7

Gadfly

LINCOLN’S FRIENDS and foes alike found his message to Congress of December 1, 1861, disappointing. Abolitionists especially felt frustrated because the president failed to endorse emancipation. His suggestion that the United States recognize “the Negro republic” of Haiti was but “a tub thrown to the Abolition whale.”1 His failure to say anything about the Trent affair upset Americans afflicted with Anglophobia, especially the Irish-Americans. In fact, most of the important issues of the day were not even mentioned.2

Democrats, without even trying, found much to criticize in Lincoln’s message. Many, including Vallandigham, did not intend to vote for any measure recognizing Haiti or advancing abolition. Since most Irish-Americans of his district voted the Democratic ticket, Vallandigham decided to use the Trent affair for personal gain. He also realized that events linked to that incident gave him a chance to chide the Lincoln administration.

The roots of the Trent controversy dated back to November 8, when an American warship, the San Jacinto, stopped a British mail steamer, the Trent, and seized two Confederate agents, James M. Mason and John Slidell. Britain promptly asked for an overt apology, demanded the immediate release of Mason and Slidell, and began preparations for war. Misguided patriots, aided by Democrats such as Clement L. Vallandigham, complicated the touchy problem by adopting a House resolution which applauded the captain of the San Jacinto for his “brave, adroit, and patriotic conduct.” Another resolution, even more absurd, pledged the same treatment for Confederate commissioner Mason as that received by Colonel Michael Corcoran, supposedly confined in a felon’s cell after falling into enemy hands at First Bull Run.3

When rumors circulated in the halls of Congress that President Lincoln intended to release Mason and Slidell and apologize for their seizure, C.L.V. decided to exploit the issue, embarrass Lincoln, and pose as a prophet. He introduced a resolution instructing the president to stand firm and defy the British demands. “We have heard the first growl of the British lion,” the Dayton congressman exclaimed seriously, “and now let us see who will cower.” He added that the purpose of the resolution was “to expose the shallow but blustering and cowardly statesmanship of the Abolition party in the House. . . . These men [Mason and Slidell],” he said as he looked into his crystal ball, “will be surrendered before three months in the face of a threat. I make that prediction here today.”4

Events proved Vallandigham to be an excellent prophet. The administration “cheerfully liberated” Mason and Slidell and admitted the seizure to have been an error. The Dayton congressman seized upon “the surrender” as an excuse to condemn the Lincoln administration, labelling its action “a calamity, . . . tenfold more disastrous than a five years’ war with Great Britain.” He also reminded his listeners that he had predicted the surrender of the two Confederates within three months, amidst Republican denials. They had, in fact, been surrendered within three weeks. “For the first time,” the grumpy gadfly moaned, “the American eagle has been made to cower before the British lion.”5

A few of Vallandigham’s friends praised him for trying publicly to embarrass the administration. A few even reiterated that he was a prophet—“a true prophet.”6 The Republican editor of the Dayton Journal fumed at the Empire’s efforts to portray Vallandigham as a man of courage and vision. He was a prophet all right, but “Jeff Davis’ prophet.” The angry editor added, “He is a prophet of evil, speaking with a lying tongue. He is a prophet without honor in his own, or any other country, save ‘Secessia,’ where his predictions of evil to our Government are hailed with delight, and his name is enrolled in the calendar of secessionist saints.”7

Vallandigham also twitted Lincoln for the way military control was extended in the border states, especially Kentucky and Maryland. Arbitrary arrests had been most numerous in those states and the blanket of military authority had even extended into the states north of the Ohio River. Vallandigham endorsed George H. Pendleton’s scorching attack upon Lincoln for suspending the writ of habeas corpus without congressional sanction. The doughty congressman shocked even his Democratic colleagues by introducing a bill providing for the president’s arrest and imprisonment if he should cause any more persons to be arrested arbitrarily, in either the border states or the loyal states.8 Republicans gasped and promptly shelved the resolution. They believed Vallandigham’s sole purpose was to embarrass the administration, and some questioned his sincerity and sanity. “In war time,” wrote “Deacon” William F. Comly of the Dayton Journal, “it is the duty of legislators to strengthen the hands of the government, and not to weaken them, even when their views do not coincide with its policy.”9 A few Democrats were pleased with Vallandigham’s boldness and his apparent bid for notoriety. Others suspected he was using the resolution merely as a means of calling the country’s attention to the many arbitrary arrests already made—offering the administration some of its own bitter medicine. “His friends had better admonish him,” wrote one concerned Democrat, “that if he does not desire to be expelled, he should not get so sarcastically funny.”10

