Copperhead (politics)

In the 1860s, the Copperheads, also known as Peace Democrats,[1]

were a faction of Democrats in the Union who opposed the American Copperhead Democrats
Civil War and wanted an immediate peace settlement with the Historical Clement
Confederates. leaders Vallandigham
Alexander Long
Republicans started calling anti-war Democrats “Copperheads”
Founded 1860
framing them as poisonous as a venomous snake (the pit viper
Agkistrodon contortrix). Those Democrats accepted the label, Dissolved 1868
reinterpreting the copper “head” as the likeness of Liberty, which they Ideology Anti-abolitionism
cut from Liberty Head large cent coins and proudly wore as Anti-Civil War
badges.[2] By contrast, Democratic supporters of the war were called Jacksonianism
War Democrats. Notable Copperheads included two Democratic National Democratic Party
Congressmen from Ohio: Clement L. Vallandigham and Alexander affiliation
Long. Republican prosecutors accused some prominent Copperheads Politics of United States
of treason in a series of trials in 1864.[3]
Political parties
Copperheadism was a highly contentious grass-roots movement. It Elections
had its strongest base in the area just north of the Ohio River as well
as in some urban ethnic wards. Historians such as Wood Gray, Jennifer Weber and Kenneth Stampp have
argued that it represented a traditionalistic element alarmed at the rapid modernization of society sponsored by
the Republican Party and that it looked back to Jacksonian democracy for inspiration. Weber argues that the
Copperheads damaged the Union war effort by opposing conscription (the "draft"), encouraging desertion and
forming conspiracies, but other historians say that the draft was already in disrepute and that the Republicans
greatly exaggerated the conspiracies for partisan reasons.

Historians such as Gray and Weber argue that the Copperheads were inflexibly rooted in the past and were
naïve about the refusal of the Confederates to return to the Union. Convinced that the Republicans were
ruining the traditional world they loved, they were obstructionistic partisans.[4] In turn, the Copperheads
became a major target of the National Union Party in the 1864 presidential election, where they were used to
discredit the main Democratic candidates.

Copperhead support increased when Union armies did poorly and decreased when they won great victories.
After the fall of Atlanta in September 1864, Union military success seemed assured and Copperheadism
collapsed.

Contents
Name
Agenda
Newspapers
Copperhead resistance
Characteristics
Historiography
Notable Peace Democrats
See also
Notes
Further reading
External links

Name
A possible origin of the name came from a New York Times newspaper account in April 1861 that stated that
when postal officers in Washington D.C. opened a mail bag from a state now in the Confederacy-

A day or two since, when one of the mail-bags coming from the South by way of Alexandria,
was emptied in the court-yard of the Post-office, a box fell out and was broken open, - from
which two copperheads, one four and a half and the other three feet long, crawled out. The larger
one was benumbed and easily killed; the other was very lively and venomous, and was
dispatched with some difficulty and danger. What are we to think of a people who resort to such
weapons of warfare.[5][6]

Agenda
During the American Civil War (1861–1865), the Copperheads
nominally favored the Union and strongly opposed the war, for which
they blamed abolitionists and they demanded immediate peace and
resisted draft laws. They wanted President Abraham Lincoln and the
Republicans ousted from power, seeing the President as a tyrant
destroying American republican values with despotic and arbitrary
actions.[8]

Some Copperheads tried to persuade Union soldiers to desert. They

talked of helping Confederate prisoners of war seize their camps and
escape. They sometimes met with Confederate agents and took
money. The Confederacy encouraged their activities whenever
possible.[9]

Newspapers
The Copperheads had numerous important newspapers, but the
editors never formed an alliance. In Chicago, Wilbur F. Storey made
the Chicago Times into Lincoln's most vituperative enemy.[10] The Copperhead pamphlet from 1864 by
New York Journal of Commerce, originally abolitionist, was sold to Charles Chauncey Burr, a magazine
owners who became Copperheads, giving them an important voice in editor from New York City[7]
the largest city. A typical editor was Edward G. Roddy, owner of the
Uniontown, Pennsylvania Genius of Liberty. He was an intensely
partisan Democrat who saw African Americans as an inferior race and Lincoln as a despot and dunce.
Although he supported the war effort in 1861, he blamed abolitionists for prolonging the war and denounced
the government as increasingly despotic. By 1864, he was calling for peace at any price.
John Mullaly's Metropolitan Record was the official Catholic newspaper in New York City. Reflecting Irish
American opinion, it supported the war until 1863 before becoming a Copperhead organ. In the spring and
summer of 1863, the paper urged its Irish working-class readers to pursue armed resistance to the draft passed
by Congress earlier in the year. When the draft began in the city, working class European Americans, largely
Irish, responded with violent riots from July 13 to 16, lynching, beating and hacking to death more than 100
black New Yorkers and burning down black-owned businesses and institutions, including an orphanage for
233 black children. On August 19, 1864, John Mullaly was arrested for inciting resistance to the draft.

