the principal article of impeachment being that based on the removal of Stanton (see Johnson, Andrew). When the impeachment proceedings failed (May 26) Stanton resigned and returned to the practice of law. In 1869 President Grant appointed him a justice of the United States Supreme Court, but he died on the 24th of December, four days after his appointment. Stanton had a violent temper and a sharp tongue, but he was courageous, energetic, thoroughly honest and a genuine patriot.
See George C. Gorham, Life and Public Services of Edwin M. Stanton (2 vols., Boston, 1899), and Frank A. Flower, Edwin McMasters Stanton: The Autocrat of Rebellion, Emancipation, and Reconstruction (New York, 1905).
STANTON, ELIZABETH CADY (1815-1902), American reformer, was born in Johnstown, New York, on the 12th of November 1815, the daughter of Daniel Cady (1773-1859), a Federalist member of the National House of Representatives in 1815-1817 and a justice of the supreme court of New York state in 1847-1855. She was educated at the Johnstown Academy and at the Troy Female Seminary (now the Emma Willard School), where she graduated in 1832. In 1840 she married Henry Brewster Stanton (1805-1887), a lawyer and journalist, who had been a prominent abolitionist since his student days (1832-1834) in Lane Theological Seminary, and who took her on a wedding journey to London, where he was a delegate to the World's Anti-Slavery Convention. He was a member of the New York Senate in 1850-1851, was one of the founders of the Republican party in New York, and from 1868 until his death was on the staff of the New York Sun. Mrs Stanton, who had become intimately acquainted in London with Mrs Lucretia Mott, one of the women delegates barred from the anti-slavery convention, devoted herself to the cause of women's rights. She did much by the circulation of petitions to secure the passage in New York in 1848 of a law giving a married woman property rights; and in the same year on the 19th and 20th of