The congressman from Dayton also joined the Democratic minority in its efforts to stay the course of abolition. These Democrats voted against a resolution proposed by Thaddeus Stevens which blamed slavery for the war and endorsed emancipation. They also voted against Thomas D. Eliot’s measure to authorize generals in command of military districts or departments to free the slaves of rebels within their jurisdiction. And they opposed, en masse, a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia and a second measure to abolish it in the western territories. They spoke out against the Confiscation Bill because it gave Lincoln a lever to attack slavery in the Confederate states. They objected to the assignment of a consul or ambassador to “the Negro republic of Haiti.” They opposed the repeal of an act forbidding Negroes to serve as stagecoach drivers or to carry the United States mail. Finally, they opposed Lincoln’s efforts of March and April 1862 to promote compensated emancipation in the border states—admitting thereby that he could no longer resist the abolition pressure.

Occasionally C.L.V. was able to get the floor to object to some abolition measure or speak briefly against it. He had a chance, for example, to enumerate his objections to the bill voiding slavery in the District of Columbia. He argued that the measure would prolong the war and nullify future attempts at reunion through compromise.11 He also abhorred all of the other abolition measures which took long hours of congressional time. His views were quite like those of another Democrat, who wrote:

Congress has the negro-phobia. It is nigger in the Senate, and nigger in the House. It is nigger in the forenoon and nigger in the afternoon. It is nigger in motions and nigger in speeches. It was nigger the first day and it has been nigger every day. Nigger is in every man’s eye, and nigger in every man’s mouth. It’s nigger in the lobby and nigger in the hall. . . . The nigger vapor is a moral pestilence that blunts the sense of duty to the Constitution and destroys the instinct of obedience to the law.12

Vallandigham interpreted the abolitionists’ attack upon slavery as a revolutionary measure. It was an attack not only upon a socioeconomic institution, but upon states’ rights, as well. The administration’s war measures centralized the government, causing the ship of state to founder upon unconstitutional shoals and change the nature of the federal union. He advocated “the Constitution as it is, the Union as it was”—the prewar union with states’ rights dominant and with slavery still intact. He believed that Jeffersonian principles must be maintained at all hazards, that eternal vigilance was the price of liberty, and that time would immortalize those who resist revolution and abolition, “the twin madnesses of the moment.” “We are in the throes of a revolution,” he wrote to one of his political allies, “and I cannot see what the issue is yet; but I dread the worst.”13 He revealed his own self-righteousness and his faith in “Time the Great Avenger” in a note to ex-President Franklin Pierce. “The time will come,” he predicted confidently, “. . . when all men who have stood firm and true to their principles and to the real interests of the country will be remembered with gratitude and honor.”14 In a sense, the Dayton congressman was offering evidence that he was a conservative, rooted to the past and fearful of the future.

In addition to opposing all the abolition measures introduced in Congress, Vallandigham also voted “nay” on many other Republican-sponsored bills. Some were measures to enact planks from the Republican platform into law. He voted against the Pacific Railway Bill, which provided a federal land subsidy for the construction of a transcontinental railroad over the plains and across the Rockies. He objected to new tariff levies. He objected to the Illinois Ship Canal Bill, denying that it had any relevance to military needs. He argued against the Treasury Note Bill (providing for the issue of $150 million of greenbacks as legal tender), saying that “forced federal currency” would bring “depreciation” and then “a final explosion.” He told Republicans to their faces that they were guilty of “fiscal irresponsibility” and “financial contrivances.” He saw the burdens of war weighing heavily upon a worn populace, for continued war meant heavier taxation. Those who wanted to continue the war, he warned, must be willing to levy the taxes and suffer the political consequences. Fancy schemes to evade that responsibility merited only censure. “Taxation, heavy taxation, but upon a sound principle and in the right way,” asserted the self-styled watchdog of the Treasury, “can alone save us now.”15