Even in an era of extremely partisan journalism, Copperhead newspapers were remarkable for their angry
rhetoric. Wisconsin newspaper editor Marcus M. Pomeroy of the La Crosse Democrat referred to Lincoln as
"Fungus from the corrupt womb of bigotry and fanaticism" and a "worse tyrant and more inhuman butcher
than has existed since the days of Nero [...] The man who votes for Lincoln now is a traitor and murderer [...]
And if he is elected to misgovern for another four years, we trust some bold hand will pierce his heart with
dagger point for the public good".[11]

Copperhead resistance
The Copperheads sometimes talked of violent resistance and in some cases
started to organize. However, they never actually made an organized attack.
As war opponents, Copperheads were suspected of disloyalty and their
leaders were sometimes arrested and held for months in military prisons
without trial. One famous example was General Ambrose Burnside's 1863
General Order Number 38, issued in Ohio, which made it an offence (to be
tried in military court) to criticize the war in any way.[12] The order was used
to arrest Ohio congressman Clement L. Vallandigham when he criticized the
order itself.[13] However, Lincoln commuted his sentence while requiring his
exile to the Confederacy.

Probably the largest Copperhead group was the Knights of the Golden Circle.
Formed in Ohio in the 1850s, it became politicized in 1861. It reorganized as
the Order of American Knights in 1863 and again in early 1864 as the Order
Clement Vallandigham, of the Sons of Liberty, with Vallandigham as its commander. One leader,
leader of the Copperheads, Harrison H. Dodd, advocated violent overthrow of the governments of
coined the slogan: "To Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky and Missouri in 1864. Democratic Party leaders
maintain the Constitution as and a Federal investigation, thwarted his conspiracy. In spite of this
it is, and to restore the Copperhead setback, tensions remained high. The Charleston Riot took place
Union as it was." in Illinois in March 1864. Indiana Republicans then used the sensational
revelation of an antiwar Copperhead conspiracy by elements of the Sons of
Liberty to discredit Democrats in the 1864 House elections. The military trial
of Lambdin P. Milligan and other Sons of Liberty revealed plans to set free the Confederate prisoners held in
the state. The culprits were sentenced to hang, but the Supreme Court intervened in ex parte Milligan, saying
they should have received civilian trials.[14]

Most Copperheads actively participated in politics. On May 1, 1863, former Congressman Vallandigham
declared the war was being fought not to save the Union, but to free the blacks and enslave Southern whites.
The army then arrested him for declaring sympathy for the enemy. He was court-martialed by the Army and
sentenced to imprisonment, but Lincoln commuted the sentence to banishment behind Confederate lines.[15]
The Democrats nevertheless nominated him for governor of Ohio in 1863. He campaigned from Canada, but
lost after an intense battle. He operated behind the scenes at the 1864 Democratic convention in Chicago. This
convention adopted a largely Copperhead platform and selected Ohio Representative George Pendleton (a
known Peace Democrat) as the vice presidential candidate. However, it chose a pro-war presidential candidate,
General George B. McClellan. The contradiction severely weakened the party's chances to defeat Lincoln.
Characteristics
The values of the Copperheads reflected the Jacksonian democracy of an earlier agrarian society. The
Copperhead movement attracted Southerners who had settled north of the Ohio River, and the poor and
merchants who had lost profitable Southern trade.[16][17] They were most numerous in border areas, including
southern parts of Ohio, Illinois and Indiana (in Missouri, comparable groups were avowed Confederates).[18]

The movement had scattered bases of support outside the lower Midwest. There was a Copperhead element in
Connecticut that dominated the Democratic Party there.[19] The Copperhead coalition included many Irish
American Catholics in eastern cities, mill towns and mining camps (especially in the Pennsylvania coal fields).
They were also numerous in German Catholic areas of the Midwest, especially Wisconsin[20]

