No figure of the Civil War era was more controversial than Clement L. Vallandigham. Republican party editors and orators denounced and detested him as a minion of Jeff Davis and a traitor. Self-styled “War Democrats” believed him devoid of patriotism and devoted to self-interest, playing a partisan fiddle while Rome burned. Most Midwestern Democrats, on the other hand, considered him their spokesman, able to put their thoughts, hopes, and fears into words. These Midwesterners, whether yeomen farmers of the backwoods area or workingmen of the cities, viewed him as their champion and endorsed his arguments against emancipation, his defense of states’ rights, and his pleas for peace and compromise.
In opposing the changes brought by the Civil War, Vallandigham played the role of conservative. He recognized war as more than a military contest waged on far-flung battlefields. He recognized the revolution occurring within the Civil War, transforming the federal union into “a new nation,” giving industry ascendancy over agriculture, extending rights to the black man, ending the upper Midwest’s chance to play balance-of-power politics, and threatening civil rights and personal freedoms. As the spokesman for Western Democrats, “Valiant Val” popularized the slogan “The Constitution as it is, the Union as it was.”
These Democratic critics of change and of the Lincoln administration came to be called “Copperheads.” They tried to slow down and stop the revolution taking place within the war and they called for peace and compromise, not only to stop the slaughter, but to halt the changes which were an integral part of the conflict. Midwestern Democrats invariably applauded Vallandigham for defending the political and economic interests of their section and nodded in agreement when he said he was “inexorably hostile” to “Puritan domination in religion or morals or literature or politics.”
Nationalist historians of the post-Civil War era have judged Vallandigham harshly, often accepting wartime political propaganda as fact. Because he opposed the will of the majority and the course of events, they have characterized him as obstructionist and traitor. Some have called him disloyal to his section and his country. Still others have furthered the legend that he was involved in the nefarious schemes of the Knights of the Golden Circle and linked to the conspiracy to establish a “Northwest Confederacy.”
Conversely, his only biographer (a devoted and sympathetic brother) used the whitewash brush rather freely in A Life of Clement L. Vallandigham, published in Baltimore in 1872. Through omission and invention, James L. Vallandigham presented his brother as an heroic figure—a man of high intelligence and signal courage, devoted to principle and persecuted by fanatics and bigots.
Civil War historians who supposed that the truth about Vallandigham lay somewhere between the views expressed by the biographer-brother and the nationalist historians have long recognized the need for a scholarly and systematic study of the controversial Copperhead, since his activities involved such questions as civil rights, smear campaigns, white supremacy, subversive secret societies, Midwestern sectionalism, wartime politics, and, above all, the problem of dissent during war in a democracy. His role as the country’s best-known exile and his activities in the Democratic National Convention of 1864 add to his importance as a historical figure. Even in the postwar years he played a major part in two important events, the Philadelphia Convention of 1866 and the presidential contest two years later.
The aspect of Vallandigham’s life most meaningful to contemporary readers, however, concerns his role as a dissenter during the Civil War. Although protest against war was no new phenomenon in the United States, the limits of dissent were undefined and very vague, creating a special problem for the Lincoln administration and its chief critic. Clement L. Vallandigham, dissenter extraordinary, deserves an in-depth study so that some legends may be laid aside and his role as a Copperhead may be reassessed.