The Dayton congressman did not vote for any of the army appropriation bills introduced in the second session of the Thirty-seventh Congress—nor did he vote against them. When the Army Deficiency Bill reached the House, he asked several embarrassing questions. He slurred the War Department and the administration by asking if it were a discrepancy rather than a deficiency bill—was it a means to hide a $30 million defalcation in the War Department? Nor did he give any support to the Army Bill, which appropriated $422 million for the year ending June 30, 1863. He remained noticeably silent during the debate on this major bill and conveniently refrained from voting, so that Republicans could not use his vote against him in the ’62 election campaign.16

Vallandigham’s self-asserted role as critic and gadfly led to verbal encounters with a couple of Republican congressmen. One of those with whom he crossed swords was John P. Hickman of Pennsylvania. The two had tangled once before and Hickman bore a grudge because he had been badly bested. The Pennsylvanian’s bluntness, combined with a swaggering self-assurance, had led him into “engagements” with other congressmen. Once Hickman had wrestled with two Virginia representatives at the top of the Capitol steps, and before the fight was over the three had rolled down to the bottom, punching, tugging, and kicking each other.

On February 19, 1862, Hickman threw down the gauntlet. Having secured the floor, he looked directly at Vallandigham and impugned his loyalty before the overflowing galleries. In his right hand he held a copy of the Baltimore Clipper; he gesticulated with his left, often pointing in the direction of the Dayton congressman. He read selections from an editorial which charged Vallandigham with harboring traitorous designs, claimed that the Democrat had referred to the South as “bleeding Dixie,” and accused him of tainting his oath to support the government and the Constitution. Then, without differentiating between an editor’s lie-filled charges and the facts of the case, the representative from Pennsylvania introduced a resolution instructing the Committee on the Judiciary “to inquire into the truth of certain charges of disloyalty” made against Vallandigham.

Feigning composure though seething with indignation, Vallandigham rose immediately to refute the charges, contradicting every sentence in the scurrilous article. He denied ever having used the term “bleeding Dixie.” He had never gone into the so-called Confederate states to meet with rebel leaders as the article charged—indeed, he had not been south of the Mason-Dixon line since the start of hostilities. Moreover, he denied that he had ever sent an article on politics to any Baltimore newspaper.

Taken aback by Vallandigham’s refutation, Hickman countered weakly. Had not Kentucky rebels named a camp in Vallandigham’s honor? Had not other newspapers also questioned Vallandigham’s loyalty?

The accused congressman answered every question forthrightly. He had never heard of a Camp Vallandigham in Kentucky, but he knew of a city named Hickman in that border state. The camp story, like others, was evidently invented by lying newspapermen, probably for political effect. Republican newspapers had circulated countless lies and made numerous charges, many libelous. Republican editors repeatedly misrepresented his views and concocted new tales as fast as he could deny the old. Sarcastically, Vallandigham suggested that an intelligent gentleman ought not to give currency to newspaper slander already denounced as false and unfair.17

Bested in the exchange, Hickman raised the white flag. He meekly withdrew the resolution he had earlier introduced, and Vallandigham was complimented by some of his Democratic friends for making Hickman look like a simpleton. Even some Republican congressmen, disgusted with Hickman’s overbearing manner and roughhouse tactics, commended Vallandigham for besting the Pennsylvanian. Vallandigham, known for his assertiveness and self-assurance, enjoyed his triumph. He expressed his satisfaction with the outcome to his wife: “I was never more gratified in my life with any result. . . . It was a signal triumph. . . . They will let me alone bye-and-bye.”18

Benjamin F. Wade, one of the United States senators from Ohio, was the next prominent member of Congress to attack Vallandigham. Friends had told “Bluff Ben” that the Dayton congressman coveted his Senate seat, and they urged him to discredit the would-be competitor by stamping the traitor’s brand upon his forehead.19 Once, outside the halls of Congress, Wade characterized Vallandigham as “a man who never had any sympathy with the Republic, but whose every breath is devoted to its destruction, just as far as his heart dare permit him to go.”20 Later, on the Senate floor, Wade made a frontal assault upon the Democratic party in general and Vallandigham in particular. He accused Democrats of trying to intimidate and discredit patriots, “men who boldly stand forth in defense of their country.” Some treason-tainted Democrats, he claimed, belonged to a subversive secret society, the Knights of the Golden Circle, and tried to use that serpentine organization to reconstruct the Democratic party. He stated that Vallandigham belonged to this association, that the Dayton congressman had tried to discredit and crucify Stephen A. Douglas and was now trying to lead the Democratic party down the road to treason.21