Historian Kenneth Stampp has captured the Copperhead spirit in his depiction of Congressman Daniel W.
Voorhees of Indiana:

There was an earthy quality in Voorhees, "the tall sycamore of the Wabash." On the stump his hot
temper, passionate partisanship, and stirring eloquence made an irresistible appeal to the western
Democracy [i.e. the Democratic Party]. His bitter cries against protective tariffs and national
banks, his intense race prejudice, his suspicion of the eastern Yankee, his devotion to personal
liberty, his defense of the Constitution and State's rights faithfully reflected the views of his
constituents. Like other Jacksonian agrarians, he resented the political and economic revolution
then in progress. Voorhees idealized a way of life which he thought was being destroyed by the
current rulers of his country. His bold protests against these dangerous trends made him the idol
of the Democracy of the Wabash Valley.[21]

Historiography
Two central questions have run through the historiography of the Copperheads, i.e. "How serious a threat did
they pose to the Union war effort and hence to the nation's survival?" and "to what extent and with what
justification did the Lincoln administration and other Republican officials violate civil liberties to contain the
perceived menace?".[8]

The first book-length scholarly treatment of the Copperheads appeared in 1942. In The Hidden Civil War,
Wood Gray decried the "defeatism" of the Copperheads. He argued they deliberately served the Confederacy's
war aims. Also in 1942, George Fort Milton published Abraham Lincoln and the Fifth Column, which
likewise condemned the traitorous Copperheads and praised Lincoln as a model defender of democracy.[8]

Gilbert R. Tredway, a professor of history, in his 1973 study Democratic Opposition to the Lincoln
Administration in Indiana found most Indiana Democrats were loyal to the Union and desired national
reunification. He documented Democratic counties in Indiana having outperformed Republican counties in the
recruitment of soldiers. Tredway found that Copperhead sentiment was uncommon among the rank-and-file
Democrats in Indiana.[22]

The chief historians who favored the Copperheads are Richard O. Curry and Frank L. Klement. Klement
devoted most of his career to debunking the idea that the Copperheads represented a danger to the Union.
Klement and Curry have downplayed the treasonable activities of the Copperheads, arguing the Copperheads
were traditionalists who fiercely resisted modernization and wanted to return to the old ways. Klement argued
in the 1950s that the Copperheads' activities, especially their supposed participation in treasonous anti-Union
secret societies, were mostly false inventions by Republican propaganda machines designed to discredit the
Democrats at election time.[8] Curry sees Copperheads as poor traditionalists battling against the railroads,
banks and modernization. In his standard history Battle Cry of Freedom (1988), James M. McPherson asserted
Klement had taken "revision a bit too far. There was some real fire under that smokescreen of Republican
propaganda".[8]

Jennifer Weber's Copperheads (2006) agrees more with Gray and Milton than with Klement. She argues that
first, Northern antiwar sentiment was strong, so strong that Peace Democrats came close to seizing control of
their party in mid-1864. Second, she shows the peace sentiment led to deep divisions and occasional violence
across the North. Third, Weber concluded that the peace movement deliberately weakened the Union military
effort by undermining both enlistment and the operation of the draft. Indeed, Lincoln had to divert combat
troops to retake control of New York City from the anti-draft rioters in 1863. Fourth, Weber shows how the
attitudes of Union soldiers affected partisan battles back home. The soldiers' rejection of Copperheadism and
their overwhelming support for Lincoln's reelection in 1864 was decisive in securing the Northern victory and
the preservation of the Union. The Copperheads' appeal, she argues, waxed and waned with Union failures
and successes in the field.

Notable Peace Democrats

Jesse D. Bright of Indiana
Henry Clay Dean of Virginia
Alexander Long of Ohio
Edson B. Olds of Ohio
George Pendleton of Ohio
Horatio Seymour of New York
Fernando Wood of New York
Clement Vallandigham of Ohio
Daniel W. Voorhees of Indiana
Marcus M. Pomeroy of Wisconsin
Wilbur F. Storey of Illinois
William Taylor Davidson of Illinois
Lewis W. Ross of Illinois
Nathan Lord President of Dartmouth College
William A. Wallace of Pennsylvania

See also
American election campaigns in the 19th century
Bixby letter
Bourbon Democrat
Copperhead (2013 film)
Doughface
Knights of the Golden Circle
Opposition to the American Civil War
Red Strings
War Democrat

