Benjamnin F. Butler, Butler's Book: Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benjamin Butler

“ McClellan claims that Stanton got his influence to get into the Cabinet in order to thwart him, but that Stanton was wholly loyal to the country and desirous of having the Rebellion put down and slavery with it.” I agree with the general in both propositions. Stanton was thoroughly loyal, and he saw that this aspiring young man was trying to get the army in his possession by getting the appointment of all the officers, and that he had got rid of General Scott. He saw also that McClellan had determined, as he admits, not to prosecute the war if the abolition of slavery were to be accomplished. Seeing these things, Stanton did try to get into the Cabinet to put down the Rebellion and to put down the dictators, too.

There was a crop of dictators about that time, there being several parties which wanted a dictator. One was composed of McClellan's political friends, the Copperheads, who thought there was danger that Mr. Cameron and President Lincoln would carry on the war so as to obliterate both the Rebellion and slavery. Their candidate for dictator, who should take the government, was McClellan. The other party were the over-zealous abolitionists who thought that Lincoln was going too slow in the endeavor of abolishing slavery and who declared that the Constitution was “a league with death and a covenant with hell.” Their candidate for dictator was Fremont, as was well known at the time. When he was in command in Missouri, he was flattered into making a proclamation abolishing slavery within the bounds of his command. This attempt President Lincoln dealt with by abolishing, that proclamation on the ground that it was one “which could be good only by a dictorial and not by a legal act,” as he puts it in his letter to Fremont. Lincoln ever afterwards took care that Fremont should be, if anywhere, in a position where he could do no possible mischief in that direction; and with a genius for administration, he put McClellan, when he thought it safe to so do, in the same category by removing him from command.

A third was the property men of the country, who thought that the expenses of the war were so enormous that it should be immediately ended by negotiation; and the New York Times, in an elaborate editorial, proposed that George Law, an extensive manufacturer of New York, should be made dictator for such purpose.