It’s not every day that Hollywood gives the star treatment to a political figure who’s been dead for more than 150 years.
And yet there he is — Edwin M. Stanton, Class of 1834 — at the center of the Apple TV+ series “Manhunt,” released earlier this year.
A pair of campus events will celebrate the series about the hunt for President Abraham Lincoln’s assassin and the role played by Stanton, who was secretary of war at the time.
It starts with a screening of all seven episodes of “Manhunt” on Sunday. The historical drama will be shown in its entirety starting at 1 p.m. in Oden Auditorium, 107 College Drive, with a new episode starting each hour and an hour-long break for dinner at 6 p.m.
Then, on Oct. 3, the show’s creator, writer and executive producer, Monica Beletsky, will take part in a panel discussion with Jonathan Tazewell ’84, Thomas S. Turgeon Professor of Drama and Film, and Professor of History Glenn McNair. The conversation at 7:30 p.m. in Oden Auditorium will be moderated by Wendy Singer, special assistant to the president for strategic initiatives and partnerships and Roy T. Wortman Distinguished Professor of History.
Both events are free and open to the public. They are sponsored by the Center for the Study of American Democracy and the Bicentennial Advisory Committee.
At the heart of the series — originally released in March — is Stanton, who served as secretary of war from 1862 to 1868 during the height of the Civil War and its contentious aftermath. As Lincoln’s right-hand man, he organized the war effort, marshaling the resources of the North to defeat the Confederacy. In the aftermath of Lincoln’s assassination, Stanton led the effort to track down John Wilkes Booth and the others who conspired to kill the president.
“In American politics, Edwin Stanton is easily Kenyon’s most influential person,” said Joseph L. Klesner, CSAD director and a professor of political science and international studies. “Not only did he organize the effort to win the war, but he and Lincoln were aligned on the idea of having a reconstruction, and he worked to push forward Reconstruction in the post-war period.”
Stanton’s role in promoting freedom and bringing about the end of slavery is compellingly told through “Manhunt,” he said.
“It’s a well-dramatized story that I think everybody will enjoy watching,” Klesner said. “It’s really important to reflect on the sacrifices that were made at that time, and hopefully those kinds of reflections will cause us to rekindle our support for democracy.”
In “Manhunt,” Tobias Menzies plays Stanton as “an immovable but vulnerable force, marching forward sadly, angrily, but most of all steadily” as he leads the efforts to track down Booth and fight for Lincoln’s Reconstruction plans, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Born in Steubenville, Ohio in 1813, Stanton arrived at Kenyon in 1831, and within three months he was promoted to sophomore status. A voracious reader and skilled debater, he also, as the story goes, once “borrowed” the favorite horse of College founder Philander Chase and took it for a joy ride. He became a lawyer and went on to be named attorney general by President James Buchanan in 1860 before becoming secretary of war two years later. Stanton was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Ulysses S. Grant but died as the result of chronic asthma at the age of 55 and before he could take office.
Singer explained that Beletsky’s decision to tell this story — based on the bestselling nonfiction book of the same title as the series from James L. Swanson — by focusing on Stanton reveals not only something important about Beletsky and her desire to elevate untold stories, but it also reveals something about Stanton’s alma mater.
“It’s important to remember that Kenyon is a critical institution of learning in the United States and has been for a very, very long time,” she said. “We didn’t just appear as a top producer of Fulbrights or all the other accolades that are true of Kenyon today; there’s a history of greatness that extends far into the past, and we should recognize that past.”
Stanton — whose son, Edwin Lamson Stanton, was valedictorian of Kenyon’s Class of 1863 — was awarded an honorary degree by the College in 1866, five years before the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp with his image. His legacy was further celebrated at “The Stanton Day” festival in 1906 when industrialist Andrew Carnegie — who earlier had donated $50,000 to the College for the Edwin M. Stanton Professorship in Economics — delivered an address about Stanton’s life and donated $25,000 to endow a scholarship fund for students like Stanton, who never graduated college, with inadequate financial means.
“It is fitting in this moment as Kenyon celebrates its bicentennial that we both pay tribute to Edwin Stanton and this new portrayal of him in ‘Manhunt,’” Singer wrote in a brief biography she prepared for the occasion. “The series — like the letters we have from Stanton in the Kenyon archives — demonstrate his intensity and overwhelming dedication to his work. These characteristics followed him from Gambier to Washington and throughout his career. With the College’s own deep connections to filmmaking and storytelling, we appreciate this latest cultural representation of a man from Kenyon’s past.”