9

Apostle for Peace

THE FINAL SESSION of the Thirty-seventh Congress convened at noon on Monday, December 1, 1862. Vallandigham sat at his desk, smiling at friends and foes. “Old Thad” Stevens, the fiery radical whip who bore his seventy winters well, hobbled down the aisle. The smiling face of Schuyler Colfax beamed at his friends, nodded to his enemies. The sturdy form of Elihu B. Washburne, reputed to be in the confidence of President Lincoln, cast a long shadow, even at noontime. John P. Hickman, the Pennsylvanian whom Vallandigham had twice bested in House encounters, fumed at his desk, awaiting a chance for revenge. The Republicans controlled the machinery of legislation, so Vallandigham and the Democrats would be able to do little more than cast minority votes.¹

After the usual preliminaries, the House listened to the reading of President Lincoln’s message. Two things in it disturbed Vallandigham and other conservatives. The president refused to retract his emancipation proclamation, despite the fact that the fall elections in the upper midwest had apparently repudiated that policy. “The tenacity with which Mr. Lincoln holds on to his emancipation proclivities,” wrote one conservative Democrat, “cannot fail, I think, to alarm the friends of the Union and of Constitutional liberty throughout our land.”²

The conservatives’ second concern was with some rather radical statements in the message. “The dogmas of the quiet past,” the message stated in one place, “are inadequate to the stormy present . . . . As our case is new, we must think anew. We must disenthrall our selves and then we shall save our country.”³ Did Lincoln have some new radical measures up his sleeve? Conservatives thought of the French Revolution and shuddered.

When Justin A. Morrill of Vermont moved to have President Lincoln’s message printed, Vallandigham rose to ask for a debate. He wanted a public opportunity to express his displeasure with certain sections of the message and with presidential policy. But Morrill refused to yield the floor to the congressman from Ohio, so the gadfly missed an opportunity to harass the administration.

Soon afterwards, Vallandigham introduced a resolution to investigate the postmaster general’s practice of closing the mails to some Democratic newspapers, especially those most critical of the Lincoln administration. He was pleased that the resolution won House approval, perhaps because some radical Republicans never missed an opportunity to kick Postmaster General Montgomery Blair in the shins.⁴

Vallandigham was less successful, however, in helping other recalcitrant Democrats secure the passage of two partisan resolutions. One requested a report from the president on arbitrary arrests; the other accused Lincoln of usurping authority and violating the Constitution. Administration forces closed ranks and tabled both resolutions.⁵

Several days later C.L.V. was back at his old game of trying to discredit Lincoln and his policies—acting as gadfly and obstructionist. On December 6 he introduced a package of six resolutions which accused the president of “attempting to establish a dictatorship,” reprimanded him for interfering with “established institutions” (that is, slavery), and instructed him to refuse any peace or compromise which would recognize the independence of the Confederacy.

As these resolutions indicated, Vallandigham was not yet a peace-at-any-price man. Reports had circulated in the lobbies and cloakrooms that Secretary of State Seward intended to negotiate a “peace” which would acquiesce in Southern independence. As a Westerner, Vallandigham could never permit a foreign power, whether England or the Confederate States of America, to control the lower half of the Mississippi River. Fearful that the rumors were actually a trial balloon of the administration, the Dayton congressman put his opposition into the record. From the very first, he had desired peace and reunion, not peace and separation. Needless to say, the Republican majority in the House of Representatives quickly disposed of the six resolutions, tabling them by a strict party vote of 79 to 50.⁶

Vallandigham next joined Samuel S. Cox in trying to obtain freedom for Dr. Edson B. Olds, an Ohio citizen being held in solitary confinement in Fort Lafayette in the national capital. Cox, who represented the Columbus district in Congress, and Vallandigham both knew Dr. Olds as a longtime, respected Democrat from Lancaster and as editor of the outspoken Ohio Eagle. Vallandigham’s friendship dated back to the years when the two served in the Ohio legislature, defending “Polk’s War” against Whig onslaughts. Later Dr. Olds served three terms as a congressman, winning a reputation for criticizing abolitionists and radicals who put themselves above the law. After the Civil War started, Dr. Olds wrote strong anti-Lincoln editorials for the Ohio Eagle and denounced the administration from the lecture platforms. In 1862 he directed much of his criticism at “the Kentucky situation,” where Union soldiers engaged in nightly marauding and Union generals imposed a military dictatorship. Olds contended that the high-handed tactics of the generals and troops changed Kentucky Unionists into secessionists.

Some Republicans in Lancaster convinced Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton that Dr. Olds’s pen should be stilled and his tongue silenced. During the night of August 12, 1862, three federal agents broke into his home and arrested him, treating him like a criminal rather than a well-known Ohio citizen.⁷ Vallandigham, Cox, and a dozen other prominent Ohio Democrats had formulated a protest, drafting a petition to President Lincoln that asked him to intercede in behalf of simple justice for Dr. Olds. Lincoln chose to ignore that petition.⁸ In mid-December Vallandigham joined other Democratic congressmen in the bid to gain Dr. Olds’s release, but the wheels of justice moved slowly—seemed, in fact, to be at a standstill. While the prisoner languished in a felon’s cell, the death of a state senator in Dr. Olds’s district created a vacancy and necessitated a special election. Olds’s friends, viewing him as a martyr, nominated the incarcerated Democrat for the legislative post, which he won by 2500 votes over a Republican opponent. It was the largest vote ever given to a candidate in Fairfield County. Dr. Olds’s resounding election victory embarrassed the administration, and the secretary of war ordered his quiet release on December 20. Olds’s friends then prepared a gala homecoming reception for the ex-prisoner, and the shouts and cheers reverberated all the way to Washington, giving heart to Clement L. Vallandigham. The Dayton congressman noted that Dr. Olds’s arrest seemed to have made him a hero—a martyr for the principle of free speech. It brought Olds publicity and political rewards. The lesson made a deep impression upon Vallandigham.

