3
CLEMENT L. VALLANDIGHAM fretted in his Washington office in late June 1860 as he tried to transform the National Democratic Campaign Committee from a nonentity into an effective agency. As chairman of that committee, he had most of the responsibility for its activities. He was troubled because his committee lacked the money it needed, because Douglas’s chances of gaining the presidency were slim, and because he was anxious to get home to Dayton.
Friends in Dayton had delayed the date of the Douglas ratification meeting until “Valiant Val” could get home from Washington to speak at the affair, scheduled for June 30. It was a well-planned party rally, for Dayton Democrats had made an extraordinary effort to put on a good show. A “magnificent bonfire illuminated the occasion,” but it failed to bring a light of hope to the gloomy Democrats. Vallandigham received prolonged applause when he was introduced to the good-sized audience. He put up a good front, feigning optimism and pretending that Douglas had a good chance to gain the presidency. He developed the theme that all conservative men should vote for Douglas, lest a Northern sectionalist (Lincoln) or the candidate of the Southern radicals (Breckinridge) gain the White House. As he was emphasizing the need for action to save Douglas from defeat and the Union from destruction, a sudden squall visited the meeting place. Lightning and thunder, a heavy rain, and a strong wind dispersed the crowd and brought an early end to the rally. Vallandigham, slow to jump off the speakers’ platform, was soaked to the skin as the torrential rain washed out the partisan program.1 The storm was an omen of things to come.
The next day Vallandigham put on a new suit and headed for Columbus, site of the Democratic State Convention. He found little there to refurbish his hopes. The feud between Buchanan and Douglas had divided the party in Ohio as the sectional controversy had wrecked it on the national level. Political realists knew that the schism was hopeless and that the odds therefore favored Lincoln, candidate of one of the sectional parties. Douglas’s supporters could only hope that none of the three rival candidates would receive a majority of the electoral votes. The election would be thrown into the House of Representatives, then, and Douglas might emerge with the honors. Events would prove this ray of hope a false one.
Stepping to the fore as one of the state’s leading Democrats, Vallandigham took a prominent part in the proceedings of the July 4 convention. He served on the Committee on Resolutions and helped to prepare the political potpourri presented as the party’s platform. One of the resolutions, a gesture to conciliate the South, asked for “the acquisition” of Cuba “upon such terms” as would be honorable both to Spain and to the United States. Another reaffirmed Vallandigham’s vote in the House of Representatives in opposing the reopening of the slave trade. One, which appealed to the racists, frankly stated that the laws of Ohio were for the “white man,” implying that mulattoes and Negroes had no political rights. Another resolution reflected Vallandigham’s states’ rights views, for it affirmed “the absolute sovereignty of the states of the Union.” The final resolution repudiated the “Higher Law” doctrine preached by some Republicans who had refused to accept the Fugitive Slave Act and the Dred Scott decision. Obedience to federal law, the resolution seemed to say, provided the basis for a stable society.2
After adopting the resolutions, the delegates selected their party’s nominees for several state offices (supreme judge, attorney general, members of the Board of Public Works) and hand-picked a slate of presidential electors.
With the state convention out of the way, Vallandigham began his campaign for Douglas in earnest, speaking at the Douglas ratification meetings in Hamilton and Miamisburg. Always he had high praise for Douglas’s qualities of leadership, his devotion to a conservative course, and his concern for Western interests. C.L.V. also attacked the Republicans for their sectional views, inimical to the national welfare. While he labeled the Republican party “the black and piratical craft of sectionalism,” he viewed Southern sectionalism as simply the reaction to the “insane utterances” of Northern ultras. As a Westerner and conservative he was “inexorably opposed” to the extremists of both sections.3
While out in the field for Douglas, he secured his own renomination to the congressional seat he had wrested from Lewis D. Campbell two years earlier. Campbell would shortly desert the Republican party and endorse the candidacy of William Gunckle, running for congress on the Constitutional Union ticket. The Republican delegates, in convention in Germantown on August 8, shed few tears at Campbell’s departure, and named Samuel Craighead, a former Whig, as their candidate to unseat Vallandigham.
