Secretary of War Edwin McMasters Stanton had been especially mean-spirited and condescending toward Illinois lawyer Abraham Lincoln before the Civil War, badly humiliating him in a high-profile railroad case in which Lincoln had served as local counsel to the high-priced Stanton team.

However, Lincoln was never one to allow personal defeats to muddy his pursuit of a political objective. After packing the corrupt Secretary of War, Simon Cameron, off to a remote ambassadorship in Moscow, he turned to the energetic and capable Stanton to sort out the mess in the War Department. Stanton, who had become a radical Republican after a career as a Democrat,  made many enemies during his ferocious tenure, but he proved to be an unswerving ally to Lincoln. Though he could be cold, remote and sarcastic, he was a devoutly religious man who developed a zealous protectiveness and affection for his former rival.

On April 14, 1865, after the president was shot in Ford's Theatre, waves of panic radiated outward from Tenth Street. Stanton quickly took control, putting the city under martial law, and personally--and ruthlessly--directing efforts to apprehend the conspirators, protect the vice president, and get to the bottom of what had happened.

The dying president was carried by soldiers to the Peterson House, a rooming house across from Ford's Theatre, where he was laid in the back bedroom on a bed too short for his lanky frame. Stanton carried out the questioning of eyewitnesses and suspects throughout the night in a parlor outside the president's room, even banishing the hysterical Mary Lincoln to a front parlor and refusing her further entry to the room where her husband lay dying.

The death vigil continued until 7:22 in the morning, when the president peacefully drew his last breath. According to Lincoln's young friend and biographer John Hay, it was Stanton who broke the silence with the words, "Now he belongs to the ages."