"Disloyalty" and the Dayton Public Schools

"DISLOYALTY" AND THE DAYTON PUBLIC SCHOOLS Carl M. Becker In early 1863 in the community of Dayton, Ohio—a growing city of twenty thousand people—children adorning themselves with Union League badges fought a bitter ideological struggle with children wearing Butternut charms. The Union League badge, merely an eagle button taken from an army uniform, was the emblem of the Union League, a Republican party auxiliary dedicated to support of the Lincoln administration and the war effort. The Butternut charm, a cross-section cut from the fruit of the white walnut tree, emblematized the "Butternut Democracy," a wing of the Democratic party intransigently opposed to the Republican party and the war.1 Initially symbols of antithetic values, the charms and badges eventually accentuated and then inspired conflict; representing for men the purposes—good and evil—of the Civil War, they were the media through which the acrimony of the adult world moved into the adolescent world and then backlashed in full measure against its authors. Such was the conflict over "disloyalty" in the Dayton public schools. This confrontation of adolescents was an outgrowth of the intense political strife that permeated the community during the Civil War. From the early months of the conflict, Dayton Butternuts—or Copperheads as they were often called—insisted, as did Butternuts throughout the nation, that the use of coercion to halt southern secession was unconstitutional. They argued, moreover, that only a voluntary "union of hearts and hands" could endure.2 Butternut constitutionalism was not merely an abstract thread unraveled from legalistic cloth. Ethnic and economic factors colored the Butternut understanding of the Constitution. Infused with the Butternut interpretation was the certi1 For the origin of the use of "Butternut," see Albert Matthews, "Origin of Butternut and Copperhead," Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts , XX ( 1918), 205-237. Before the war, the word referred to poor farmers who colored their outer garments with the brown dye of the butternut. The crosssection of the wartime emblem presented the appearance of two hearts united, which Butternuts said represented the true unity of North and South. 2 This point of view is expressed in Wood Gray, The Hidden Civil War ( New York, 1942), pp. 43-44. 58 tude of southerners from Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky, who had constituted the bulk—about 70 per cent—of the early nineteenth century migration to the Dayton area.3 Their progeny, though declining as a percentage of a population fed by northern and European sources, was still an influential group in the community, manifesting itself in the continuing articulation of states' rights doctrines. Some commercial interests, aggrieved by loss of southern markets, also supported the Butternut cause.4 Political kinship with a fellow-Daytonian, Clement Laird Vallandigham, the apotheosis of the anti-Lincoln mission nationally, imbued Dayton Butternuts with a sense of purpose that gave further vitality to their labors. Dayton Republicans naturally contested the Butternut view, insisting that the Lincoln administration was pursuing sensible policies in the prosecution of a constitutionally and morally just war. Deriving support from various elements—manufacturers and workingmen who identified their economic well-being with Republican legislation, German-Americans who detested slavery,5 and so-called "War Democrats " who were committed to the maintenance of national unity— the Republican party met the Butternut Democracy in the political arena on nearly equal terms in the early months of the war. In the first important election of the war years, the local contests of the spring of 1862, Butternut candidates won eight of ten city offices—but by narrow margins in most races. The Butternuts construed the victory as an endorsement of Vallandigham's criticism of the Lincoln administration , but Republicans denied any such relevancy, weakly attributing defeat to failure of overconfident party members to campaign forcibly for the ticket.6 The Republicans countered with a sweet victory in the congressional contest in the fall when their candidate, Brigadier General Robert C. Schenck, unseated Vallandigham, the incumbent from the Third District (which had been gerrymandered for the purpose). Savored by the Republicans as a vote of confidence for Lincoln, the victory was but a prelude to a conflict that subsequently infected every aspect of community life. Only...