Democratic contentions that President Lincoln’s emergency measures had violated the Constitution prompted Republican leaders to try to put a blanket of approval over them. Thaddeus Stevens drafted a bill to expiate “the President and other persons for suspending the writ of habeas corpus.” This so-called Indemnity Bill met Democratic resistance in the House. Vallandigham, in his turn, arose to challenge the bill and stated his unequivocal opposition to it. He again offered the six resolutions he had introduced on December 5 as a substitute for the sections of the Indemnity Bill. By mutual consent, the House members postponed the consideration of Stevens’s resolutions and Vallandigham’s amendments until “the first Monday of January, 1863.”⁹

Vallandigham took a firm stand against two other Republican-sponsored measures which were debated in the House in the closing weeks of December 1862. One was a bill to welcome West Virginia into the Union, thereby sanctioning the president’s use of “military force and political puppets” to create a new state out of a portion of an old one. C.L.V., like other Democrats, believed Lincoln’s action in bringing the new state into being unconstitutional and based upon pretense rather than fact. The Republican majority ignored the carping criticism of conservative Democrats and by a 96 to 55 vote added a new star to the flag.¹⁰ The action put the stamp of approval on the questionable tactics which had carved Virginia in two; it also increased the Republican majority in Congress and contributed to offsetting Democratic gains in the ’62 congressional elections.

The second measure concerned Lincoln’s efforts to free the slaves by proclamation. Democratic congressmen, especially those from the border states, still criticized the preliminary emancipation proclamation of September 22 and still sought to dissuade the president from issuing the definitive one on January 1, 1863. A Kentucky congressman, therefore, introduced a resolution which characterized the proclamation as an ill-timed, illegal, and intolerable transaction. Vallandigham too believed presidential emancipation unwarranted, unnecessary, devisive, and unconstitutional. He believed it would discourage enlistments, breed discontent in the border states, unite the South to a man, and dampen the war effort in the North. It would make peace, compromise, and reunion more difficult to achieve. After tabling the antiemancipation resolution by an 81 to 53 vote, Republicans countered by bringing forth a statement which endorsed Lincoln’s emancipation policy; the president’s policy, it declared, was “well adopted to hasten the restoration of peace, well chosen as a war measure, and had proper regard for the rights of citizens and the prosperity of a free government.” The resolution carried, 78 to 51. Vallandigham cast one of the votes against it.¹¹

The Dayton congressman left Washington only once in December. In the company of George H. Pendleton, another Democratic congressman from Ohio, he took a hurried trip to New York to visit the Wood brothers and speak at a rally which they had organized. The Wood brothers, who controlled the New York News, also tried to control the city’s Democratic organization. Fernando Wood, previously a three-term mayor of New York City, had won a congressional seat in the 1862 election. Although he had given the war qualified support in 1861-1862, he became disillusioned with administration policy and began to view Vallandigham as a statesman and prophet. His brother Benjamin, who sat in the Thirty-seventh Congress in a seat near Vallandigham’s, developed considerable respect for the Dayton representative and their mutual respect evolved into a personal friendship. The brothers promised Vallandigham and Pendleton a serenade and a chance to speak if they would visit their fair city.

Soon after the two Ohioans, in the company of Congressman Fernando Wood, arrived at their New York hotel, “Dodsworth’s Band” serenaded them and a crowd gathered. Calls from the crowd brought Vallandigham and Pendleton out on the balcony. The Daytonian, grabbing at the opportunity to speak first, lit into the Lincoln administration and soon had the crowd in a responsive mood. He listed and elaborated upon Lincoln’s many “crimes,” saving his harshest comments for the arbitrary arrests perpetrated in a supposedly free country. He would not seek his own safety, he said defiantly, by paying compliments to a chief executive undeserving of any. He did not fear the handcuffs carried by Lincoln’s agents nor the knives or guns carried by assassins. His assassination had been bluntly suggested in a hostile press. The editor of the Wheeling Intelligencer, for example, had written, “Brutus slew a man for treason in the capital whose lowest characteristics would ennoble Vallandigham.”¹² “The traitors,” stated another radical, pointing a finger at the Dayton congressman, “have only two rights—the right to be hanged and the right to be damned.”¹³

After an hour, C.L.V. finally got around to the subject of peace, the desirability of compromise and reunion. The public demand for peace, he said, was growing louder and longer. Humanity called out for peace; charity would underwrite the compromise. If the Democratic party regained political ascendancy, compromise could be achieved and the Union restored. When Vallandigham finally finished, he received a prolonged applause. The enthusiastic audience evidently approved of his views.¹⁴

George H. Pendleton, playing second fiddle, then had his chance to offer an antiadministration tune. His speech was brief, however, for the hour was very late. The informal program ended shortly after midnight, and the two Ohio congressmen retired to their rooms. The alacrity with which the New York listeners accepted pleas for peace impressed Vallandigham. The mood of the country was changing. No longer was he a prophet in the wilderness. Many, maybe millions, were ready to applaud peace doctrines. It seemed as if all the country needed was a bold leader to step forward and transform the latent peace sentiment into an open crusade.

