Crushing Dissent: The Pacific Coast Tests Lincoln's Policy of Suppression, 1862

CRUSHING DISSENT: THE PACIFIC COAST TESTS LINCOLN'S POLICY OF SUPPRESSION, 1862 Robert J. Chandler On Aucust8, 1862, Secretary ofWar Edwin M. Stanton, at the request of President Abraham Lincoln, published two unprecedented orders. The first "directed" L^nited States marshals and chiefs of police to "arrest and imprison" any persons "discouraging volunteer enlistments" or "giving aid and comfort to the enemy" or for "any other disloyal practice." A military commission would try such prisoners, while the second order explicitly "suspended" the writ of habeas corpus in their cases. These were the first orders authorizing political arrests to apply nationwide. ' Though the federal government decreed suppression, it let local civil authorities choose the victims. The appearance of the orders in community newspapers encouraged the public to participate in the selection . Two states on the Pacific Coast, far from Civil War battlefields, offer insight into the operation of the orders. In California and Oregon, politics came to dominate policy, as the outspoken Southern sympathies of dissenters outraged Union sensibilities, but did not threaten security. During 1862, L^nionists tested Lincoln's program by banning five newspapers from the L^nited States mails and arresting six Democrats in California and by banning six newspapers in Oregon. Arbitrary arrests in the North, which began with the war in April 1861, were secret, regional, and sporadic. "A telegraphic dispatch, or a private order from the State or War Department, was the usual warrant," observed John A. Marshall, a strongly partisan representative of the political prisoners. This era ended when Edwin M. Stanton became secretary of war, centralized all arbitrary arrests in his department, and, at Lincoln 's command, freed all political prisoners on February 14, 1862, on the condition that they take a loyalty oath. Historian Dean Sprague studied this first period in his Freedom under Lincoln and concluded: "Never again during the war were the forts to be filled with political 1 Official Records, ser. 2, 4:359; OfficialRecords, ser. 3, 2:321; New York Herald, Times, and Tribune, August 9, 1862. 236CIVIL WAR HISTORY prisoners as they were in 1861." The orders of August 1862 would prove otherwise!2 As suppression slackened in the East, it began slowly in California and Oregon. General George Wright, commanding the Department of the Pacific since October 1861, had primary responsibility to keep peace. This sixty-year-old veteran of the Seminole, Mexican, and Indian wars of Oregon, was a well respected and judicious soldier. A decade's residence on the Pacific Coast had given him insight into the characteristics of the region's diverse population, which came from all parts of the globe. Spring 1862 saw orders to suppress dissent coming from different authorities and applying to specific cases but not generally. Wright dealt with the banning of three newspapers and one arrest.3 Unionists in California and Oregon controlled the state governments in 1862. In California through the 1850s, a Southern-oriented Democracy , based on the principles of state sovereignty and white supremacy had dominated politics, but the 1860 and 1861 elections brought Republicans and Union Democrats to power. Many Southern Democratic politicians rushed back in 1861 to join the rebel armies, and election results retired others. Public opinion killed or converted Southern sympathizingnewspapers in San Francisco, and in May 1862, Unionists impeached and removed district judge James H. Hardy, the last Confederate supporter with a statewide reputation remaining in office. Southern Democrats did, however, control many counties, and Unionists prepared to use civil and military authorities to attack them in their strongholds. Conditions were similar in Oregon.4 2 John A. Marshall, American Bastile [1869], 24th ed. (Philadelphia, 1879), 760-62, and see also SecretaryofState William H. Seward's "Little Bell," frontispieceand p. xiii; Dean Sprague, Freedom under Lincoln (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1965), 290. The lack of historical comment on the two August orders is surprising. Perhaps their publication in different series of the Official Records aided their scholarly neglect. Neither James Ford Rhodes, in his brief but excellent summary of arbitrary arrests in History of the United States, 7 vols. (New York, 1893-1900), 4:229-39, norJames C. Randall, in his pathbreaking and classic Constitutional Problems under Lincoln, rev. ed...