After Wade’s remarks appeared in the Congressional Globe, Vallandigham sought the floor of the House for his reply. Holding a copy of the Globe in his hand, he read Wade’s slanderous charges to an attentive audience. Then, rising on tip-toe and raising his voice, he discarded his decorum and usual temperance. “Now, sir,” he shouted, “here in my place in the House and as a Representative, I denounce—and I speak it advisedly—the author of that speech as a liar, a scoundrel, and a coward—His name is BENJAMIN F. WADE!”22

The presiding officer, of course, called Vallandigham to order. One of Wade’s friends quickly introduced a resolution to censure Vallandigham for his intemperate remarks and personal attack upon the senator. But Vallandigham escaped censure, partly through his knowledge of parliamentary law. Then, too, congressmen were reluctant to interfere in a personal feud in which both parties had overstepped the bounds of propriety.23

Others joined Wade and Hickman in trying to discredit Vallandigham. John A. Gurley and Samuel Shellabarger, congressmen from Ohio, presented petitions from their districts asking for Vallandigham’s expulsion from the House as “a traitor and a disgrace to the State.” Since the petitions had not come from Vallandigham’s own congressional district, and since there was no evidence offered that he was guilty of treason or had disgraced Ohio, a House committee shelved the batch of petitions.

Republican constituents occasionally wrote to their congressmen to excoriate Vallandigham and sometimes to urge his expulsion. “I look upon him [Vallandigham] as one of the blackest traitors in either the Senate or the House,” wrote a Michigander who thought he could read the minds of voters in a neighboring state, “and I am confident I speak the sentiments of 7/8 of the Democrats of Ohio when I say their wishes are that he might in some way be expelled.”24 The expulsion of Jesse Bright of Indiana from the Senate in February 1862 tempted some to suggest the same medicine for C.L.V. “If justice were done,” wrote one such critic, “Vallandigham would be kicked from the House as Bright was from the Senate.”25

Republican editors made an art of abusing Vallandigham. John W. Forney, editor of the Philadelphia Press and a confidant of President Lincoln, set the pattern and the pace. He asserted that Vallandigham and Jeff Davis belonged in the same bed and that Vallandigham’s stand on the Trent affair and other measures gave hope and encouragement to the enemy.26 “His record for the past four months,” wrote another Republican editor in January of 1862, “is sufficient to render him infamous for life, and will in all probability, unless he seeks absolution in sackcloth and ashes.”27 Occasionally Republican editors put their villification of Vallandigham into rhyme. One wrote:

Vile traitor to the blood our fathers spilt for thee,

And dark inheritor of Arnold’s infamy;

List to the hiss of moral serpents in thy breast,

Lapping their forky tongues of treason from their nest,

And spawning in thy heart’s tartarian cell,

New gems to make thee worthy of a hell;

Damnation’s seal is set upon thy rebel name—

In blackest brand, thou moral vagabond, in same,

Go forth, a traitor to thy country, and thy God:

Hearing afar the voice of Lyon’s; and Ellsworth’s blood

Asking sweet vengeance for thy festering crime,

Making thee hissed and hated through all coming time.28

When occasional compliments of Vallandigham appeared in Southern newspapers, Republican editors in Northern states viewed them as evidence that the Dayton congressman deserved to be expelled from Congress, arrested promptly, and tried for treason. Republican strategists, such as Benjamin Wade or Horace Greeley, recognized that a treason campaign against Vallandigham would affect his political future and stigmatize the Democratic party. “We have the monster [Vallandigham] branded with the traitor’s mark,” croaked one Republican in mid-April of 1862, “and it is treason on the part of our friends to let up the impure and damnable party that has held its organization above the interest of the country.”29 Some Republicans were so partisan in their approach to all problems that they even thought it treasonable for a Democrat to wear his own party’s emblem, be it a butternut, a hickory branch, the head of Liberty, or a picture of Jefferson.30