The defeat of General Ambrose E. Burnside and the Army of the Potomac at Chancellorsville on December 13 nurtured defeatism and seemed to give validity to Vallandigham’s contention that the South could not be conquered. Democrats also gained a hearing for their claim that the multiplication of unconstitutional acts presaged the establishment of a military dictatorship. The intensity of defeatism and the fear of despotism furnished fertile ground for the spread of propeace sentiment. On December 22, three days before the birthday of the Prince of Peace, Vallandigham introduced a resolution in Congress proposing “an immediate cessation of hostilities.” He said that such action might revive negotiations for peace and effect reunion. The North should devise some amendments to the Constitution in order to secure “the rights of the several States and sections within the Union.”¹⁵ The Republican majority, led by Thaddeus Stevens and Schuyler Colfax, quickly quashed Vallandigham’s public bid for peace. Republican congressmen might be able to sidetrack his demand for “an immediate cessation of hostilities,” but they could not eradicate the peace sentiment pervading the hearts of the people and prevailing in many sections of the upper Midwest.

The year 1862 ended on a gloomy note. Statisticians totaled the Union casualties at Chancellorsville, and the figures passed the 13,000 mark. Prophets of gloom gained popularity in certain circles. There was widespread disgust with Lincoln’s emancipation measures in Democratic quarters. “The year 1862,” Samuel Medary wrote in the Crisis, “has been a year of blood and plunder, of carnage and conflagration . . . of falsehood and corruption . . . of defeat, desolation, and death.”¹⁶ William T. Logan, whom Vallandigham had helped select to edit the Democratic daily in Dayton, the Empire, wrote in the same gloomy vain: “Civil War stalks the land. The earth is crimson with the blood of brave men. Desolation, ruin, and suffering follow the march of contending armies. . . . In almost every house there is a mourner, and in almost every heart a vacant place. The ferry man on the river Styx has done a heavy freighting business during the last twelve-month.”¹⁷

Over the Christmas holidays, Vallandigham, who stayed in Washington, decided that he would try to crystalize the peace sentiment so prevalent on every hand, and would seek recognition as the apostle of peace. He prepared a formal, propeace oration to be given at the earliest opportunity after Congress ended its holiday recess. “Next week or the following,” he wrote on New Year’s Day, “I shall speak at length on peace, war, and the present state of the Union—also the future.”¹⁸

Vallandigham received the opportunity to give his carefully prepared speech on the afternoon of January 14, when Stevens’s Indemnity Bill (with the Dayton congressman’s amendatory resolutions) again became the official business of the House. He had let some of his colleagues and some newspapermen know that he had a major speech ready and that he hoped to give it on the fourteenth.

After gaining the floor, Vallandigham left his seat on the extreme left and moved to the center of the opposition benches. Members of the House noticed his action and laid aside their newspapers or put down their pens, for reports had circulated that he had “a speech worth listening to.” Veteran congressmen, quite immune to oratory, moved into empty seats nearer the speaker. “Old Thad” Stevens, wearing his snuff-colored wig, braced himself in his chair and grimly eyed Vallandigham, shuffling his papers only a few feet away. Owen Lovejoy, the abolitionist congressman from Illinois, hitched his chair forward and raised his hand to his ear to catch the opening sentences. Charles W. Wickliffe, a gout-ridden representative from Kentucky, used both a crutch and a cane to hobble down the aisle and seat himself at C.L.V.’s elbow. Schuyler Colfax, smiling as always, turned in his chair, brushed back his locks, and gave his rapt attention. The ladies and soldiers in the overcrowded galleries ceased their chatter as they impatiently awaited the opening words. Calm and self-confident, Vallandigham looked his audience in the eye, seeking complete silence and full attention.¹⁹

He began mildly enough, reviewing the events leading to the war. He gathered fire as he blamed the Republican party, rather than the fire-eaters of the South, for the crisis of 1860-1861. He reproached President Lincoln for foisting a policy of coercion upon a reluctant populace. He saw Southern radicalism as but a natural reaction to the rantings of the abolitionists and the dogma of the Higher Law advocates. The Fort Sumter affair, Vallandigham continued, unleashed a torrent of hysteria upon the country, sweeping all before it: “The gospel of love perished; hate sat enthroned; and the sacrifices of blood smoked at every altar.”

Vallandigham next discussed the series of Lincolnian proclamations which, he said, violated the Constitution and eroded congressional power. A wave of arbitrary arrests alarmed defenders of “the inviolate rights of the citizens.” The administration heaped corruption atop corruption and taxes atop taxes, threatening the nation’s survival. An alert electorate, reacting to the incompetence of the administration and concerned with saving civil rights, repudiated Lincoln and the Republicans in the fall elections of 1862. The administration, despite having all the resources—men, money, materials, and public confidence—had failed “utterly, signally, and disastrously.” The people of the North had given their wealth, confidence, and lives in vain; excessive taxes, a menacing national debt, mangled bodies, thousands of graves, and military defeats were “the true trophies of war.” President Lincoln had turned to emancipation as a means to divert attention from his own failures and the country’s frustrations. The war ought not to continue another day or another hour. The country, and especially the upper Midwest, wanted compromise, conciliation, and peace. “The people of the West,” said the conservative and sectionalist, “demand peace, and they begin to more than suspect that New England is in the way.” Eastern disunionists had driven the South out of the Union; they might also cause the Northwest to go its own way.

