Frank L. Klement - The Limits of Dissent

The drawing of Vallandighams arrest used on the title page spread is
adapted from Frank Leslies Illustrated Newspaper, May 23, 1863.

ISBN: 978-0-8131-5355-1

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 71-111512

COPYRIGHT 1970 BY THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY

A statewide cooperative scholarly publishing agency serving Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, Kentucky State College, Morehead State University, Murray State University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University.

Editorial and Sales Offices: Lexington, Kentucky 40506

To the memory of

WILLIAM B. HESSELTINE

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I am indebted for favors and assistance to many persons and several institutions. Dozens of librarians and curators gave excellent service in making research materials available and in answering queries. Mr. Gerald Shields, head of the Social Science Division of the Dayton and Montgomery County Public Library, and Mr. Conrad F. Weitzel, reference librarian of the Ohio Historical Society, exemplify those who gave help beyond the call of duty.

Three Daytonians deserve my special thanks. Mr. John Drake, president of the Montgomery County Historical Society, located the Vallandigham probate records in the catacombs of the county court house. Mr. Lloyd Ostendorf loaned some items from his excellent collection of Daytoniana. Mr. Carl M. Becker of the Wright State University shared with me an interest in Midwestern Copperheadism and offered friendly advice and encouragement.

Mr. William E. Van Horne of Columbus, Ohio, volunteered information concerning Vallandighams return from exile and his relationship to the McGehan brothers. He also loaned an unpublished manuscript entitled The Strange Deaths of Clement L. Vallandigham and Thomas McGehan.

Two Marquette University graduate students, serving as research assistants in the History Department, gave invaluable help in checking out scores of items in the Congressional Globe, the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, and in various newspapers. Miss Sandra Collins served during the 1964-1965 academic year and Miss Edith Lechleitner during the 1965-1966 term.

Three grants subsidized research trips to various libraries and archives. A grant from the Graduate Research Committee of Marquette University enabled me to complete the gathering of notes in Dayton and Columbus. The Penrose Fund of the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia subsidized a research trip into Canada as well as visits to libraries in Richmond, Philadelphia, New York City, Albany, Rochester, Buffalo, and Cleveland. And a grant by the Midwest Research Grants Committee (established jointly by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin and the History Department of the University of Wisconsin) covered some of the expenses of an extended stay in Washington, D.C., to examine materials in the National Archives and the Library of Congress, and limited stays in Madison and Chicago, as well as paying most of the typing costs of the first draft. The Graduate Research Committee of Marquette U. provided funds for typing the revised manuscript.

Editors of three historical quarterliesJournal of Southern History, Ohio History, and Journal of Negro Historygraciously granted permission to incorporate sentences from three of my articles into this book.

I am most indebted, of course, to my wife Laurel for encouragement and invaluable assistancecorrecting, proofreading, indexing. During the last half-dozen years Clement L. Vallandigham has become almost a member of the family.

No figure of the Civil War era was more controversial than Clement L. Vallandigham. Republican party editors and orators denounced and detested him as a minion of Jeff Davis and a traitor. Self-styled War Democrats believed him devoid of patriotism and devoted to self-interest, playing a partisan fiddle while Rome burned. Most Midwestern Democrats, on the other hand, considered him their spokesman, able to put their thoughts, hopes, and fears into words. These Midwesterners, whether yeomen farmers of the backwoods area or workingmen of the cities, viewed him as their champion and endorsed his arguments against emancipation, his defense of states rights, and his pleas for peace and compromise.

In opposing the changes brought by the Civil War, Vallandigham played the role of conservative. He recognized war as more than a military contest waged on far-flung battlefields. He recognized the revolution occurring within the Civil War, transforming the federal union into a new nation, giving industry ascendancy over agriculture, extending rights to the black man, ending the upper Midwests chance to play balance-of-power politics, and threatening civil rights and personal freedoms. As the spokesman for Western Democrats, Valiant Val popularized the slogan The Constitution as it is, the Union as it was.

These Democratic critics of change and of the Lincoln administration came to be called Copperheads. They tried to slow down and stop the revolution taking place within the war and they called for peace and compromise, not only to stop the slaughter, but to halt the changes which were an integral part of the conflict. Midwestern Democrats invariably applauded Vallandigham for defending the political and economic interests of their section and nodded in agreement when he said he was inexorably hostile to Puritan domination in religion or morals or literature or politics.

Nationalist historians of the post-Civil War era have judged Vallandigham harshly, often accepting wartime political propaganda as fact. Because he opposed the will of the majority and the course of events, they have characterized him as obstructionist and traitor. Some have called him disloyal to his section and his country. Still others have furthered the legend that he was involved in the nefarious schemes of the Knights of the Golden Circle and linked to the conspiracy to establish a Northwest Confederacy.

Conversely, his only biographer (a devoted and sympathetic brother) used the whitewash brush rather freely in A Life of Clement L. Vallandigham, published in Baltimore in 1872. Through omission and invention, James L. Vallandigham presented his brother as an heroic figurea man of high intelligence and signal courage, devoted to principle and persecuted by fanatics and bigots.

Civil War historians who supposed that the truth about Vallandigham lay somewhere between the views expressed by the biographer-brother and the nationalist historians have long recognized the need for a scholarly and systematic study of the controversial Copperhead, since his activities involved such questions as civil rights, smear campaigns, white supremacy, subversive secret societies, Midwestern sectionalism, wartime politics, and, above all, the problem of dissent during war in a democracy. His role as the countrys best-known exile and his activities in the Democratic National Convention of 1864 add to his importance as a historical figure. Even in the postwar years he played a major part in two important events, the Philadelphia Convention of 1866 and the presidential contest two years later.

The aspect of Vallandighams life most meaningful to contemporary readers, however, concerns his role as a dissenter during the Civil War. Although protest against war was no new phenomenon in the United States, the limits of dissent were undefined and very vague, creating a special problem for the Lincoln administration and its chief critic. Clement L. Vallandigham, dissenter extraordinary, deserves an in-depth study so that some legends may be laid aside and his role as a Copperhead may be reassessed.