When Dayton Republicans, full of liquor and enthusiasm, returned from Germantown at two o’clock in the morning, they did their best to awaken the townspeople and break the news of Craighead’s nomination. With the Phoenix Band leading the way, they marched up and down the streets of Dayton, carrying their torches, singing party songs, and shouting for Craighead at the top of their voices. The nominee himself and other Dayton Republicans may have received the news with joy, but Democrats grumbled about the noise and the commotion. “They robbed me,” complained one of Vallandigham’s friends, “of two good hours of sleep.”4
During the remaining days of August and September, the incumbent congressman visited every village and settlement in the Third District, speaking at party rallies, barbecues, and poleraisings. Vallandigham, who still thought of himself as a Jacksonian Democrat, noticed that hickory poles and hickory branches were most popular in the backwoods districts. Many Ohioans still spoke reverently of “Old Hickory,” and at times it seemed as if Vallandigham called upon the ghost of Jackson more often than upon Divine Providence. The Jefferson Township rally, not far from Dayton, was one of the more interesting of the ’60 campaign. There industrious Democrats, bent on outdoing others, raised a pole 165 feet high—“the tallest hickory pole in the state,” it was claimed.5
On one of his speaking tours in the Third District, C.L.V. was away from home for nearly two weeks and spoke usually three times a day. Invariably defending his record as a congressman, he explained his antitariff views, gloated over his vote for the Homestead Bill, and tried to clarify his position on the complicated Kansas question. Republican speakers and Republican newspapers, on the other hand, sought to develop the conviction that, by refusing to bring in Kansas with the Topeka Constitution, Vallandigham was actually trying to make Kansas a slave state. Somewhat angry at Republican efforts to misrepresent him, he lashed out at the “liars” and the “falsehoods,” and justified his “honest devotion” to the principle of popular sovereignty.6 When Republicans raised the Homestead issue and claimed that President Buchanan, in league with Southern Democrats, had defeated the measure, Vallandigham pointed out that Hannibal Hamlin, Lincoln’s running-mate, had voted against the Homestead Bill as a member of the Senate.7
Vallandigham again made an appeal to voters’ fears and prejudices. He tried to frighten his listeners by stating that Lincoln’s election would precipitate a crisis and bring on a war. He appealed to the anti-Negro prejudice so widespread among the poorer people of his district by claiming that Republicans favored emancipation and that free Negroes offered a threat to poor people’s jobs and security. J. Frederick Bollmeyer, whom Vallandigham had brought to Dayton to edit the Empire, stated his own views more bluntly. Did white men want “stinking niggers” sitting next to them on workmen’s benches or in jury boxes? Did they want their daughters to marry “black boys” and bear “black babies”?8 It seemed to be good politics for Vallandigham to denounce John Brown, “negro equality,” and “amalgamation” as he bid for reelection and tried to stem the Republican tide.
The Dayton Democrat also reminded his Catholic constituents that the Republic party bore the scarlet mark of Know-Nothingism. “When we consider that the mass of the Republican party were once in the Know-Nothing lodges, and there swore solemn, terrible, and proscriptive oaths against foreigners of every nation,” wrote the editor of the Empire, “we may naturally presume that the present pretended affection which they profess for the German race grows out of nothing but an anxious and overweening desire for office.”9
Republicans resented Vallandigham’s appeals to racial prejudice and accused him of demagogic practices. “He is,” wrote the Republican editor of the Dayton Journal, “an unscrupulous opponent, unfair in all his speeches, resorting to that dirty slang about negro equality, which for years has been his hobby and which has been nearly played out.” And, in an appeal to emotion, he added: “It is still remembered how he interrogated old John Brown while he lay riddled with bullets in the Harpers Ferry Armory.”10 Perhaps it was just one more case of the pot and the kettle calling each other black.