“The experiment of war,” Vallandigham continued, “has been tried long enough.” It was time to turn to a peace policy. He proposed, therefore, “an informal, practical recognition” of the Confederacy, mediation by a friendly foreign power, and concessions aimed at eventual reunion. He asked for an armistice—not a formal treaty—and the withdrawal of Northern armies from the seceded states. Then, as steps to reunion, the two sections should declare an “absolute free trade between the North and South,” restore travel and communication, open up the railroads, and give all the natural and artificial forces which tend to reunite “the fullest sway.” “Let time,” he added, “do his office—drying tears, dispelling sorrows, mellowing passions, and making herb and grass and tree grow again upon the hundred battlefields of this terrible war. Let passions have time to cool, and reason to resume sway.” This program of armistice, aimed at rebuilding the comity of the two sections, would bring “eventual reunion” and “the ultimate achievement of the nation’s destiny.”²⁰

He preached his gospel of peace for an hour without interruption. Some of his colleagues occasionally nodded approvingly; others shook their heads now and then to show their dissent. The crowds in the galleries, even the many uniformed soldiers, sat silent and spellbound. The speech was Clement L. Vallandigham’s formal bid to lead the peace crusade.

Although the Dayton congressman spoke with an earnestness which was convincing, his plan of reunion was really quite vague and impractical. Southern rebels wanted no peace except that which promised them independence and the chance to go their own way. Nor did most Northerners believe that all was lost; they recognized that their advantages in population, production, and capital would give them an eventual military victory. Northern morale had not yet fully crumbled and there still existed a fatalistic faith in the future.

Vallandigham also erred in believing that the federal union of prewar days could be restored. The nation and government had already changed. Industrialism held the reins. Furthermore, the Emancipation Proclamation was irrevocable; Lincoln could not put back into slavery men whom he had declared to be free. Vallandigham simply misjudged both the temper of the North and the goals of the South. He spoke more like a dreamer than the practical man he claimed to be.²¹

Four colleagues, including one Democrat, secured the floor to answer Vallandigham and put their disapproval of his recommendations into the record. John A. Bingham of Ohio, who viewed himself as a radical Republican, denied most of what Vallandigham had said. He insisted that the rebels rather than the Republicans had brought on the war. The president was duty bound to suppress the insurrection. Vallandigham was a defeatist; the North could and would raise more men, money, and materials to win the war. Furthermore, Vallandigham was a false prophet, guilty of ignoring some basic facts and perverting others. Next James M. Ashley of Ohio reprimanded the Dayton congressman for failing to vote for the army appropriation bills. “When our flag is dishonored and our sons murdered,” he stated, pointing his finger at Vallandigham, “you sit here and refuse to devote a dollar to defend our institutions.” Ashley then reminded Vallandigham that he had failed of reelection—had been repudiated by his constituents. Bah! Vallandigham did not represent the wishes of the people of Ohio nor the upper Midwest. Time would reward and honor those who had the courage and the will to carry on the war to crush treason, both in the South and on the home front.²²

Owen Lovejoy of Illinois and Samuel C. Fessenden of Maine endorsed Ashley’s critical comments. Lovejoy bluntly assured his colleagues that Vallandigham did not speak for the Midwest —he was a misguided apostle preaching falsehood rather than truth. Fessenden defended New England and rebuked Vallandigham for stirring up sectional spirit, which affected national unity adversely.²³

Henrick B. Wright of Pennsylvania was the lone Democrat to rise and deny Vallandigham’s contentions. Wright said he still had full faith in the eventual triumph of Northern arms, and he curtly told Vallandigham that he had deceived himself as to the Southern mind. Men who want independence are not interested in compromise and reunion. The president was guilty of errors of judgment, but such blunders did not excuse citizens from supporting their flag and their country. “Demagogues cannot corrupt the people,” Wright said as he looked straight at Vallandigham, “and woe to the men who deceive them.”²⁴

Vallandigham tried to get the floor to answer his critics. He stood in the aisle and sought the Speaker’s attention. But Speaker Galusha A. Grow ignored him and soon directed the business of the House in another direction. Evidently he felt that Vallandigham had already had too much of a hearing.

Although many Republican newspapers made no mention of Vallandigham’s peace speech, those that did commented on it adversely. Some called its author a traitor and defined his speech as “a treasonable production.” “The people of the Northwest spurn him,” wrote Isaac Jackson Allen of the Ohio State Journal, “and spit upon his detestable dogma.”²⁵ One resentful Republican suggested they hang Vallandigham first and apologize afterward.²⁶ He was “a hyena” who ought to be hunted down and shot, “a secession toad” who ought to be “punctured with the spear of Ithuriel.” He was as much an enemy of the country as the rebels of the South—neither should be tolerated; both must be whipped.²⁷

A considerable number of Ohio Democrats joined the Republicans in criticizing Vallandigham’s speech of January 14. Some thought it would hurt the Democracy, giving Republicans a chance to stigmatize the party. He had drunk from the cup of defeatism, they said, and had forfeited the right to speak for the party. Samuel S. Cox, for example, repudiated the idea of an armistice. Hugh J. Jewett, already at odds with Vallandigham, used the propeace speech as an excuse to sever personal relations. Some who had befriended him earlier backed away, mumbling about leprosy. “He has at last revealed to the country his true position,” wrote a former friend. “He is a rebel, and I will henceforth treat him as such.”²⁸

On the other hand, many of Vallandigham’s defenders praised him for his bold step forward. John T. Logan of the Dayton Empire called the apostle of peace “the greatest living American statesman” and described his exposition as “one of the ablest ever delivered in the halls of Congress.”²⁹ “It is a speech,” wrote James J. Faran in the Cincinnati Enquirer, “which would add to the fame of a Clay, or a Webster, or a Burke, or a Chatham.”³⁰ Samuel Medary of the Crisis cheered. At last the Dayton congressman had joined his camp of extremists. He therefore paid Vallandigham one compliment after another. “This is no ordinary speech—made by no ordinary man,” wrote the Columbus curmudgeon, “and under circumstances the most remarkable which ever overtook any nation or people. It may be well if this nation ponders seriously and with judgment over the words of wisdom and burning eloquence which run through every paragraph, sentence, and line.”³¹

