As secretary of war, Stanton became increasingly disillusioned with his erstwhile friend McClellan, who had remained ensconced in the Washington defenses since the summer of 1861 and showed little inclination to take the offensive against the Confederate forces in Virginia. In March 1862 Stanton and other cabinet members convinced Lincoln to remove McClellan as commanding general of the entire army, though McClellan continued to command the Army of the Potomac. For several months in the spring and early summer of 1862, Lincoln and Stanton performed the role of commanding general.

When the Democratic party split on the sectional issue in 1860, Stanton followed Buchanan and Black in supporting John C. Breckinridge, the presidential nominee of the southern Democrats, because he considered Breckinridge the only candidate capable of preserving the Union. During a cabinet shake-up in December 1860, Black became secretary of state, and Buchanan appointed Stanton to replace him as attorney general. Throughout the closing months of Buchanan's term, Stanton strove forcefully to preserve the Union.

In January 1834 Brown made another, this time successful, attempt to escape, crossing the Ohio River to Cincinnati and on to Cleveland…During his years in Cleveland, Brown worked as a boatman on Lake Erie and was an active member of the local Underground Railroad, ferrying fugitives across the lake to Canada. He was also active in local and regional abolitionist associations and the Negro Convention Movement. He was employed as a lecturing agent by the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society in 1843 and later in a similar position by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.

SHERMAN, John, a Representative and a Senator from Ohio; born in Lancaster, Fairfield County, Ohio, on May 10, 1823; attended the common schools and an academy in Ohio; left school to work as an engineer on canal projects; studied law; admitted to the bar in 1844 and began practice in Mansfield, Ohio; moved to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1853; elected as a Republican to the Thirty-fourth and to the three succeeding Congresses and served from March 4, 1855, to March 21, 1861, when he resigned; chairman, Committee on Ways and Means (Thirty-sixth Congress); elected as a Republican t

William Henry Penrose was born March 10, 1832 at Madison Barracks in Sackett's Harbor, New York, where his father, Captain James W.