The Union As It Was: A Critique of Recent Interpretations of the "Copperheads"

THE UNION AS IT WAS: A Critique of Recent Interpretations of the "Copperheads" Richard O. Curry Americans like to think of themselves as rational, egalitarian, and God-fearing people whose generosity exceeds only their passion for individual liberty and freedom of conscience. Much of American history justifies this point of view. But a recurrent theme in our society , especially during periods of national crisis, is the sacrifice of democratic ideals to a devil theory of politics and history—whether in the form of Bavarian Illuminati, the "Great Beast" of Rome, the Anarchists, Radicals of the early 1920's, or Communism. Contemporary historians, as a rule, deal with the politics of hysteria in a detached and objective manner. One major exception has been the treatment accorded by many writers to those conservative opponents of the Lincoln administration commonly called "Copperheads ," "Butternuts," or "Peace Democrats." "Copperhead" was a loosely defined epithet coined by Republicans to characterize northern Democrats who criticized Lincoln's war policies. Copperheads condemned confiscation acts, arbitrary arrests, suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, the Emancipation Proclamation , the passage of federal conscription laws, and violations of freedom of the press. They wanted no part of what they termed "abolitionist fanaticism," and called for the restoration of "The Union As It Was" before the war began. In their view, the Radicals were subverting the Constitution, destroying civil liberties, and undermining the established social order by propagating poisonous theories of racial equality. To Radicals, such a position was not only unenlightened and reactionary , but disloyal. Conservative rhetoric was little more than a diversionary tactic by which Copperheads tried to conceal treasonable motives. Failing in their attempt to seize political power in the North by peaceable means, so the story goes, traitors and rebel sympathizers turned to organizing secret societies—Knights of the Golden Circle, Sons of Liberty, Corps de Belgique, containing thousands of members, perhaps as many as 500,000—which discouraged enlistments, aided 25 26CIVIL WAB HISTORY desertion, circulated disloyal literature, recruited for the enemy, and eventually plotted revolution in the North itself.1 Under the pressure of war, charges and countercharges leveled by Republican and Democratic partisans against each other are neither surprising nor unprecedented. Radicals and Copperheads occupied polar positions on slavery and the nature of the Union. War hysteria and the tendency of Republicans to equate opposition to the war policies of the Lincoln administration with treason produced an explosive , and at times, irrational political situation. Conservative northern Democrats, most of whom were not willing to acquiesce in Confederate independence as the sine qua non of peace, were on the defensive throughout most of the war, and "Waving the Bloody Shirt" remained a favorite Republican campaign device well into the ISWs. What is surprising is the fact that a number of modern historians accept as valid many of the charges leveled by Radical Republicans against their conservative antagonists. Included in this group are Leonard Kenworthy, whose biography of Daniel W. Voorhees appeared in 1936; Wood Gray, George Fort Milton, F. L. Grayston, and Samuel A. Pleasants, who wrote in the 1940s; Bethania Smith and Frank C. Arena, whose work appeared in the 1950's; and John Niven, Frederic S. Klein, John E. Talmadge, and Stephen Z. Starr, whose writing has appeared since I960.2 Gray's study, The Hidden 1 See, for example, the report by Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt to Edwin M. Stanton, Oct. 8, 1864, in U.S. War Dept, The War of the Rebellion: A Compihtion of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies ( Washington , 1880-1901), Ser. II, VII, 930-953; Benn Pitman (ed.), The Treason TriaL· at Indianapolis Disclosing the Pfons for Establishing a North-Western Conspiracy (Cincinnati, 1865); and Winslow Ayer, The Great Northwest Conspiracy . . . . (Chicago, 1865). Among the more sensational "treason" exposés in Republican newspapers were those in the Chicago Tribune, Aug. 26, 1862, and the Indianapolis Journal, Jan. 19, 1863. 2 Leonard Kenworthy, The Tall Sycamore of the Wabash: Daniel Wolsey Voorhees (Boston, 1936); Wood Gray, The Hidden Civil War: the Story of the Copperheads (New York, 1942); George Fort Milton, Abraham Lincoln and the Fifth Column (New York, 1942); F. L. Grayston, "Lambdlin P...