The Printer's Kiss: The Life and Letters of a Civil War Newspaperman and His Family

19. Partisan Fever

230 ChAPTer nineTeen } To provide for yourself abundant matter for shame and repentance—act under the influence of passion. —Freedom’s Casket, June 15, 1844 Partisan Fever As autumn approached, the Union defeat at the Battle of Chickamauga muted rounds of applause in the north for earlier victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg. Meanwhile, statewide elections in Ohio and other states were gearing up, and Tomlinson was publishing the Loyal Scout in rip­ ley. The four­page tabloid promoted the Union ticket, with John Brough for governor, and ran for seven issues, with the last issue dated October 10, 1863. Most of the articles in that issue focused on Union candidates and their opponents. One opponent, the Copperhead Democrat Clem­ ent Vallandigham, was running for governor from Canada, where he had eventually landed after leaving the Confederacy. his supporters in Ohio thronged to rallies and sang out vehement denunciations of Lincoln: We are coming, Abraham Lincoln . . . With curses loud and deep, That will haunt you in your waking And disturb you in your sleep.1 republicans and Unionists countered with their own chant: “hurrah for Brough and Abraham / And a rope to hang Vallandigham.” republi­ can newspapers accused Vallandigham of being linked to antidraft riots partisan feVer } 231 in new York, Morgan’s invasion of Ohio, and Lee’s march into Pennsyl­ vania. he was also thought to be working with the Knights of the Golden Circle to thwart Union success. his followers were often referred to as butternuts; they tended to be rural, relatively uneducated, resistant to the draft, and resentful of African American competition for jobs. They called Brough a “nigger lover” and a “fat Knight of the corps d’Afrique.” in the final outcome, however, such epithets worked against them when republicans used their opponents’ racist propaganda to mount an offen­ sive campaign. in linking emancipation to Union victory, republicans managed to construe a vote for Copperhead Democrats as a vote against the Union.2 in ripley, Tomlinson used the October 10 issue of the Loyal Scout to laud candidates on the Union ticket as good, true, and loyal men. he vilified their opponents as lying, cowardly, and traitorous vermin. The Union candidate running for clerk of court, for instance, was “honest, capable and loyal,” while his opponent was “the dirty rebel, the coward dog, the drunken bully, the lazy thief; who would fight his grandmother for her gruel.” Tomlinson’s vituperation of anti­Union candidates was The last newspaper published by Will Tomlinson, the Loyal Scout, October 10, 1863, was found in 1970 in the attic of the home of the author’s grandparents. (Wylie­ Tomlinson Letter Collection) 232 } the printer’s kiss sometimes more than verbal. in a diatribe against one local politician, he issued the following challenge: “Chilton A. White can put this in his pipe and smoke it;—he, White, is a dirty liar, a contemptible coward, a traitor . . . whose greatness is like that of a pig following a cow—picking up what others drop. if this pot house loafer and liar and dog will meet me, Will Tomlinson, face to face, i will teach the whelp the merits of a good thrashing; and the world the value of a Congressman’s carcass well skined [sic].” in another article, “Last sunday in ripley,” Tomlinson de­ scribed a flesh­and­blood encounter he had with “traitors”who broadcast “infamous and cowardly lies” about him. After giving one of the traitors “a profound settler on the mug,”Tomlinson drew his pistol and drove the others back. Although the incident ended with the “original difficulty” being resolved between him and the other men, the editor of the Loyal Scout was clearly on the warpath. Any “humbugs and cowards” voting for Vallandigham, he wrote, deserved to be “kicked from one end of the corporation to the other.”3 in “Patriot Then—Traitor now,” in the same issue, Tomlinson wrote that Brown County traitors like Pat McGroarty had “brains besotted by the meanest of Georgetown­doctored whisky” and had “forsaken the glo­ rious cause of country.” Debating causes of the war rather than fighting in it was pointless, he argued. “Let us put down rebellion, and then settle political questions about it.” it made no difference, he wrote, “whether Joshua Giddings or Jeff. Davis got up the rebellion.” no one, he said, should refuse to fight the rebels even if he thought Lincoln violated the Constitution. “Who...