6
THE FOURTH OF JULY 1861 dawned bright and clear in Washington. A gentle breeze teased the flags which bedecked buildings and flagpoles, and the pleasant weather brought many of the city’s residents and visitors into the streets.
Most of the congressmen, waiting for the opening of the Thirty-seventh Congress at noon, took to the streets to watch the parade and to attend the morning program. They saw President Lincoln and other notables sitting on a canopied platform erected between the White House and the street. They watched a dozen bands play martial music and twenty-six regiments of infantry march up Pennsylvania Avenue. Then some of them crowded around the platform to hear six short speeches, one by General Winfield Scott and another by President Lincoln. When the program was over, a military escort led the president to the Treasury grounds to hoist a huge flag up a 100-foot flagpole while a band played “The Star-Spangled Banner.” As the ceremonies came to an end the highly emotional crowd gave nine cheers for “the grand old flag” and nine more for President Lincoln.1
Clement L. Vallandigham was among the congressmen who watched the proceedings. He noticed that the flag which Lincoln had hoisted skyward contained thirty-four stars. Perhaps Congress could take some measures to reunite the country and make that flag more than an empty symbol.
At noon the Senate and the House of Representatives met in response to Lincoln’s special call. John W. Forney, clerk of the House, rapped his gavel, bringing to order the querulous congressmen and the crowded galleries, packed mostly with soldiers stationed in the many camps around the capital city. The Rev. Thomas H. Stockton read the opening prayer; he asked God to help right the “erroneous views” of the “southern brethren.” Next Forney read President Lincoln’s proclamation of April 15 which declared an “insurrection” in process and asked Congress to meet in special session at noon on July 4. Vallandigham was one of 159 congressmen who answered the roll call.2 Two who claimed to represent the State of Virginia also answered when the clerk called the roll. Virginia thus seemed to have representatives in two congresses, one meeting in Washington, the other in Montgomery. Vallandigham was most interested in the complex problem, for Virginia was the land of his fathers.
It did not take the Dayton congressman long to make his presence known and to alienate several colleagues. He challenged the right of three (Francis P. Blair, Jr., of Missouri, Gilman Marston of New Hampshire, and Samuel R. Curtis of Iowa) to take their congressional oaths, claiming they held military commissions which disqualified them from sitting in the House.3 He read aloud the sixth section of Article I of the Constitution, which specified that a person who held a commission in the United States Army could not serve in Congress. Vallandigham drew some boos from the galleries. Although the Constitution upheld his resolution, the Republican majority chose to ignore the protester and his contentions.
The House then turned to the task of electing its Speaker. The Hon. John P. Hickman of Pennsylvania, destined to become one of Vallandigham’s most vehement critics, nominated Francis P. Blair, Jr., and complimented the Missourian on effective military action in his state—action which had kept Missouri in the Union and had “elicited the enthusiastic approbation of every loyal American.”4 Vallandigham winced as the galleries applauded and he immediately rose to protest. He did not want the galleries to affect debate and the course of events as they had during the French Revolution. Clearly, Vallandigham was out of step with the patriotic sentiment sweeping the country.
On the second ballot, the Republican majority elected Galusha Grow of Pennsylvania to serve as Speaker. Blair kept his congressional seat, turning down a brigadier generalship in order to avoid “political complications” in his state.
Speaker Grow began his tenure with a fervent and patriotic speech which galled Democratic members of the House. The country must be reunited by force “even though the waters of the Mississippi should be crimsoned with human gore, and every foot of American soil baptized in fire and blood. . . . If the republic is to be dismembered and the sun of liberty must go out in endless night,” he continued, “let it set amid the roar of cannon and the din of battle, when there is no longer an arm to strike or a heart to bleed in its cause.”5 The galleries applauded again. Vallandigham, who wanted the Union restored by compromise rather than coercion, shook his head in disbelief. John Brown was dead, but his spirit permeated the land.