Praise for Vallandigham came from other quarters. The Wood brothers, using the editorial page of the New York Daily News, designated the Ohio congressman as the leader of the peace crusade.³² The Boston Courier endorsed Vallandigham’s peace sentiments. So did scores of lesser known papers, as a groundswell for peace and compromise swept over the land. The multitudes began to see him as a prophet and to put their faith in him. He expressed sentiments held in their hearts, once suppressed by the surge of patriotism. “ ‘Peace’ is on a million lips,” wrote John W. McElwee of the Hamilton True Telegraph, “and it will thunder, ere long, in the ears of our rulers like an Alpine storm.”³³ Vallandigham’s propeace speech, entitled The Great Civil War in America and published as a pamphlet, sold like hotcakes at five cents a copy. “The Vallandigham Polka,” described as a “spirited piece of music,”³⁴ gained popularity at the backwoods dances and at party rallies. A new book entitled The Record of Hon. C. L. Vallandigham on Abolition, the Union, and the Civil War experienced a widespread sale in Democratic circles.³⁵ Intended to help him gain the governor’s chair, the book impressed Vallandigham’s old friends and won new ones. “Those who have been accustomed to denounce Mr. VALLANDIGHAM as a traitor and disunionist,” wrote the partisan publisher, “will not take a favorable interest in this Record, for they will find their slanderous accusations nailed to the wall, and hung up to the gaze of the public.”³⁶ The widespread desire for peace rehabilitated Vallandigham’s reputation in many quarters.

As he regained popularity in certain circles, Vallandigham received many invitations to speak at Democratic rallies. His commitment to his congressional duties allowed him to accept very few. Perhaps the most pressing invitation came from the Democratic Association of Newark, New Jersey. Since he had some admirers there, he accepted an engagement for the evening of February 14, just a month after he had dropped his “peace bomb” in the House of Representatives.

James W. Wall and other Newark Democrats provided an overflow crowd in Concert Hall and an impressive setting. Nehemiah Perry presided at the session, and three “guests of honor” sat on the stage. Each of the guests was well known to the crowd, for each had been arbitrarily arrested, confined in a federal prison for a time, and later released without any charges ever being filed. Each of the three guests was presented “as living testimony” that the Lincoln administration had violated the Constitution, crushed freedom of speech and press, and intimidated Democrats. The clever sponsors wanted to draw a comparison between the lettres de cachet of Louis XVI’s day and the arbitrary practices of the Lincoln administration.

Dennis A. Mahony, onetime editor of the Dubuque Herald, occupied “the chair of honor” nearest Vallandigham and at his right. Mahony had spent three months in “Old Capitol Prison” in Washington for writing editorials too critical of the Lincoln administration. After his release he began a manuscript stating his side of the case and relating his experiences as a prisoner of state. He happened to be in New York helping to get his manuscript ready for the publisher when the Newark Democrats invited him down to occupy a chair of honor on the stage while Vallandigham was speaking.³⁷

James A. McMaster, who occupied the second chair of honor, had spent six months in a federal prison for his bold and imprudent criticism of President Lincoln in the Freeman’s Journal of New York. Unrepentant, McMaster developed a genuine mistrust of Lincoln, believing he wished to establish a despotism. If anything he was more defiant and churlish after his release than before his incarceration.

The third chair of honor was occupied by Henry Reeves who had edited the Republican Watchman of Greenport, Long Island. His intense partisanship led him to defend slavery, oppose the war, eulogize Jefferson Davis, and abuse President Lincoln. In time federal authorities seized him and put him behind bars in Fort Lafayette. After a month he gained his release, more contrite than either McMaster or Mahony.

After each of the three guests of honor was introduced, Nehemiah Perry turned the platform over to Vallandigham, who devoted considerable time to flaying the arbitrary arrests made by the Lincoln administration. He viewed the fall elections of 1862 as a repudiation of “despotism” and as a means of opening the doors of Lincoln’s bastilles. He denounced William H. Seward, “a mere twaddle of a man,” reputed to be organizing a coalition of conservatives and a new political party. He spent most of the hour and a half, however, pleading for peace, compromise, and reunion. Northern peace men and Southern peace men, he said, should cooperate in giving reality to the slogan “The Constitution as it is, the Union as it was.” He prayed that God would favor his people so they could be led through the Red Sea of war and into the promised land of peace. He was willing to assume the leadership of the peace movement; he was willing to be the guide with the “nerves of steel” and “strength of will” which the occasion demanded.³⁸

A deafening applause followed when the Dayton congressman concluded his remarks, bowed gracefully, and sought his chair. Perry, the presiding officer, rushed over to grab Vallandigham’s hand, and the three guests of honor added their compliments. The applause continued for a full four minutes, satiating Vallandigham’s soul and encouraging him to believe that the country wanted peace and that Lincoln and Company misrepresented the people.