Notes
1. Weber, Jennifer L. (2006). Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North
 (https://archive.org/details/copperheadsrisef00webe). Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 1 (htt
ps://archive.org/details/copperheadsrisef00webe/page/n19). ISBN 1429420448.
OCLC 76960635 (https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/76960635).
2. Benjamin P. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln: A Biography (1952) p. 377.
3. Wertheim, (1989).
4. Andrew L. Slap; Michael Thomas Smith (2013). This Distracted and Anarchical People: New
Answers for Old Questions about the Civil War-Era North (https://books.google.com/books?id=t
FEWodN8MsUC&pg=PA47). Fordham UP. p. 47. ISBN 9780823245680.
5. THE IMPENDING WAR.; EXCITEMENT AT THE NATIONAL CAPITAL Anticipated Raid of the
Secessionists. THE DISTRICT MILITIA ORDERED OUT. Intentions of the Administration
Regarding Fort Sumpter. Object and Result of Lieutenant Talbot's Mission. What is Thought of
the Refusal to Allow him to Returnt to the Fort. SOUTH CAROLINA TO BE HELD
RESPONSIBLE. (https://www.nytimes.com/1861/04/11/archives/the-impending-war-excitement
-at-the-national-capital-anticipated.html), New York Times, 11 April 1861, pg. 1
6. Strausbaugh, John City of Sedition: The History of New York City during the Civil War Hachette
UK, 2 August 2016
7. Joseph George Jr., "'Abraham Africanus I': President Lincoln Through the Eyes of a
Copperhead Editor," Civil War History (1968) 14#3 pp. 226–239.
8. Charles W. Calhoun, "The Fire in the Rear," Reviews in American History 35.4 (2007), pp-
530–537 online (https://muse.jhu.edu/article/225319) at Project Muse.
9. William A. Tidwell, April '65: Confederate Covert Action in the American Civil War. Kent State
University Press. 1995. pp. 155–20.
10. Walsh (1963).
11. Mark Wahlgren Summers, A Dangerous Stir: Fear, Paranoia, And the Making of Reconstruction
(2009) p. 38
12. George Henry Porter (1911). Ohio Politics During the Civil War Period (https://archive.org/detail
s/ohiopolitics00portrich). Columbia UP. p. 159 (https://archive.org/details/ohiopolitics00portrich/
page/159).
13. Michael Kent Curtis, "Lincoln, Vallandigham, and Anti-War Speech in the Civil War." William
and Mary Bill of Rights Journal 7 (1998) pp. 105+.
14. Frank L. Klement, The Copperheads in the Middle West.
15. Frank L. Klement, "Clement L. Vallandigham's Exile in the Confederacy, May 25-June 17,
1863." Journal of Southern History (1965): 149–163. in JSTOR (https://www.jstor.org/stable/220
5442).
16. Mary Beth Norton, et al. A People and a Nation, A History of the United States" Vol I, (Houghton
Mifflin Co., 2001) pp. 393–395.
17. Eugene H. Roseboom, "Southern Ohio and the Union in 1863." Mississippi Valley Historical
Review (1952): 29–44. in JSTOR (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1902842).
18. Robert H. Abzug, "The Copperheads: Historical Approaches to Civil War Dissent in the
Midwest." Indiana Magazine of History (1970): 40–55. online (http://scholarworks.iu.edu/journal
s/index.php/imh/article/view/9470/12651).
19. Joanna D. Cowden, "The Politics of Dissent: Civil War Democrats in Connecticut." New
England Quarterly (1983): 538–554. in JSTOR (https://www.jstor.org/stable/365104).
20. Weber, Copperheads (2006).
21. Stampp (1949), p. 211.
22. Gilbert R. Tredway, Democratic Opposition to the Lincoln Administration in Indiana (http://jah.ox
fordjournals.org/content/61/1/197.extract). Indianapolis, Indiana: Indiana Historical Bureau,
1973. Retrieved March 2, 2011.