Vallandigham found time in August to pay brief visits to two neighboring states to wave the flag for Douglas and buoy faltering Democratic hopes. He spoke in Richmond, Indiana, and several days later in Detroit, Michigan. Again he spoke out for conservatism and the Constitution. Conservative men must drive the fanatics back into their holes, and vote for Stephen A. Douglas to save the country from catastrophe. If the “flood of fanaticism” was not checked, a “devastating war” would drench the land with blood. Vallandigham evidently impressed his Detroit audience most favorably. The Democratic editor of the city’s Free Press described the Ohio congressman as “one of the coming men of the country,” a man “whose eloquence never fails to electrify an audience.”11
While in Detroit, Vallandigham crossed the river and paid a brief visit to Windsor, Canada West, little dreaming that three years later he would spend nearly a year in that small city as an exile from his native land.
Dayton Democrats looked forward to Douglas’s scheduled visit of September 23 as the highlight of the ’60 presidential campaign. Vallandigham, as chairman of the “Douglas Reception Committee,” helped to circulate thousands of flyers and post hundreds of handbills announcing the “gala event.” The committee made an extraordinary effort to amass “a tremendous throng” and earn a compliment from “the Little Giant.”
When all seemed in readiness, C.L.V. journeyed to Columbus to hear Douglas’s speech in the state capital and to escort him to Dayton. Although Douglas’s train was very late, Montgomery County Democrats turned out en masse to give him a rousing reception. Cannons belched a noisy welcome and four bands, each trying to play louder than the others, added to the din. Shouts and cheers from “twenty thousand throats” helped make the affair “one of the greatest demonstrations of enthusiasm” ever to occur in Vallandigham’s home town.12
The crowd at the depot was so large that Vallandigham and Douglas had trouble making their way to the bedecked carriage waiting to take them to the Court House square. Eventually they reached the platform erected on the Court House steps, where thousands more had patiently awaited the arrival of their hero.
Douglas’s voice was very hoarse, so he asked permission to limit his talk to ten minutes. He still had to make speaking stops in Hamilton and Cincinnati. The huge crowd, immersed in empathy, hung on every word and greeted each assertion “with cheer after cheer of the most enthusiastic kind.”13 Thousands followed the two political allies back to the depot, acting as an informal “guard of honor.”
Vallandigham accompanied Douglas to Hamilton and Cincinnati before returning to his district to resume his speaking schedule. Douglas’s visit had buoyed his hopes. Furthermore, Republicans were somewhat divided; some conservatives supported Gunckle although Craighead was the party’s official nominee.
A successful “windup rally” also gave C.L.V. cause to be optimistic on the eve of the state election of October 8. A grand procession, featuring many floats and marching bands, drew “ohs” and “ahs” from the huge crowd lining the streets of Dayton. After the parade the crowd gathered around the speakers’ stand to hear Vallandigham give the best and longest of the three speeches. He found the audience most responsive to his thrusts at Republicanism in general and Lincoln, Gunckle, and Craighead in particular. “If the proud flesh of those insolent Republicans is not subject to irritation by the results of the elections . . .,” predicted one of Vallandigham’s loyal supporters, “then I do not read aright the signs of the times.”14
The prediction was only partially right. Vallandigham edged out Craighead by 134 votes, but he gained reelection only because a third candidate competed for the ballots.15 Elsewhere in Ohio most of the Democratic congressional candidates went down to defeat as the Republican trend swept the upper midwest.
After a brief rest and a chance to savor his victory, Vallandigham went forth to renew his campaign for Douglas’s election. A cloud of gloom, evolving out of the October elections, hung heavily over the Douglas backers. Republicanism seemed to be on the upswing, a harbinger of the November elections.
Vallandigham’s campaign trail took him to New York City, where he gave an address at the Cooper Institute—the same forum which had catapulted Lincoln into national prominence. The Ohioan found a sympathetic audience. Many were conservatives who deplored the radicalism of the hour and feared the consequences of Lincoln’s election. Some were merchants who foresaw that secession might close their avenues of trade and their paths to profits. Others were Democrats unwilling to surrender the patronage positions they held from President Buchanan’s hand. Most, of course, were the party faithful who had been led to believe that the Democratic party had a monopoly on virtue and wisdom.