When he returned to his desk in Congress, Vallandigham continued his opposition to most administration measures. In his effort to prevent the Conscription Bill from having “any advantages” in the procedural labyrinth, he made rather barbed comments against both Abram B. Olin and James B. Campbell. Olin had introduced the Conscription Bill in the House on February 20, and Campbell had implied that all Democrats were pure and simple traitors. Before proceeding with his prepared speech against the Conscription Bill, Vallandigham expressed contempt for Campbell’s remarks impugning the loyalty of Democratic critics. Looking straight at the Pennsylvania Republican, Vallandigham scornfully declared: “His threat I hurl back with defiance into his teeth. I spurn it. I spit upon it.”³⁹

Pretending innocence, Campbell said that he had no particular person in mind when he denounced traitors, but if the shoe fit, Vallandigham could put it on. “That’s enough” retorted the Ohio congressman, visibly angry. Campbell politely tried to interrupt, begging, “One moment.” “Not a moment after that!” retorted Vallandigham. “I yielded the floor in the spirit of a gentleman and not to be met in the manner of a blackguard!” “The member from Ohio is a blackguard!” Campbell barked back as the galleries applauded the Pennsylvanian and hissed Vallandigham.⁴⁰

His feathers ruffled, the comely cock from Ohio turned from exchanging personal insults to discussing the Conscription Bill. He found many sections of the proposal unpalatable, even repulsive. The provost marshal system for which the bill provided, would put the fate of civil rights in the hands of partisan federal agents, swarming over the land like locusts. That section of the bill which authorized the provost marshals “to inquire into and report . . . all treasonable practices” threatened the liberties of citizens. The courts, not single-minded provost marshals, should have the right to decide what “treasonable practices” were. The provost marshal system should not usurp the functions of the courts.

After finishing his thorough and effectual examination of each section of the Conscription Bill (which was later revised in line with some of Vallandigham’s objections) the Dayton Democrat digressed into partisan pastures. He reminded Republicans that they had been repudiated in the 1862 elections. And when Republicans claimed that there was a need for “forceful conscription,” he declared, they confessed that the people had lost faith in Lincoln, in the administration, and in coercion as a means to an end. Still, he could not resist the opportunity to put in a plug for peace.⁴¹

Even before Vallandigham had taken his seat, James M. Ashley asked for the floor to reply to the Democratic dissenter. Ashley, who liked to badger Vallandigham, called his speech “a ruse” to protect rebels, draft dodgers, and traitors—none of whom merited any defense. Vallandigham, who believed Ashley was persecuting him, tried to rebuke his Republican colleague from Ohio, but the Speaker ignored his calls for attention. Daniel W. Voorhees of Indiana rushed to Vallandigham’s defense, gaining the floor to praise the anti-Conscription Bill speech and chide Ashley for his “offensive speeches.” Voorhees agreed with every criticism made of the measure, he said, and he characterized Vallandigham’s speech as “a spellbound worthy argument.” Ashley, who feared Voorhees’s sharp tongue, did not reply and settled in his seat. He had put “the traitor’s brand” upon Vallandigham again, and he knew that he would later enjoy the toasts and praise of his friends.⁴²

Before the Conscription Bill came to a vote,⁴³ Vallandigham was accused several times more of being an obstructionist and a traitor. Once Thaddeus Stevens made the charge, reading a summary of Vallandigham’s Newark speech from a Republican newspaper. He then questioned the Ohioan’s integrity and patriotism. This time the Speaker gave the Dayton congressman a chance to reply. Vallandigham had “a corrected newspaper version” on his desk and he read what he had actually said, not what a partisan newspaper had accused him of saying. He had a few unkind words for editors who distorted and misrepresented in order to smear him with Republican mud.⁴⁴

Several days later, an old nemesis, John A. Bingham, arose to reprimand Vallandigham for his pro-Southern views and his unpatriotic practices. He even questioned his Ohio colleague’s honesty and intelligence. He too misrepresented Vallandigham’s views in his disorganized discourse, and once more charged that the four-section scheme which he had proposed two years earlier was no more than an attempt to set up four separate confederacies. The Speaker again gave Vallandigham time to correct Bingham’s misstatements and to deny that he sympathized with the rebels. He repeated his oft-uttered contention that the four-section proposal was intended to prevent the Union from breaking up. “My object—the sole motive by which I have been guided from the beginning of this most fatal revolution,” said the oft-abused congressman, “is to maintain the Union and not destroy it.”⁴⁵

The third critic to enter the lists against Vallandigham was another Republican congressman from Ohio, Harrison G. T. Blake. This detractor reminded the Dayton congressman that he had called himself a Western sectionalist and “fire-eater” several years before the war, and then accused him of identifying himself with the South rather than the North during the war years. Blake not only questioned Vallandigham’s patriotism but implied he was a traitor who should be so branded. Again Vallandigham arose to defend himself and again he tried to explain his views to critics who tended to see any opposition to administration measures as treason.⁴⁶ His rebuttal was lost on men in whose hearts a narrow patriotism burned and whose minds equated Republican doctrine with truth and justice.

During the closing hours of the final session of the Thirty-seventh Congress, Vallandigham gave his brief valedictory speech. In a sense it was a plea for fairness on the part of Republicans bent upon abusing Democrats who expressed dissenting views. It was wrong and unfair to label dissident Democrats “traitors” or “secessionists,” he declared. Patriotism would not be served by name-calling, nor unity by misrepresentation. Truth would not bend before the wrath of blind partisanship, and those who let passion dislodge reason would live to regret their over-indulgence.⁴⁷

Before returning to Dayton after Congress adjourned, C.L.V. took a trip into the Northeast to seek new converts for the cause of peace, reconciliation, and reunion. He made a one-night stop in Philadelphia and spoke to a good-sized crowd collected by antiwar Democrats. He catered to the anti-Negro prejudices of the city’s Irish-Americans, who made up the bulk of his appreciative audience, denouncing the administration’s emancipation measures. Then he sermonized on the subject of peace. He recommended a national convention as a means to reunion. Had not the fall elections repudiated the policies of the Lincoln administration, including emancipation and coercion? The country wanted peace, and a national convention seemed to be the best way to make the hopes of the people a reality. The apostle found new converts for his cause in the “City of Brotherly Love.” His Philadelphia experience proved to be “exceedingly gratifying.”⁴⁸