Vallandigham was so busy serving as gadfly and quarreling with Republicans that he did not take time to return to Dayton to vote in the April 1862 elections, even though a close personal friend, William H. Gillespie, sought the mayor’s office. Since the Republican newspaper in Dayton had questioned Vallandigham’s loyalty, he chose to view the election returns as an endorsement of his course and his cause. Not only was Gillespie elected, but a Democratic resurgence seemed to be in process in most parts of the upper Midwest.31

The April election returns offered proof, Vallandigham believed, that the people were beginning to repudiate the Lincoln administration. “Gloomy as the prospect is,” he wrote to ex-President Pierce, “there is yet hope. The Democratic party was not dead; it only slept; but it is now stirring itself as the strong man rousing himself from his slumbers. Its success is our only hope. Yes, it is amazing that our people—Americans proud, boastful and free—should have submitted to usurpation and despotism which would have roused Greece even to resistance after two thousand years of servitude . . . . But, thank God, the regenerating spirit breathes again upon this people and we are young enough to recover all: and we will—I mean our public and private liberties. I hope for more.”32

Encouraged, Vallandigham tried to rally his party and revive its prewar principles. Trying to step into the leadership void created in the party by Douglas’s death, the Dayton congressman wrote a “call to action,” and got thirty-five other congressional Democrats to sign the call and agree to a meeting date. Next he formed an ad hoc committee to prepare a statement of Democratic faith and tried to impose his antiwar views upon the other members. Some of the self-styled War Democrats, however, fully aware that Vallandigham’s reputation as an antiwar man hurt rather than helped the party, used delaying tactics to nullify his leadership. Peeved and impenitent, Vallandigham then wrote a statement in collaboration with William A. Richardson of Illinois, tacked on the names of most Midwestern Democrats, and published it under the title “Address of the Democratic Members of the Congress to the Democracy of the United States.” The document urged conciliation and compromises, recommended use of the ballot box to change the direction of events in the country, and asserted that states alone had the right to touch slavery (“domestic institutions”). The Vallandigham-Richardson address emphasized the worthiness of states’ rights doctrine, restating the views of Jefferson and Calhoun. It tied the Democratic party to the past, promising to reconstruct the Union upon prewar ideas and with prewar institutions. It was further proof of Vallandigham’s conservatism, uncomfortable with the revolution which was modifying the country’s institutions. The document tried to foist the slogan “The Constitution as it is, the Union as it was” upon the Democratic party.33

Vallandigham’s action helped to widen the schism already existing within the Democratic party. Some of those whose names had been attached to the address were incensed or embarrassed. “I think no document ought to have been sent out,” wrote one who found his name listed as a sponsor, “which was not acceptable to the majority of our party.”34 Astute Democrats like Manton Marble of the New York World recognized the weaknesses of the abortive document. It abounded with “uncandid aspersions” and failed to condemn the Southern rebels. Marble viewed the latter as inexcusable. He also recognized that the document was “a monstrous anachronism.” “Its spirit,” he asserted, “belongs not to the present but to the past.”35

Republicans, wont to criticize Vallandigham at every opportunity, attacked the document with glee. Horace Greeley condemned it as a poisonous potion composed of “old party catchwords and phrases, . . . half-truths,” and rank partisanship. “Slavery, imperilled by her own treason in the Slave States,” Greeley wrote, “summons her trusty servitors in the Free States to the rescue.”36

The hostile Washington atmosphere proved wearing to Vallandigham, affecting his disposition and making him long to be home again. “I wish I could get away from here,” he wrote to his mother in mid-June, adding, “I am weary, very weary of it.” Although worn and tired, he still nurtured the hope that peace and prosperity would revisit his war-torn and unhappy country. “I am still hopeful of the future,” he insisted, “even amidst the darkness that surrounds us, and the evil and wickedness I see on every side.” But thoughts of his “victories” over Benjamin F. Wade and John P. Hickman buoyed his spirits. “God has been very good to me in the midst of sore persecution,” he wrote in closing, “and has delivered me out of the hands of my enemies, and given me the victory over them in every assault.”37

Early in July, Vallandigham found an excuse to escape Washington’s pressure-laden atmosphere. He left for Columbus to attend the Democratic State Convention. There he found many delegates optimistic about the future of the Democratic party. Indeed, it seemed as if a Democratic revival was in progress. The April election returns served as a stimulant. The failure of McClellan’s peninsular campaign cost the Lincoln administration prestige. The economic depression of 1861-1862, affecting the Midwest brutally, touched many pocketbooks and caused some to transpose their economic grievances into political discontent. Democratic partisanship had become fashionable again.