Further reading
Calhoun, Charles W. "The Fire in the Rear", Reviews in American History (2007) 35#4 pp.
530–537 10.1353/rah.2007.0078 online (http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/rah/summary/v035/35.4ca
lhoun.html); Historiography.
Cowden, Joanna D. "The Politics of Dissent: Civil War Democrats in Connecticut", The New
England Quarterly, 56#4 (December 1983), pp. 538–554 in JSTOR (https://www.jstor.org/pss/3
65104).
Cowden, Joanna D., “Heaven Will Frown on Such a Cause as This”: Six Democrats Who
Opposed Lincoln’s War. (UP of America, 2001). xviii, 259pp.
Curry, Richard O. "Copperheadism and Continuity: the Anatomy of a Stereotype", Journal of
Negro History (1972) 57(1): 29–36. in JSTOR (https://www.jstor.org/pss/2717071).
Curry, Richard O. "The Union as it Was: a Critique of Recent Interpretations of the
'Copperheads'". Civil War History 1967 13(1): 25–39.
George, Joseph Jr. "'Abraham Africanus I': President Lincoln Through the Eyes of a
Copperhead Editor". Civil War History 1968 14(3): 226–239.
George, Joseph Jr. "'A Catholic Family Newspaper' Views the Lincoln Administration: John
Mullaly's Copperhead Weekly". Civil War History 1978 24(2): 112–132.
Gray, Wood. The Hidden Civil War: The Story of the Copperheads (1942), emphasizes
treasonous activity.
Hershock, Martin J. "Copperheads and Radicals: Michigan Partisan Politics during the Civil
War Era, 1860–1865", Michigan Historical Review (1992) 18#1 pp. 28–69.
Kleen, Michael, "The Copperhead Threat in Illinois: Peace Democrats, Loyalty Leagues, and
the Charleston Riot of 1864", Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (2012), 105#1 pp.
69–92.
Klement, Frank L. The Copperheads in the Middle West (1960).
Klement, Frank L. The Limits of Dissent: Clement L. Vallandigham and the Civil War (1998).
Klement, Frank L. Lincoln's Critics: The Copperheads of the North (1999).
Klement, Frank L. Dark Lanterns: Secret Political Societies, Conspiracies, and Treason Trials
in the Civil War (1984).
Landis, Michael Todd. Northern Men with Southern Loyalties: The Democratic Party and the
Sectional Crisis'. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014.
Lendt, David L. Demise of the Democracy: The Copperhead Press in Iowa. (1973).
Lendt, David L. "Iowa and the Copperhead Movement". Annals of Iowa 1970 40(6): 412–426.
Manber, Jeffrey, Dahlstrom, Neil. Lincoln's Wrath: Fierce Mobs, Brilliant Scoundrels and a
President's Mission to Destroy the Press (2005).
Milton, George F. Abraham Lincoln and the Fifth Column (1942).
Nevins, Allan. The War for the Union (4 vols. 1959–1971), the standard scholarly history of
wartime politics and society.
Rodgers, Thomas E. "Copperheads or a Respectable Minority: Current Approaches to the
Study of Civil War-Era Democrats". Indiana Magazine of History 109#2 (2013): 114–146. in
JSTOR (https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5378/indimagahist.109.2.0114); historiography focused
on Klement, Weber and Silbey.
Silbey, Joel H. A Respectable Minority: The Democratic Party in the Civil War Era, 1860–1868
(1977) online edition (https://www.questia.com/read/105266888).
Stampp, Kenneth M. Indiana Politics during the Civil War (1949) online edition (https://www.qu
estia.com/library/book/indiana-politics-during-the-civil-war-by-kenneth-m-stampp.jsp).
Smith, Adam. No Party Now: Politics in the Civil War North (2006), excerpt and text search (http
s://www.amazon.com/No-Party-Now-Politics-Civil/dp/0195188659/).
Tidwell, William A. April '65: Confederate Covert Action in the American Civil War. (1995).
 Walsh, Justin E. "To Print the News and Raise Hell: Wilbur F. Storey's Chicago 'Times'".
Journalism Quarterly (1963) 40#4 pp. 497–510. doi: 10.1177/107769906304000402.
Weber, Jennifer L. Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln's Opponents in the North (2006).
Wertheim, Lewis J. "The Indianapolis Treason Trials, the Elections of 1864 and the Power of
the Partisan Press". Indiana Magazine of History 1989 85(3): 236–250.
Wubben, Hubert H. Civil War Iowa and the Copperhead Movement (1980).

External links
The Old Guard (http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa/browse.journals/oldg.html) – a Copperhead
magazine 1863–1867 is online at Making of America
Ohio Copperhead History (http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=582)
An Anti-Copperhead Broadside Denouncing Former President Franklin Pierce As A Traitor (htt
p://www.shapell.org/manuscript.aspx?171326). Shapell Manuscript Foundation

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