Stanton: The Life and Times of Lincoln’s Secretary of War

by Benjamin P. Thomas, Harold M. Hyman

643 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1962

About the author

The son of a storekeeper, Benjamin Platt Thomas was two years old when his father died. After his mother's remarriage to a Baptist minister, Thomas moved frequently throughout the mid-Atlantic states. He earned his bachelor's degree from Johns Hopkins University, and returned after a brief period as a teacher and bond salesman to earn his doctorate. Upon receiving his Ph.D. in 1929 Thomas taught as an associate professor of history at Birmingham-Southern College, in Birmingham, Alabama.

In 1932, Thomas accepted an offer to become executive secretary of the Abraham Lincoln Association. In that role he edited the organization's quarterly publication and wrote two books published by the Association. Thomas left the Association in 1937 and worked in insurance and as a farmer for several years. He returned to the Abraham Lincoln Association in 1939 by becoming a director, and took up the position of the body's treasurer three years later. Thomas sold his insurance business in 1944 to focus on scholarship, and wrote a series of books, the most notable of which, his 1952 biography of Abraham Lincoln, became a national bestseller. He was working on a biography of Lincoln's second secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, when he committed suicide after receiving a diagnosis of throat cancer.