Repudiating the Administration: The Copperheads in Putnam County, Indiana

46 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Repudiating the Administration The Copperheads in Putnam County, Indiana Nicole Etcheson H istorical studies of the Copperheads, or antiwar northern Democrats, take the reader straight into the murky depths of Civil War-era conspiracy . As Jennifer L. Weber notes in her recent study, the Copperheads left few sources, perhaps suggesting that they engaged in nefarious or even treasonous schemes that they preferred not to see the light of day. Certainly, Republicans believed the worst of Copperheads. In fact, much of the evidence for Copperhead activity comes from the files of Republican detectives or provost marshals. Before Weber, Frank Klement, then the leading historian of the Copperheads, dismissed such evidence as too self-interested on the part of the Republicans to credit seriously. In the case of Indiana, Klement noted much too convenient a convergence between the information provided by these detectives and the political needs of Governor Oliver P. Morton.1 The questions historians have asked about the Copperheads have, in fact, largely been framed by their enemies, the Republicans. Chiefly, historians have wanted to know whether the Copperheads sympathized with the Confederacy and even aided it, or whether they merely invoked the right of the opposition to criticize the government in power, a right often equated with treason during wartime. Scholars can gain perspective on the controversies surrounding the Copperheads by placing them in context. Putnam County, Indiana, provides one laboratory for examining the Copperheads. Historians have long recognized Indiana as one of the leading Copperhead states. Weber calls the Hoosier state, along with Illinois, “the center of gravity for antiwar activity.” A military commission tried a high profile conspiracy case against some leading Indiana Copperheads in the fall of 1864, concurrent with critical state and national elections . These trials led to an important United States Supreme Court case, Ex parte Milligan, shortly after the Civil War. Milligan denied the government the power to try civilians before military courts in jurisdictions not under martial law, thereby protecting civil liberties.2 Conflict over wartime loyalty and civil liberties was thus fought over as fiercely in Indiana as anywhere in the Union. Putnam County, in the west-central part of the state, was reasonably representative of Civil War-era Indiana. Rural and agricultural, the county enjoyed commercial connections through the National Road that bisected it, and a growing railroad network. It was also Copperhead territory. Copperhead characteristics often included southern birth or heritage, a conservative Democratic background, NICOLE ETCHESON FALL 2013 47 Title page, K.G.C.: An Authentic Exposition of the Origin, Objects, & Secret Work of the Organization Known as the Knights of the Golden Circle (Louisville [?]: U.S. National U.[nion] C.[ommittee], 1862). THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY REPUDIATING THE ADMINISTRATION 48 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY and racism, all of which describe Putnam County’s population. Almost onethird of the county’s residents had been born in the Upper South, principally Kentucky. With Indiana solidly Democratic in nineteenth-century elections, state Democrats had grown accustomed to being the dominant party. The county also voted mostly Democratic, although Greencastle, the county seat and a college town, tended toward the Whigs and later the Republicans. As for racism, in 1851, Indiana adopted a new state constitution, largely the work of the Democrats in the convention. A separate vote allowed Hoosiers to adopt a provision forbidding African Americans to enter the state. State voters overwhelmingly ratified both the constitution and the black exclusion provision, Article 13, that they famously adopted by a larger majority than the constitution. Both the majorities in favor of the constitution and Article 13 proved greater in Putnam County than in the state itself, as did the disparity between the votes ratifying the constitution and Article 13, indicating the county’s strong Democratic and anti-black sentiments.3 Putnam County Copperheads reflected the outlook of this society. Staunch Democrats, often of southern heritage, they believed passionately that the Republicans had exploited the war to subvert traditional liberties and advance black rights. Putnam Democrats lost their political supremacy in the realigning election of 1860. In 1856, the old Whig vote had split between the emerging Republican Party (then called the People’s Party in Indiana) and...