It did not take C.L.V. long to win the favor of his New York audience. In Ohio he had learned to cater to the whims and prejudices of the common man. The audience repeatedly applauded him for his savage thrusts at radicalism, especially that with an abolitionist tinge. He blamed Northern radicalism, rather than Southern, for the nation’s ills. He not only failed to denounce secession, he almost seemed to endorse it. If secession came, only “God and the great tribunal of History” had the right to judge “the sufficiency and justice” of such an act. Crawling out even further on the imaginary limb, he promised that he would never, as a member of Congress, “vote one dollar of money whereby one drop of American blood should be shed in a civil war.” Evidently the enthralled audience endorsed his oratorical pledge, for it arose as one man to cheer and give him a “vehement and long-continued applause.”16
Several days later, at a private dinner in the National Hotel in Washington, D.C., Vallandigham restated his determination to vote neither supplies nor men to coerce Southern states, and again he expressed his belief that Northern fanaticism was the nation’s curse and secessionism but the Southern reaction to the abolition malady.17
Having expressed his anticoercion views twice, he returned to Dayton to cast his ballot for Stephen A. Douglas. He told one of his friends, a Democratic poll-worker, that he feared he had cast his last vote for a president “of the United States.”18
In the days that followed, the telegraphic wires brought the news of Lincoln’s victory and Douglas’s defeat. Jubilant Dayton Republicans celebrated their victory with liquor in the grog shops, parades through the streets, and bonfires and speeches at the “jollification meetings.” Secession rumors soon sobered the victorious Republicans and they haggled over the course their party ought to pursue. Horace Greeley, who had helped Lincoln achieve his victory, suggested that the administration should let “the erring sisters” go in peace.19 Some abolitionists expressed the same sentiment, for they rationalized that the nation would be purer without slave states in it. In the Midwest, some Republican newspaper editors, such as those of the Ohio State Journal in Columbus and the Indianapolis Journal, endorsed Greeley’s suggestion. “If South Carolina, or any other state wants to secede,” wrote one Republican editor, “let her in God’s name go peacefully.”20
Most Republican realists, however, expressed themselves in opposition to Greeley’s let-them-go policy. They had won the election fairly and they wanted to enjoy the fruits of their victory. The editor of the Dayton Journal, William F. “Deacon” Comly, set himself firmly against secession. If it came, he would advocate coercion, whipping the South, if need be, “into a bloody submission.” The Republican editor also took Vallandigham to task for stating he would refuse to vote money and men to coerce states that might secede. “In this he sets at naught all the powers of the Constitution, all the rights of the loyal States, all the obligations of law, and makes the national government a powerless, helpless, contemptible thing.”21
Vallandigham ignored his Republican critics and continued to hope for peace. He deplored secession, but he preferred peaceable secession to civil war. He hoped President-elect Lincoln would listen to the voices of moderation—those advocating “peace, negotiation, concession.” “At least, if he will forget the secession of the Ten Tribes,” wrote Vallandigham, glancing backwards into history, “will he not remember and learn a lesson of wisdom from the secession of the Thirteen Colonies.”22
1 Dayton Daily Empire, 2 July 1860; Dayton Daily Journal, 2 July 1860.
2 Daily Ohio Statesman (Columbus), 5 July 1860.
3 Dayton Daily Empire, 11 July 1860.
4 Entry of 9 August 1860, Medlar, “Journal.”
5 Dayton Daily Empire, 6 August 1860.
6 Ibid., 10 August 1860.
7 Dayton Daily Journal, 21 May 1860.
8 9 January, 15 April, 15 September 1860.
9 5, 10 March 1860.
10 5 September 1860.
11 2 August 1860.
12 Dayton Daily Empire, 24 September 1860.
13 Ibid.; entry of 26 September 1860, Medlar, “Journal.”
14 Entry of 8 October 1860, Medlar, “Journal.”
15 Dayton Daily Journal, 9 October 1860.
16 New York World, 3 November 1860; New York Tribune, 3 November 1860; Vallandigham to editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer, 10 November 1860, published 13 November.
17 Washington Evening Star, 6 November 1860.
18 Quoted in Vallandigham, Vallandigham, p. 141.
19 New York Tribune, 9 November 1860.
20 Cairo City Gazette, 6 December 1860.
21 Dayton Daily Journal, 8 November 1860.
22 Vallandigham to editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer, 10 November 1860, published in Dayton Daily Empire, 13 November.