The Dusty Bookshelf: Edward Stanly: Whiggery’s Tarheel “Conqueror”
Norman D. Brown, Edward Stanly: Whiggery’s Tarheel “Conqueror.” University of Alabama Press, 1974
Many books about Civil War figures start with a brief introductory section of the subject’s prewar career and a brief conclusion about what he did after the way, while of most the book focuses on the Civil War. Other books, like this one, follow the protagonist’s entire career, of which their Civil War experience take up important chapters but don’t swallow up the rest of the narrative. Still, Stanly’s Civil War adventures are why he has what little fame he has today.
I relied on Norman Brown’s book for much of my information about Stanly in my Civil War Round Table talk on North Carolina two pro-Union governors in the Civil War. Stanley was the second, and “official,” Union governor after Marble Nash Taylor’s self-proclaimed and somewhat farcical “governorship.” Stanly tried unsuccessfully to lure white North Carolinians back into the Union during the early part of federal occupation of eastern North Carolina (1862 to early 1863). In his unsuccessful attempts at conciliation, Stanly alienated significant blocs in the North, appeasing proslavery whites while the North’s policy was turning rapidly into official emancipationism.
Brown gives a good deal of attention to Stanly’s early career in North Carolina and national politics, before getting to his attempted unionist governorship. This is a comprehensive account which culminates in his failure to win over white North Carolinians with his political skills as Lincoln’s emissary.
Edward Stanly had (1810-1872) was a prominent politician in antebellum North Carolina, following in the steps of his father John Stanly. John, along with Edward’s two uncles, all got into fatal duels. The uncles were killed in their duels, while John won his – an 1802 encounter against William Dobbs Spaight, a signer of the Constitution. (It wasn’t the last time a politician killed a fellow politician, and Founding Father, in a duel).
John’s political advance wasn’t hindered by the duel with Spaight. He rose in state politics and paved the way for his most promising son, Edward, who became a lawyer based in New Bern, and a fierce Whig partisan, ending up (like his father) as speaker of North Carolina’s lower house (then called the House of Commons).
Edward was a partisan, pugnacious Whig, whom his fellow Whigs (foreshadowing alert) called a “conqueror” because of his political triumphs. He served in Congress in the 1840s and again during the period of the crisis ending in the Compromise of 1850. In each of his stints in Congress, his family history threatened to repeat itself. He had one narrowly-averted duel in the 1840s, and again in the early 1850s, when he fought a duel with Samuel W. Inge, a Southern sectionalist Democrat who quarreled with Stanly over the latter’s alleged failure to stand by the South against the North.
It wasn’t that Stanly publicly opposed slavery. He expressed private opposition to the institution but in public opposed Northern attacks on it. He denounced the Wilmot Proviso which would have kept slavery out of all federal territories. But always he focused on the theme of intersectional harmony. Working with Northerners (at least Northern Whigs), he wanted a nationalistic policy binding North and South together while rejecting either side’s agitation of the divisive slavery issue. He even – pretty much alone among Southern congressmen – supported the right of abolitionists to petition Congress.
It’s hardly any wonder that the sectionalist Inge thought Stanly was a sellout to the South, and this provoked harsh words on the House floor leading to a duel. Jefferson Davis was Inge’s second. The combatants fired harmlessly at each other, and it was the last Congressional duel (or the last formal) one.
In 1853, Stanly went to California to recoup his personal fortune by practicing law in the growing Golden State. He took a brief break to run for governor on the Republican ticket in 1857 – while (unlike other Republicans) he criticized the old Wilmot proviso, he allowed some of his skepticism of slavery to peek out as he called for reserving the Western territories for free white labor only. He was overwhelmingly defeated by a proslavery Democrat – indeed, the victor’s vote totals exceeded those of Stanly and the third (Know-Nothing) candidate combined.
The Civil War found Stanly still in California, when he received a call from President Lincoln to serve as “military governor” of North Carolina. By April 1862, the Union had occupied much of the coastal area of the latter state, and persistent Union dreams of rallying the repressed Unionism among white Tar Heels – especially Whigs – led the President to send Stanly to North Carolina on what was intended as a mission of conciliation.
From his old home base in New Bern, and in travels elsewhere in Union-occupied territory, Stanly tried to persuade the whites to put North Carolina back into the Union – to sweeten the deal, he suggested that if they rejoined the Union promptly, they’d be more likely to be able to keep their slaves. Continuing to resist, Stanly warned, would lead to slave liberation.
Though federal troops were legally forbidden to return any of the large population of fugitive slaves in the Union-held districts, Stanly persuaded one fugitive to “voluntarily” return to her alleged master. Angry federal troops liberated the fugitive, but many fugitives who heard of this incident went into hiding lest they be “voluntarily” re-enslaved too. Stanly also suggested to local whites that, independently of federal forces, they might form slave-catching militias.
Stanly also had a chat with Vincent Colyer, a former YMCA worker who had been appointed Superintendent of the Poor by General Ambrose Burnside, who commanded in the area. Stanly suggested to Colyer that it was impolitic to alienate the whites by maintaining a school for blacks – including fugitives – as Colyer had done. Stanly also suggested that such a school violated North Carolina laws against educating slaves.
Colyer promptly closed his black school and went north to rally opinion against Stanly. After much uproar in Congress and the newspapers, Stanly and Colyer agreed there had been a misunderstanding – Stanly hadn’t actually ordered the closing of the school, so Colyer went back and started it up again. Meanwhile, Union authorities made clear that there would be no returning of fugitives.
Other measures of conciliation by the military governor included trying to relax the naval blockade on the North Carolina coast and suppress undisciplined Union soldiers’ attacks on the houses and property of whites and blacks. Stanly wasn’t fully successful in these initiatives, either.
Stanly remonstrated with Lincoln about the Emancipation Proclamation, which he saw as a serious obstacle to conciliation. The proclamation had a loophole – if the Union occupied areas of coastal North Carolina could send a Congressional delegation to Washington, then the slaves in that area would remain enslaved. Stanly organized Congressional elections, but he faced a dilemma. If he didn’t get a Congressional delegation sent by January 1, 1863, the slaves in his district would be freed, but if he did hold Congressional elections, then a political adventurer he despised might win. Charles Henry Foster, a carpetbagger avant la lettre, had been an abolitionist in Maine, a rabid Southern-rights editor in Virginia and North Carolina, then when the war broke out a Unionist (he promoted the “governorship” of Marble Nash Taylor). Foster recruited a number of eastern North Carolina’s poor whites whites into the Union army, while radicalizing them with a “Free Labor” platform of reserving the area to free white workers, excluding slavery. Stanly saw Foster as a dangerous demagogue and hesitated to risk him going to Congress. In the end, Stanly held a belated election, which a Stanly candidate won, but Congress refused to accept the election results and eastern North Carolina ended up subject to the Emancipation Proclamation.
Emancipation, and the recruitment of black soldiers, led Stanly to resign his military governorship in early 1863 and return to California. At the end of the war he defended his governorship against critics, and during Reconstruction he opposed the Radicals, saying black suffrage should be extremely limited and warning of the alleged perils of intermarriage. He died before Reconstruction ended.
