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Introduction
As Ohioans vote in the 2008
presidential election in which the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have
divided the country, it is interesting to look back to the divisions
in the North over Lincoln’s policies during the Civil War. Anti-war
Democrats were called “Copperheads” and several Ohio politicians
were prominent in their ranks. They have been labeled in the
following three groups:
Ohio Congressman Alexander Long was
among the first group and was almost expelled from Congress for his
views. Ohio Congressman Clement Vallandigham was a prominent
advocate for the second group. Congressman George Pendleton
represented the views of the third group. This article will feature
the fate of the latter two Peace Democrats during the Ohio
gubernatorial election of 1863 and the presidential election of
1864.
Ohio’s 1863 Gubernatorial
Election
The Ohio gubernatorial election of
1863 saw one of the most unusual campaigns in the history of the
state. Peace Democrat and exiled Congressman Clement Vallandigham
ran for governor from Windsor, Ontario, Canada. How did this happen?
Born in New Lisbon, Vallandigham
was a lawyer who become a state legislator from Dayton and then ran
unsuccessfully for Congress in 1852 and 1854. In 1856, he lost by a
tiny margin, appealed to Congress, and was seated with the key help
of Southern Democrats, fueling his sympathy for the slave-holding
South. Vallandigham was narrowly re-elected in 1858 and 1860. In the
1860 presidential election, he supported the Democratic candidate
Stephen Douglas. With the firing on Ft. Sumter and Lincoln’s policy
of defending the Union, Vallandigham became a leading Congressional
opponent of Lincoln’s policy, calling for a negotiated peace with
the Confederacy.
For his views, he was almost
assaulted by Cleveland regiments camped outside Washington and was
charged with treason by some Republicans. Vallandigham’s opposition
to abolition of slavery added to the movement to defeat him. The
Lincoln administration recruited wounded general Robert Schenck to
oppose Vallandigham, who lost his seat in the October, 1862 election
despite an overall Democratic Congressional victory in Ohio.
Returning to Washington to complete his term, Vallandigham made a
farewell pro-peace speech in Congress on January 14, 1863,
denouncing Abraham Lincoln for the Emancipation Proclamation and his
war policies.
Returning to Ohio. Vallandigham
decided to run for governor against pro-war Democratic governor
David Tod. General Ambrose Burnside, relieved of the command of the
Army of the Potomac after the Fredericksburg disaster, was now the
commander of the Military District of Ohio, and issued General Order
Number 38, which warned against “the habit of declaring sympathies
for the enemy”.
Vallandigham then gave a speech
denouncing “King” Lincoln and claiming that the war was not being
fought to save the Union but to free blacks and enslave whites. He
was arrested on May 5, 1863 and then immediately tried and convicted
by a military commission, and sentenced to imprisonment for the
duration of the war. His lawyer’s attempt to obtain a writ of habeas
corpus was denied by a federal judge, a decision upheld in February,
1864 by the United States Supreme Court.
Not wanting to make Vallandigham a
Copperhead hero and martyr, President Lincoln instead decided to
exile him to the Confederacy. A reluctant General Braxton Bragg took
custody of the exile in Tennessee on May 25. Vallandigham and the
Confederacy did not make a comfortable match. On June 17, he sailed
from Wilmington, North Carolina on a blockade runner for Bermuda,
and then to Halifax, Nova Scotia. From there he went to Niagara,
Ontario. There, on July 15, he accepted the nomination of the Ohio
Democrats, outraged by his arrest and exile, for governor. Moving to
Windsor, Ontario across from Detroit in August, he proceeded to wage
his gubernatorial campaign from exile. His platform included
withdrawing Ohio from the Union if there was no peace with the
South.
His opponent was not the incumbent
Tod but rather John Brough (pronounced "bruff"), another pro-war
Democrat. Vallandigham's campaign was undercut by the Union
victories that summer at Vicksburg and Gettysburg and the danger
posed by the John Hunt Morgan raid into Ohio.
At Republican rallies, the chant
was:
Hurrah for Brough and Abraham
and a rope to hang Vallandigham.
The Democratic response was:
May every Buckeye-smooth or
rough,
Denounce the renegade Jack Brough,
May every woman, child and man,
Pray Heaven to bless Vallandigham.
Vallandigham lost in a landslide by
100,000 votes (including about 40,000 Ohio soldiers serving in the
Union armies).
The 1864 Presidential Election
Undeterred by this defeat,
Vallandigham returned to Ohio (in disguise), arriving in Dayton on
June 15, 1864, after which he was elected a delegate to the
Democratic Party presidential nominating convention in Chicago.
Despite demands for his arrest, Lincoln followed the advice of
Horace Greeley and decided to leave Vallandigham free.
In August, he wrote a peace plank
at a divided convention. To his dismay, this was rejected by the
Democratic presidential nominee George McClellan (twice fired as
commander of the Army of the Potomac by Abraham Lincoln). Also enter
“Gentleman” George Pendleton, a moderate Peace Democratic
Congressman from Cincinnati (elected in 1856, after losing in his
first Congressional campaign in 1854). As a representative of the
moderate Peace Democrats, he was nominated for Vice-President on the
second ballot.
With the fall of Atlanta and the
overwhelming support of Union army soldiers, Lincoln easily won
re-election, carrying all but three states and winning the electoral
college vote 212-21. He carried Ohio by 60,000 votes (including
30,000 Union soldier votes).
Post-Civil War
Vallandigham attempted a political
comeback in the 1868 election but lost the Democratic nomination for
Ben Wade’s United States Senate seat. He then attempted to regain
his Congressional seat but was again defeated by Schenck.
Vallandigham returned to his law practice. Representing an accused
murderer, he accidentally shot himself while preparing the defense
and died June 17, 1871. His funeral was attended by George Pendleton
and Salmon Chase (whom he had supported for president in 1868).
Pendleton also suffered more
political setbacks. He was defeated when he again ran for Congress
in 1866. He gained prominence with a Jacksonian currency plan to pay
off the war debts. He became a candidate for the Democratic
presidential nomination in 1868, actually leading on the first
ballot but then losing to Horatio Seymour, who would lose the
election to Ulysses Grant.
Pendleton then ran for Ohio
governor in 1869 but lost to the incumbent Republican, Civil War
hero, and future President of the United States - Rutherford Hayes
(although only by 7,500 out of 465,000 votes). Despite these three
successive political setbacks, Pendleton made a comeback by winning
a seat in the United States Senate in 1878. There, he is remembered
as the author of the Pendleton civil service reform legislation
enacted in 1882 in tribute to assassinated President James Garfield
from Ohio. However, this led to his loss of his Senate seat in 1884,
in part due to his own party’s opposition to this reform
legislation.
The administration of President
Grover Cleveland, the first Democrat elected since the Civil War,
appointed Pendleton Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary
to Germany. He held this position until 1889, following Cleveland’s
defeat for re-election. Shortly afterwards, he died while traveling
in Belgium.
References:
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. New York: Fordham University Press.
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