Vallandigham also disagreed with many parts of Lincoln’s message, read by Forney in stentorian tones. He believed the president had failed to report on the state of the Union fully and impartially. He viewed the message as partisan and dishonest, “a labored and lawyerly vindication of his [Lincoln’s] own course of policy.” This partisan policy he believed had precipitated the nation into “a terrible and bloody revolution.” Lincoln should not have blamed only Southern radicals for the distraught state of affairs, for Northern abolitionist and Northern radicals also deserved some of the blame—C.L.V. could recite their sins, too. Furthermore, had not Republican leaders repeatedly and consistently stymied all attempts at compromise?6
Routine business occupied most of the rest of the day. Although he was serving his third term in Congress, Vallandigham received only one minor committee assignment, to the Committee on Public Lands. Perhaps this was a part of the penalty for being a dissenter and a member of the minority party.
That evening Vallandigham attended a Democratic caucus session. Nearly all party members were there except congressmen from Kentucky and Maryland. Party spokesmen sought to establish some policy for the Democracy. Nearly everyone who arose to speak endorsed war as the only realistic road to reunion. Even the New York delegation favored supporting the government and suppressing the rebellion. Vallandigham alone spoke out against coercion and stated his antiwar views firmly and frankly. Reunion, he argued, could be effected only by compromise and Northern concessions to the South. War, as Douglas said, could mean only “eternal, final separation.” No other congressional Democrat supported Vallandigham’s views. Evidently all had bowed to the passions and realities of the hour. He stood alone.7
Three days later Vallandigham called on some Ohio troops at an army camp outside Washington. It was a sunny Sunday and the Dayton congressman wanted to visit former friends who were both officers and constituents. Colonel Alexander McCook, an acquaintance from boyhood days in New Lisbon, accompanied Vallandigham and served as guide. Some soldiers belonging to a Cleveland regiment recognized C.L.V. as he passed their quarters and taunted him for his antiwar views. They called him “traitor” and “secessionist” and threatened to ride him out of camp on a rail. The visitor viewed the insults with disdain and replied tartly. Tempers flared and fisticuffs followed, but Colonel McCook and other officers intervened and rescued the congressman from the soldiers.
Indignant and undaunted, the Dayton congressman then visited the sector of the camp occupied by the soldiers of the Second Ohio Volunteer Regiment. Many of these soldiers were from Dayton and some were personal friends. He received a courteous welcome and spent several hours visiting or conveying messages he had in hand. The Cleveland soldiers, however, reported their “brush” with Vallandigham to a Republican newspaperman, who wrote up the “camp incident” for his paper and put it on the telegraphic wires. It made the rounds of the Republican press, with some editors exaggerating for effect. The New York Tribune told the wildest tale—it claimed that Vallandigham had lost his head when he passed an effigy of himself hanging from a tree and that he had been pelted with stones and chased out of the camp. The unfriendly papers also gave the impression that C.L.V.’s views were anathema to all soldiers. The Dayton congressman, on the other hand, supposed that a minor incident had been magnified and trimmed with lies so that it could be used against him at election time.8
Vallandigham contributed very little to the legislation enacted in the short, special session of the Thirty-seventh Congress. He was on his feet often, raising points of order and putting roadblocks in the way of legislation that President Lincoln desired. He frequently commented on procedure and Republican steamroller tactics, and he exhibited a thorough knowledge of parliamentary law. His Republican colleagues usually treated him courteously even though some disdained the dissenter. They successfully sidetracked his motions and pigeon-holed his amendments as fast as he made them. They referred his proposal to repeal the Morrill Tariff and replace it with the Act of 1859 to the Committee of Ways and Means, where it died unattended and unmourned. They rejected his amendment to allow rabbis to serve as chaplains in the U.S. Army, and they successfully killed his motion to void the oath prescribed for all cadets attending West Point Academy. Vallandigham was even denied the right to speak on the controversial Military Academy Bill. Nevertheless, he shouted a few words of reproach. “Then, sir,” he quipped sarcastically, “let it go down upon the record that this bill has been forced upon its passage without debate. I propose, sir, to discuss it in that GREAT HEREAFTER to which I have so often had occasion of late to deal.”9