In New York City the Wood brothers, assisted by James A. McMaster, made arrangements for the peace crusader to address the Democratic Union Association. Since most members of the audience read and approved the antiwar editorials in the New York Daily News, Vallandigham had to do more interpolating than converting. His central theme was that the liberties of the people could be saved only by the cession of the war, which had eroded the civil rights of citizens—the arbitrary arrests were proof of that. Those rights could still be saved if compromise and reunion were substituted for coercion and subjugation. He ended with several threats of his own. If Lincoln and “his minions” knew that Democrats would defend their liberties with their lives, those who held the scepter and brandished the sword would not trifle with men’s rights. If Lincoln, “surrounded by the parasites of power,” failed to heed the wishes of the people, a revolution might visit America as in earlier years revolutions had visited overseas countries.⁴⁹

The next day Vallandigham noticed that the New York Times had credited to him things he had not said and views he did not hold. This issue of the Times reached Lincoln’s desk, and the president did not know that he was being misled. Furthermore, a Times editorial added to the misrepresentation with the assertion: “He [Vallandigham] opposed the war, advocated immediate peace, denounced our Conscription Act as ten times worse than that of Poland.”

The apostle of peace, indignant because the Times had falsified what he had said, felt compelled to write a letter to editor Caleb C. Norvell. His letter was brief and summarized his views on questions of law, order, and revolution:

Allow me to say that the statement of your reporter that I denied any allegiance to the Conscription Act, and your own that I counseled resistance to it by the people of the North, are both incorrect. On the contrary, I expressly counseled the trial of all questions of law before the judicial courts, and all questions of politics before the tribunal of the ballot-box. I AM FOR OBEDIENCE TO ALL LAWS—obedience by the people and by the men in power also. I am for a free discussion of all measures and laws whatsoever, as in former times; but FORCIBLE RESISTANCE TO NONE. The ballot-box, and not the cartridge-box is the instrument of reform and revolution. . . .⁵⁰

After his brief stay in the New York City, Vallandigham took the train to Albany and a conference with Governor Horatio Seymour. Samuel S. Cox and William Bigler, ex-governor of Pennsylvania, were also there and the four discussed party welfare. Vallandigham and Bigler took an antiwar stand, whereas Cox and Seymour took a more moderate view. Governor Seymour made his points well as he discussed the party’s future, and the two antiwar men agreed to qualify their opposition to the war. “Mr. Vallandigham,” one writer noted, “has agreed to abate his hostility to the war for the sake of the party.”⁵¹

From Albany Vallandigham went into Connecticut to give several antiwar speeches. He seemed less the antiwar crusader now than before his trip to Albany. Still, however, he spoke out for a national peace convention and still he believed compromise a better means to reunion than coercion.

The Dayton congressman then turned his face toward the Midwest, Ohio, and home. He knew that peace sentiment was widespread in the upper Midwest, much more extensive than in New England. He knew that Kentucky had tried to promote a national peace convention; the state legislature had discussed the desirability of appointing commissioners to meet with representatives of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and New York to “counsel upon the state of the country.”⁵² Vallandigham also knew that the Democratic-controlled legislatures in Indiana and Illinois had tried to cooperate with Kentucky in promoting a national peace convention, but in each case Republican governors had prevented formal action.

Ohio had a dozen Democratic editors who regarded themselves as out-and-out peace men. Editor Thomas Beer of the Crawford County Forum fit that category. “Every dollar spent for the persecution [sic] of this infamous war,” he wrote in despair, “is uselessly wasted—and every life lost in it is an abominable sacrifice, a murder, the responsibility of which will rest upon Abraham Lincoln and his advisors. The man who does not wash his hands of all participation in such a war, shares the guilt of those by whom it is persecuted [sic]. Support of this war and hostility to it show the dividing line between the enemies and friends of the Union. He who supports the war is against the Union.” The Bucyrus editor developed the argument that only disunionists, North and South, favored the war. Unionists, therefore, must advocate peace and reunion. Beer wanted a six-month armistice during which delegates from the North and the South would meet to settle major differences and restore the Union.⁵³

Young Thomas O. Lowe, a Dayton disciple of Vallandigham, also wanted to push the Democratic party toward all-out peace goals. Lowe stated his views in a well-written treatise published in the Dayton Empire: “We are always for peace when war will do us more harm than good, or when war can be honorably avoided. [Emerich de] Vattel says ‘War is so dreadful a scourge that nothing less than manifest justice, joined to necessity, can authorize it or exempt it from reproach.’ We believe this war could have been honorably avoided by the North . . . and that there is no possibility of its resulting in anything but evil, and therefore we are for peace.”⁵⁴

The doubting Thomases, Beer and Lowe, were but two of many Ohioans chanting “Peace! Peace! Peace!” As an apostle of peace, Clement L. Vallandigham was anxious to organize and lead the movement in his home state. He was also anxious to gain his party’s gubernatorial nomination and continue his public career. In March 1863, it seemed as if his propeace crusade might make him Ohio’s most popular figure and push him toward the governor’s chair. Opportunity seemed to be knocking, and a key labeled “Peace” might unlock the door.

¹ Washington correspondent, in Ohio State Journal (Columbus), 2 December 1862; New York Independent, 4 December 1862.

² Thomas Dudley to John J. Crittenden, 8 December 1862, John J. Crittenden Papers, Library of Congress.

³ Lincoln, “Annual Message to Congress,” 1 December 1862, in James D. Richardson, ed., A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 10 vols. (New York, 1896-1899), 8: 3343.

⁴ Congressional Globe, 37 Cong., 3 sess., pp. 2-3.