Dayton delegates such as Bollmeyer of the Empire and Mayor Gillespie, two of Vallandigham’s closest friends, gave him a warm welcome when he arrived at his hotel in Columbus late on July 3. That evening a crowd gathered in front of his hotel, gave him three cheers, and called for a speech. It was good for C.L.V.’s ego to feel wanted again. He lit into the Lincoln administration and the crowd repeatedly applauded his oratorical sallies.

The next morning he gave one of the principal addresses at the convention. He emphasized two themes, attacking abolitionism and “arbitrary government.” The recent congressional session, he asserted, had done more for the cause of secessionism in six months “than Beauregard, and Lee, and Johnson, and all the Southern generals combined, had been able to accomplish in one year.” He denounced arbitrary arrests, especially those of Ohio Democrats. The audience response emboldened him; he closed by asking Ohio Democrats to demand their rights and to maintain them at all hazards. Perhaps the nation needed a Runnymede or a John Hampton! It was a speech which breathed defiance and he received a tremendous ovation, proof that he had regained some of his lost luster and that his views had become more popular in Democratic circles. “He rises from persecution,” wrote a sympathetic Democratic editor, “and attracts public notice and approbation from abuse.”38

Vallandigham also served on the Committee on Resolutions, where he found the membership badly split on the question of war and peace. One faction, led by Samuel Medary of the Crisis, believed that the Union “was gone for good,” that the army should be withdrawn from the South and an armistice arranged. Medary argued that Lincoln ought to be impeached, either for violating the Constitution or for incompetence and idiocy. He even berated Vallandigham for failing to vote against all military bills or army appropriation measures. The “War Democrats,” on the other hand, led by George W. Manypenny of the Ohio Statesman, believed that all efforts should be subordinated to two basic issues: defeating the rebels and restoring the Union. Army officers wearing Democratic buttons and on leave from their field assignments gave support to Manypenny’s arguments. Vallandigham occupied a middle position. He believed that the Union might still be restored by compromise—that it was not lost forever. The Southern states, he felt, might still be enticed back into the Union by reasonable promises and concessions. The West, he warned, could never allow “a foreign power” to control the lower section of the Mississippi. He detested abolitionism. President Lincoln’s many unconstitutional acts merited censure. His slogan was still “The Constitution as it is, the Union as it was.”39

In time, the Committee on Resolutions hammered out its planks, taking strong stands against arbitrary arrests, “the abolition heresy,” and Lincoln’s “unconstitutional acts.” The Democratic party had a monopoly on virtue, Republicans on vice.40 In short, the resolutions seemed to restate the preachments which Vallandigham had earlier helped write into the “Address of the Democratic Members of Congress to the Democracy of the United States.”

After the convention adjourned (1862 was not a gubernatorial election year in Ohio), most of the delegates took trains for home. Some of the delegates and visitors, however, spent the evening of “the glorious Fourth” in Columbus, drinking Democratic toasts. A crowd of celebrants visited Vallandigham’s hotel and called for him to say a few words. He answered their calls by stepping out on the balcony, lighting into Lincoln and abolitionists, and appealing to political prejudices. The crowd loved it. This was his third speech in Columbus within twenty-four hours, and each had been “a crowd-pleaser.”41 He may have been physically exhausted, but he was light at heart.

Vallandigham did not return to Washington for the closing weeks of Congress, which remained in session until July 17. Instead, he took the train to Dayton to be reunited with his family, to visit his friends, and to dispose of some business in his law office. He also wanted to take the necessary steps to insure his reelection to Congress. Events at the State Democratic Convention had renewed his conviction that he was right and the Republican congressmen wrong. No longer was he a voice crying in the wilderness, for growing dissatisfaction with the Lincoln administration and the war made some Democrats who had been most critical of him the previous summer stand at his side and pay him homage. He could again pose as a prophet and glory in the change of public opinion.