Vallandigham also carried on a futile fight against what he called “executive usurpation.” On July 15 he introduced seven resolutions censuring Lincoln for “a series of unconstitutional acts.” One cited the “illegal arrests” made by military authorities. Another challenged the suppression of freedom of speech and of the press. Others charged the chief executive with usurping Congressional prerogatives—declaring war, raising an army and navy, establishing a blockade, and suspending the writ of habeas corpus. He asked that his resolutions be made an early order of business and “referred to the Committee of the Whole.” The Republican majority, impatient with Vallandigham’s efforts to discredit Lincoln’s war measures, disposed of the seven resolutions quickly, laying them “on the table” by a voice vote.10
Despite his open antiwar views, the Dayton dissenter did vote for several war measures, much to the disappointment of Samuel Medary of the Crisis. He voted to pay the volunteers who had answered the president’s call for 75,000 men, for he believed they had no motive “but supposed duty and patriotism” to move them. He also voted for the bill which authorized the president to call for 500,000 volunteers for “a period of not more than three years,” justifying his action by the claim that they were needed “to protect and defend the Federal Government.” On the other hand, he did not favor the use of the volunteer army to wage an aggressive war upon the South or “to invade states which had claimed that they had seceded.”11
The Dayton congressman’s only prepared speech of the thirty-three day session argued against war and for compromise. He criticized Lincoln’s message to Congress as one-sided, and blamed the Republicans rather than the secessionists for producing the crisis and pushing the sections to the verge of war. Lincoln’s “usurpations” nullified civil rights and threatened to transform the republic into a dictatorship. In some European countries, he suggested, such usurpations, would have cost sovereigns their heads. Peace and compromise were the means to reunion and the salvation of civil rights. Many Americans opposed coercion, but the emotional tide of the hour silenced some who would otherwise speak in protest. At a later date, Vallandigham predicted, time would vindicate him and praise those who preached the gospel of reunion through peace. “I am,” he added “for peace—a speedy, immediate, honorable PEACE with all its blessings.”12
The battle of Bull Run on July 21 made Vallandigham’s peace proposals even more impractical and improbable. The rebel victory seemed to make more real the Confederates’ dream of an independent nation. The North, with injured pride, girded the sword more securely to its side and prepared for a longer, bloodier contest. Vallandigham, failing to grasp the reality of the situation, still talked of peace when most Northerners wanted war and most Southerners wanted independence. He asked for concessions and compromise when most Northerners called for retribution and revenge. And he asked for charity and compassion when the mood of the country nurtured distrust and hate.
Nevertheless, in the closing of the special session, C.L.V. made one more bid for compromise. He introduced a resolution asking for a “Convention of the States” to adjust “all controversies” and to amend the Constitution. The resolution and all hopes for negotiated peace died when the House adjourned sine die the next day.13
Most Republicans scorned Vallandigham’s views on war and peace. One wondered aloud whether Vallandigham belonged in the Confederate congress rather than the one in which he held his seat. Another, Cyrus Aldrich of Minnesota, bluntly told the Dayton Democrat that he was “under a mental hallucination” and bent on making a nuisance of himself. Vallandigham, Aldrich added, had favored peace when he should have voted for war, opposed the government when he should have supported it, and preached partyism when he should have practiced patriotism.14
Republican editors, too, showed their contempt for Vallandigham and his views. The editor of the Cincinnati Times called C.L.V.’s speeches in Congress “treasonable stuff.” The New York Tribune repeatedly accused him of treason and labeled him pro-secessionist in his sympathies. The New York Herald stated he was disloyal and “muddled and confused” as well. Even most of the Democratic newspapers in the North questioned the correctness and wisdom of his propeace pronouncements. The Detroit Free Press, for example, characterized his sentiments as “murky and impure,” out of line with the wishes of the country. Most Democrats, like the Republicans, wanted the rebellion suppressed and the Union sustained.15
After Congress adjourned on August 6, Vallandigham took a leisurely trip home by way of Baltimore, Cumberland, and New Lisbon. In Baltimore he was the guest of Henry May, a Maryland congressman with pro-Southern sympathies. Vallandigham took two side trips, one in a carriage to May’s country estate and another down the Potomac in May’s celebrated yacht Midge. He also discussed politics with his famous brother-in-law, John Van Lear McMahon, who roomed at the Entau House. In Cumberland he visited with other in-laws and found that one of his nephews had marched off to join the Confederate army. In New Lisbon, he exchanged greetings with his mother, his brothers, and friends.