⁵ Ibid., p. 3.

⁶ Ibid.

⁷ Olds’s detailed account of his arrest and imprisonment is included in John A. Marshall, American Bastile: A History of Illegal Arrests and Imprisonments of American Citizens during the Late Civil War (Philadelphia, 1878), pp. 586-605.

⁸ Dayton Daily Empire, 17 December 1862; Olds to Cox, 5 December 1862, Samuel S. Cox Papers (microfilm), Hayes Memorial Library, Fremont, Ohio.

⁹ Congressional Globe, 37 Cong., 2 sess., pp. 14, 20, 22, 104.

¹⁰ Ibid., pp. 51, 59.

¹¹ Ibid., pp. 76, 92, 130; New York Independent, 18 December 1862.

¹² Wheeling Intelligencer (n.d.), quoted in Cleveland Leader, 2 November 1862.

¹³ William G. “Parson” Brownlow, quoted in Cleveland Leader, 31 October 1862.

¹⁴ New York Times, 13 December 1862.

¹⁵ Congressional Globe, 37 Cong., 3 sess., p. 165.

¹⁶ Crisis (Columbus), 31 December 1862.

¹⁷ Dayton Weekly Empire, 3 January 1863.

¹⁸ Vallandigham to “My dear Sir” [recipient unknown], 1 January 1863, Ford Collection, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York City.

¹⁹ Washington correspondent, in Cincinnati Daily Gazette, 15 January 1863; Boston Herald (n.d.), quoted in Dayton Daily Empire, 31 January 1863.

²⁰ Congressional Globe, 37 Cong., 2 sess., Appendix, pp. 52-60.

²¹ Alexander Stephens to his brother Linton, 18, 22, 29 January 1863, quoted in part in Richard M. Johnston and William H. Browne, Life of Alexander H.Stephens (Philadelphia, 1878), pp. 431-32, 435.

²² Ibid., pp. 314-18.

²³ Ibid., pp. 345-46.

²⁴ Ibid., pp. 318-21.

²⁵ 20, 26 January 1863.

²⁶ Edwin B. Morgan to Elihu B. Washburne, 31 January 1863, Elihu B. Washburne Papers, Library of Congress.

²⁷ Chillicothe Advertiser (n.d.), Eaton Register (n.d.), Cincinnati Commercial (n.d.), and New York Independent (n.d.), all quoted in Dayton Daily Empire, 7 February 1863.

²⁸ Ohio State Journal, 28 January 1863; New York Independent, 22 January 1863.

²⁹ 24 January 1863.

³⁰ 20 January 1863.

³¹ 21 January 1863.

³² 20, 23, 27 January 1863.

³³ 29 January 1863.

³⁴ Dayton Daily Empire, 9, 23 December 1862.

³⁵ Ibid., 17 February 1863.

³⁶ Jefferson A. Walter, “Publishers’ Notice,” in The Record of Hon. C. L. Vallandigham on Abolition, the Union, and the Civil War (Columbus, 1863), p. 4.

³⁷ Mahony’s indictment of the Lincoln administration appeared under the title The Prisoner of State (New York, 1863). Mahony’s career as a Copperhead has been treated in a number of studies, including: Herbert W. Wubben, “Dennis Mahony and the Dubuque Herald, 1860-1863,” Journal of Iowa History 56 (October 1958): 289-320; and Roger B. Sullivan, “Mahony the Unterrified” (A.B. thesis, Loras College, Dubuque, 1938).

³⁸ New York Times, 15 February 1863; Dayton Daily Empire, 20 February 1863; Crisis, 25 February 1863; Hillsborough Weekly Gazette, 5 March 1863.

³⁹ Congressional Globe, 37 Cong., 3 sess., Appendix, p. 172.

⁴⁰ Ibid.

⁴¹ Ibid., pp. 172-77.

⁴² Ibid., pp. 1227-28, 1230.

⁴³ The vote in the House came on 25 February 1862, and the bill carried by a 115 to 48 vote. Vallandigham gave one of the “nay” votes.

⁴⁴ Congressional Globe, 37 Cong., 3 sess., p. 1292.

⁴⁵ Ibid., pp. 1402-4.

⁴⁶ Ibid., pp. 1408-9.

⁴⁷ Ibid., pp. 1415-16.

⁴⁸ Philadelphia Inquirer, 7 March 1863; Dayton Daily Empire, 13 March 1863; Vallandigham, Vallandigham, pp. 231-33.

⁴⁹ New York Times, 8 March 1863; Dayton Daily Empire, 27 March 1863; Vallandigham, Vallandigham, pp. 231-33.

⁵⁰ 8 March 1863, published in New York Times, 10 March.

⁵¹ Samuel S. Cox to Erastus Corning, 13 March 1863, Horatio Seymour Papers, New York State Library, Albany; Dayton Daily Journal, 16 March 1863.

⁵² John W. Finnell to John J. Crittenden, 9 February 1863, Crittenden Papers.

⁵³ Crawford County Forum (Bucyrus), 30 January, 6 March 1863. Beer’s contributions to the antiwar crusade are well presented in Thomas H. Smith, “The Peace Democratic Movement in Crawford County, Ohio, 1860-1865” (master’s thesis, Ohio State University, 1962), and “Crawford County ‘Ez Trooly Dimecratic,’ ” Ohio History 76 (1967): 33-53.

⁵⁴ Lowe used the pseudonym “Hampton,” in the Dayton Daily Empire, 7 February 1863. Lowe’s views are presented admirably in Carl M. Becker, “Picture of a Young Copperhead,” Ohio History 72 (January 1962): 3-23.