Banks of the Ohio

Abstract

This chapter provides an outline of Edwin M. Stanton's early life. Stanton was the grandson of Thomas Norman, who lived just a short distance from Zimmerman's Tavern in Culpeper County, Virginia. Martha Wale, a widow who ran the tavern, suspected that Stanton shared his ancestor's obstinacy and thought it boded ill for the Confederacy's bid for independence during the Civil War. Norman had lived his entire life in the watershed of the upper Rappahannock. During the American Revolution, he served in the Western Battalion of the Virginia Line, with which he descended the Ohio River in bateaux to the falls of the Ohio, between Kentucky and the Illinois country. The rest of this chapter focuses on Stanton's childhood, the genteel poverty that stalked his youth, his views on militarism, his relationship with Mary Lamson, and his education at Kenyon College in Ohio under the guardianship of Daniel Collier. It also discusses the cholera epidemic that occurred in Ohio.