Vallandigham’s short vacation in New Lisbon gave him a chance to rest, to sample public opinion, and to see rays of hope for the Ohio Democracy, which had turned its back on fusion. In a personal letter to a long-time political ally, he expressed his optimism:
Light is beginning at last to break upon us. The vindication of free speech in Congress & the Battle of Manasses [sic]—the two great events of the age—are opening the eyes of the people to the true origin, character & magnitude of the war. The maintenance of the organization & integrity of the Democratic party gives us an ancient & still admirable machinery wherewith to rally the masses & to save the Constitution & public & private liberty, & I hope—it is the desire of my heart—to restore the Union, the Federal Union as it was forty years ago.16
After returning to Dayton, Vallandigham obtained some inside information on Democratic party activities. His friend and confidant, J. Frederick Bollmeyer of the Empire, reported on the in-fighting which had occurred at the State Democratic Convention, in session when Vallandigham was cultivating graciousness in Baltimore. The convention seemed to have endorsed Vallandigham’s views; it had blamed “fanatical agitators, North as well as South” for the war, recommended the calling of a national convention, reprimanded President Lincoln for trespassing upon unconstitutional grounds, and placed civil rights and the Constitution on a pedestal.17 The convention repudiated fusion (the Union party movement) and nominated Hugh J. Jewett as the Democratic candidate for the governorship. Vallandigham endorsed the state platform and was pleased that most Democrats rejected fusion. He was rather unhappy, nevertheless, with the nomination of Jewett, a rival within the party and a railroad man for whom Vallandigham had cultivated a personal animosity.
The returning congressman also reacquainted himself with the local political situation. County Democrats were badly split on the questions of the hour. Bollmeyer advocated Vallandigham’s views in the Empire, where he favored compromise and peace, denounced Lincoln’s war measures, and claimed civil rights must be respected. He received able support from Christian Gross, a German-American who had two sons serving in the Union army, and young Tom O. Lowe, a lawyer whose father commanded an Ohio regiment in the West Virginia campaigns. The antiwar Democrats had controlled the county convention of August 3 and had adopted antiwar and anti-Lincoln resolutions before electing peace men to the state convention.18
However, some sixty county Democrats who viewed Vallandigham’s course as unpatriotic and Bollmeyer’s editorials as unpardonable, had organized a convention of their own in order to give “an honorable direction” to their party. These “War Democrats” had supported fusion, had asked for vigorous prosecution of the war, had placed patriotism above partyism, and had repudiated Vallandigham’s propeace views. Although some of these sixty were opportunists,19 more interested in promoting their own than the country’s welfare, others were solid citizens who had bowed to the patriotic surge of the day and believed antiwar resolutions were inimical to the country’s welfare. Colonel Alexander McCook, once a close personal friend of Vallandigham, typified the “War Democrats” who denounced Bollmeyer’s editorials and Vallandigham’s views. Within Bollmeyer’s hearing McCook had expressed his contempt for critics of the war. “Yes, by G-d,” he exclaimed as the editor of the Empire walked by, “I say, d--n any man who is not for the Union, and d--n Vallandigham, too! He is worse than a Judas; he is a d----d traitor!”20
The Democracy of Butler County, also in Vallandigham’s congressional district, was as badly split as that of Montgomery County. Michael M. Maginnis of Hamilton, a disciple of Vallandigham, led the antiwar faction, and the propeace and anti-Lincoln resolutions which he had foisted upon the county convention created a gaping party schism. In the days that followed, each faction subsidized its own newspaper, developed its own platform, and went its own way. The “War Democrats” supported fusion and learned to hate the “Peace Democrats” more than they hated the Republicans, once their detested adversaries.