1 Cincinnati Daily Gazette, 4 December 1861.

2 Entry of 3 December 1861, Medlar, “Journal.”

3 Congressional Globe, 37 Cong., 2 sess., p. 5.

4 Ibid., pp. 101, 120.

5 Ibid., pp. 210-12.

6 Dayton Daily Empire, 3, 9 January 1862.

7 Dayton Daily Journal, 4 January 1862.

8 Congressional Globe, 37 Cong., 2 sess., pp. 40, 67, 92.

9 20 December 1861.

10 John W. Kees to Samuel S. Cox, 20 December 1861, Samuel S. Cox Papers (microfilm), Hayes Memorial Library, Fremont, Ohio.

11 Congressional Globe, 37 Cong., 2 sess., pp. 5-6, 1589-90, 1698, 1767, 1788, 1819-20, 2359-60, 2363, 2560-61; entry of 7 March 1862, Medlar, “Journal.”

12 Macomb Eagle (n.d.), quoted in Indianapolis State Sentinel, 23 December 1861.

13 Vallandigham to Alexander S. Boys, 27 January 1862, Alexander S. Boys Papers, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus.

14 11 April 1862, Franklin Pierce Papers, Library of Congress.

15 Congressional Globe, 37 Cong., 2 sess., pp. 168-70, 198-99, 345, 523, 526-27, 593-94, 614-15, 618, 638, 640, 665, 680, 689, 693-95, 874, 887, 1589, 1659, 1682-83, 1971, 2906, 3031.

16 Ibid., pp. 569, 576, 579, 907-8, 1309. Vallandigham’s congressional record is reviewed in a cursory and confusing fashion in Christena M. Wahl, “The Congressional Career of Clement Laird Vallandigham” (master’s thesis, Ohio State University, 1938).

17 Congressional Globe, 37 Cong., 2 sess., pp. 879-81; Indianapolis State Sentinel, 1 March 1862.

18 20 February 1862, published in part in Vallandigham, Vallandigham, p. 192.

19 John H. Geiger to Wade, 20 February 1862, and Peter Zinn to Wade, 5 February 1862, Benjamin F. Wade Papers, Library of Congress.

20 Quoted in Vallandigham, Vallandigham, p. 193.

21 Congressional Globe, 37 Cong., 2 sess., p. 1736.

22 Ibid., pp. 1828-29.

23 Ibid., pp. 1828-31, 1833; Crisis, (Columbus), 7 May 1862.

24 L. A. Pierce to Zachariah Chandler, 6 December 1861, Zachariah Chandler Papers, Library of Congress.

25 Dayton Daily Journal, 7 February 1862.

26 Philadelphia Press (n.d.), quoted in Dayton Daily Journal, 17 January 1862.

27 Dayton Daily Journal, 16 January 1862.

28 San Francisco Bee (n.d.), reprinted in Dayton Daily Journal, 5 March 1862.

29 Peter Zinn to Benjamin F. Wade, 15 April 1861, Wade Papers.

30 O. T. Fishback to Thomas O. Lowe, 22 April 1862, Thomas O. Lowe Papers, Dayton and Montgomery County Public Library; Dayton Daily Journal, 5 April 1862.

31 Dayton Daily Journal, 4, 5 April 1862; Crisis, 16 April, 7 May 1862; entry of 9 April 1862, Medlar, “Journal.”

32 11 April 1862, Pierce Papers.

33 Published in the Washington Intelligencer, 8 May 1862.

34 James A. Cravens to William H. English, 25 June 1862, William H. English Papers, Indiana State Historical Society, Indiana State Library, Indianapolis.

35 New York World, 9, 13 May 1862.

36 New York Tribune, 9 May 1862.

37 Vallandigham to his mother, 14 June 1862, published in Vallandigham, Vallandigham, p. 211.

38 Crisis, 9 July 1862; Daily Ohio Statesman (Columbus), 7 July 1862; Ohio Patriot (New Lisbon), 8 August 1862.

39 John D. Martin to Philip Ewing, 9 July 1862, Thomas Ewing Papers, Ohio Historical Society; Crisis, 12 December 1861; Daily Ohio Statesman, 7 July 1862; Ohio State Journal (Columbus), 8 July 1862.

40 “Report of the Democratic State Convention, 1862,” 4 July 1862, in Samuel Medary Papers, Ohio Historical Society.

41 Crisis, 9, 16 July 1862; Daily Ohio Statesman, 9, 16 July 1862.

If you find an error or have any questions, please email us at admin@erenow.org. Thank you!