Republicans, controlling the call for a “common ticket,” developed the “Union movement” as a political stratagem. They usurped the Union party label for their county conventions and pulled the strings backstage. Patriotism served as a silent but effective partner, and prominent Democrats, such as David Tod and John Brough, cooperated with Republicans at the Union party convention of September 5, 1861. The fusionists named Tod as their gubernatorial nominee, asked for full support to suppress the rebellion, and prepared to carry the October elections.
Party-line Democrats viewed Tod as a renegade, an opportunist whom the Republicans had bought with thirty pieces of silver. They failed to understand that Tod’s success in railroading and manufacturing made him more enamored of Republican party principles than of the antitariff and proagrarian principles preached by Ohio Democrats. Truly, Tod was out of place in a party which mechanics and workingmen regarded as their own. A year before the start of the war, Tod had drawn up “a conspiracy bill” which outlawed unions and strikes, and made workingmen who had struck for higher wages guilty of conspiracy and punishable as criminals. Perhaps Tod also felt out of place in a party which Samuel Medary of the Crisis wished to dominate. Years earlier the two had learned to hate and distrust each other. Medary’s return to a place of influence in Democratic circles made Tod uneasy and he therefore looked for greener political pastures.21
While condemning Tod and Lincoln, Democratic editors saved some of their sharpest barbs for the Union party movement. They appealed to public prejudice, calling the Union party “a mask to cover the deformities of Abolition.” One might throw the lion’s skin over “the same animal,” they noted, but the ears would stick out.22 They characterized the promoters of fusion as “Know-Nothing tricksters, Republican abolition leaders, and political trimmers generally.” Other straight-line Democrats bragged that they were “neither for sale nor barter”—no matter what the price.23
As the election campaign became more intense in September, Vallandigham became more of an issue. Republicans hurled invectives in his direction and pretended that he held the Democratic party in the palm of his hand. They labeled him “an arch-traitor,” an “unmitigated scoundrel,” “a secessionist,” and “the pliant tool of the rebel leaders.” Concocting outright lies to tarnish his reputation, they charged, for example, that Confederates in Kentucky had named an army camp in Vallandigham’s honor, and that he belonged to a pro-Southern secret society, the Knights of the Golden Circle, which intended to aid the Confederacy and bring about a rebellion in the North. “Every vote cast for Hugh J. Jewett for governor,” asserted the Republican editor of the Cleveland Leader, “is a vote in favor of a dishonorable peace, in favor of the rebels, and in opposition to the Federal Government.”24 Some Republicans even held that Vallandigham “richly deserved the halter” because of his stand for peace and opposition to the war.25
The Republican campaign of villification against Vallandigham paid dividends. Independents, unburdened by party ties, refused to vote for the party in which C.L.V. held membership. Republicans, gathering grapes in the political vineyards, worked harder to defeat “Vallandigham and Jewett.” In some places in Dayton it was not even safe to speak a word in C.L.V.’s defense. “There is no denying the fact now,” wrote a sympathetic Dayton observer, “that he is the most unpopular man in the north, and that here in his own district, he has but a minority of the people with him.”26
Vallandigham was not one to be intimidated or bow to pressure. Indeed, the insults hurled his way and the efforts to intimidate him only made him more defiant and self-righteous. He walked the streets of Dayton openly, with head held high and opinions unyielding. Occasional incidents caused tempers to flare. Once a Republican grocer whom the Vallandighams had patronized for years told the congressman he would give him no more credit—that as a scoundrel and traitor he deserved no consideration. Vallandigham answered heatedly, threatening to thrash his accuser on the spot. The grocer then picked up a pistol and threatened to use it, upon which Vallandigham beat a hasty retreat. In his hurry to get outside, he stumbled over the doorsill, “fell on all fours” on the flagstones, and scrambled into the millinery store next door for safety. He injured only his pride, however, while Republicans generally found the incident amusing. Their hatred of Vallandigham blinded them to the seriousness of the incident and the threat it offered to personal rights and safety.27
Actually, Vallandigham took only a very small part in the Democratic campaign to put Jewett into the governor’s chair. Because of the personal antagonism existing between the two, Jewett did not care to have Vallandigham speak in his behalf. At the nominee’s request, the Democratic State Central Committee gave the Dayton congressman not a single speaking engagement. Jewett’s friends discouraged county and city leaders from extending C.L.V. an invitation to speak in their communities as if he were anathema to the party. Vallandigham gave only one speech during the entire campaign, and that in Dayton on the eve of the election. That speech, as everyone expected, turned into a severe indictment of the Lincoln administration.28
Although Vallandigham appeared to be a drag on the wheel of the party bandwagon, Ohio Democrats seemed to have some things going for them. They could point out that “Mr. Lincoln’s Army” had met defeat at Bull Run because the chief executive ordered the army into battle before it was ready for action, thus laying the debacle at the president’s door. Then, too, the economic depression which engulfed the upper Mississippi Valley seemed to worsen with each passing month. The bottom dropped out of the farmers’ market basket; in some parts of Ohio farmers sold their corn for seven cents a bushel, while others used it for fuel. Some businessmen in Ohio river cities cursed Lincoln even though they had voted for him a year earlier. “Matters look blue enough here,” reported a Democrat visiting Cincinnati. “Business men have long faces and short money receipts. One Jim Brown & Co. say they have lost $40,000 since the election [1860] by depreciation in stock. There are three of them and they each voted for Lincoln ‘God & Liberty,’ and say now they ‘wish Lincoln and all political parties were in hell.’”29
Both Republicans and Democrats expressed apprehension as the campaign passed through its final weeks. When October 8 arrived, however, Republican concern had changed to a quiet confidence. Rampant patriotism, feeding on the Republican campaign against “treason,” gave Tod and the Union party the edge.
The election passed off quietly enough in Dayton, with the exception of a few incidents in two of the city’s wards. In the Sixth Ward a “Vallandighamer” openly declared that he would rather live under Jeff Davis than Abe Lincoln. Some “patriot” knocked him down on the spot. Arising slowly, the Democrat eyed his tormentor, then decided to run off, but not before a hearty kick sent him scampering across the commons. Another foolish fellow, also a defender of Vallandigham, made a statement endorsing secession and condemning President Lincoln. When a “patriot” threatened to whip him, he pulled a pistol out of a pocket, but bystanders quickly overpowered him, dragged him down to the canal and thoroughly ducked him. After he promised to behave, he was released, going home wetter if not wiser. In the Fifth Ward an Irish poll-worker named Dennis Dwyer argued heatedly with Republicans who accused him of working to elect “a secessionist.” A fight occurred and Dwyer, badly outnumbered, was seriously injured. No one made an effort to intimidate or attack Vallandigham on election day. He spent the entire day, from sunrise to sunset, around the polls of his ward, badgering acquaintances to renounce the fusion movement by voting the straight Democratic ticket.30
After the bruises were counted and the votes tabulated, officials reported that David Tod had carried Dayton, Montgomery County, and the state of Ohio by handsome margins. Republicans gloried in the election returns and held a series of party jollifications. The Republican editor of the Dayton Journal thanked God that virtue, patriotism, and Tod had triumphed. His headline must have galled Vallandigham: “TREASON DEAD AND BURIED! Vallandigham and His Traitorous Crew Squelched!”31
Some members of the state Democratic organization, seeking a scapegoat, held Vallandigham in part responsible for the defeat of their ticket. They viewed him as a millstone around Jewett’s neck, and claimed that his imprudent remarks had cast a cloud over the Democratic party, making it vulnerable to charges of treason.
Those Republicans who had centered their campaign fire on Vallandigham thought it proper to view the election returns as a repudiation of the Dayton congressman and his policies. “Since Vallandigham’s traitorism has been so effectively rebuked by the voters of his District,” the editor of the Dayton Journal proclaimed, “he must, if he has the least respect for their expressed will, resign his position as their elected representative.”32
Vallandigham, always self-righteous, had no inclination nor intention to resign. He still believed he was right and the voters wrong. He spent considerable time in his law offices, doing occasional favors for indigent Irish or German-American constituents. He also put the election returns out of his mind by immersing himself in the books which occupied so many shelves in his study. He sought justification for his views in the works of Burke, Macaulay, Hume, Jefferson, and John Adams. In a sense, he was preparing himself for the second session of the Thirty-seventh Congress, scheduled to convene on December 2. In that session Vallandigham was destined to impress his contempt of abolitionists, his hatred of radicals, his antipathy for New England, and his distrust of President Lincoln deeper into the record.
1 National Intelligencer (Washington), 6 July 1861; Baltimore Evening Patriot, 5 July 1861.
2 Congressional Globe, 37 Cong., 1 sess., pp. 1-2.
3 Ibid., p. 3; Crisis (Columbus), 11 July 1861.
4 Congressional Globe, 37 Cong., 1 sess., p. 4.
5 Ibid., p. 5.
6 Ibid., p. 57.
7 Baltimore Evening Patriot, 9 July 1861.
8 Baltimore Clipper, 8 July 1861; New York Tribune, 8 July 1861.
9 Congressional Globe, 37 Cong., 1 sess., pp. 23, 100, 348. Professor Bertram W. Korn had high praise for Vallandigham’s effort to eliminate discrimination against rabbis in “Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham’s Championship of the Jewish Chaplaincy in the Civil War,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 53 (December 1963): 188-91.
10 Congressional Globe, 37 Cong., 1 sess., p. 130.
11 Ibid., pp. 59, 100, 130-32, 171, 332, 348.
12 Ibid., pp. 56-60. Medary printed the entire speech in the Crisis, 25 July 1861.
13 Congressional Globe, 37 Cong., 1 sess., pp. 440-44.
14 Ibid., pp. 93, 459.
15 Cincinnati Times (n.d.), quoted in Dayton Daily Journal, 18 July 1861; New York Tribune, 12-13 July 1861; New York Herald, 12 July 1861; Detroit Free Press, 18 July 1861.
16 C.L.V. to Alexander S. Boys, 13 August 1861, Alexander S. Boys Papers, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus.
17 Crisis, 15 August 1861.
18 Lowe to “Dear Johnnie” [a brother], 24 August 1861, Thomas O. Lowe Papers, Dayton and Montgomery County Public Library; “Proceedings of the Democratic Mass Conventions, Montgomery County, August 3, 1861,” Dayton Daily Journal, 7 August 1861.
19 Entry of 8 August 1861, in Medlar, “Journal.”
20 Entry of 12 August 1861, in ibid.
21 Edgar A. Holt, “Party Politics in Ohio, 1840-1850,” Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly 38 (January 1929): 108-9, states that Medary believed Tod had tricked him out of a consular appointment during Polk’s presidency. Ruth Wood Gold, “The Attitude of Labor in the Ohio Valley toward the Civil War” (Master’s thesis, Ohio State University, 1948), pp. 6-7, explains why Tod felt out of place in a party in which mechanics and workingmen predominated.
22 Daily Ohio Statesman (Columbus), 1 August 1861.
23 Stark County Democrat (Canton), 10 July 1861; Crisis, 15 August 1861; Dayton Daily Journal, 29 August 1861.
24 Cleveland Leader, 4 October 1861; Dayton Daily Journal, 28 August, 24 September 1861; Cincinnati Daily Gazette (n.d.), quoted in Crisis, 5 September 1861.
25 Entry of 19 August 1861, Medlar, “Journal.”
26 Thomas O. Lowe to “Dear Johnnie,” 24 August 1861, Lowe Papers.
27 Dayton Daily Journal, 31 August, 2 September 1861.
28 Entry of 8 October 1861, Medlar, “Journal.”
29 Matt Marion to Samuel S. Cox, 3 December 1861, Samuel S. Cox Papers (microfilm), Hayes Memorial Library, Fremont, Ohio.
30 Entry of 8 October 1861, Medlar, “Journal”; Dayton Daily Journal, 8, 9 October 1861.
31 9 October 1861.
32 10 October 1861.