In the 1860s, the Peace Democrats, also known as Copperheads, were a faction of the Democratic Party in the North who opposed the American Civil War and wanted an immediate peace settlement with the Confederates. Republicans started labeling anti-war Democrats "Copperheads" after the eastern copperhead (Agkistrodon contortrix), a species of venomous snake. Those Democrats embraced the moniker, reinterpreting the copper "head" as the likeness of Liberty, which they cut from Liberty Head large cent coins and proudly wore as badges.Benjamin P. Thomas, Abraham Lincoln: A Biography (1952) p. 377. By contrast, Democratic supporters of the war were called War Democrats. Notable Copperheads included two Democratic Congressmen from Ohio: Reps. Clement L. Vallandigham and Alexander Long. Republican prosecutors accused some prominent Copperheads of treason in a series of trials in 1864.Wertheim, (1989).
Copperheadism was a highly contentious grassroots movement. It had its strongest base just north of the Ohio River and in some urban ethnic wards in large cities. In the state of Ohio, perhaps in contrast with Indiana and Illinois, the counties that had Peace Democrat majorities tended not to be along the Ohio River, but more in the central and northwestern portions of the state.
Historians such as Wood Gray, Jennifer Weber, and Kenneth M. Stampp have argued that it represented a traditionalistic element alarmed at the rapid modernization of society sponsored by the Republican Party and that it looked back to Jacksonian democracy for inspiration. Weber argues that the Copperheads damaged the Union war effort by opposing conscription, encouraging desertion, and forming conspiracies. Still, other historians say that the draft was already in disrepute and that the Republicans greatly exaggerated the conspiracies for partisan reasons.
Historians such as Gray and Weber argue that the Copperheads were inflexibly rooted in the past and were naive about the refusal of the Confederates to return to the Union. Convinced that the Republicans were ruining the traditional world they loved, they were obstructionist partisans. In turn, the Copperheads became a significant target of the National Union Party in the 1864 presidential election, when they were used to discredit the leading Democratic candidates. Copperhead support increased when Union armies did poorly and decreased when they won great victories. After the fall of Atlanta in September 1864, Union military success seemed assured, and Copperheadism collapsed.
Name
A possible origin of the name came from a New York Times newspaper account in April 1861 that stated that when postal officers in Washington, D.C., opened a mail bag from a state now in the Confederacy:
Agenda
During the American Civil War (1861–1865), the Copperheads nominally favored the Union and strongly opposed the war, for which they blamed abolitionists. They demanded immediate peace and resisted draft laws. They wanted President Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans ousted from power, seeing the President as a tyrant destroying American republican values with despotic and arbitrary actions.Charles W. Calhoun, "The Fire in the Rear," Reviews in American History 35.4 (2007), pp- 530–537 online at Project MUSE.
Some Copperheads tried to persuade Union soldiers to desert. They talked of helping Confederate prisoners of war seize their camps and escape. They sometimes met with Confederate agents and took money. The Confederacy encouraged their activities whenever possible.William A. Tidwell, April '65: Confederate Covert Action in the American Civil War. Kent State University Press. 1995. pp. 155–20.
Newspapers The Copperheads had numerous important newspapers, but the editors never allied. In Chicago, Wilbur F. Storey made the Chicago Times into Lincoln's most vituperative enemy.Walsh (1963). The New York Journal of Commerce, originally abolitionist, was sold to owners who became Copperheads, giving them an important voice in the nation's largest city. A typical editor was Edward G. Roddy, owner of the Uniontown, Pennsylvania Genius of Liberty. He was an intensely partisan Democrat who saw African Americans as an inferior race and Lincoln as a despot and dunce. Although he supported the war effort in 1861, he blamed abolitionists for prolonging the war and denounced the government as increasingly despotic. By 1864, he was calling for peace at any price.
John Mullaly's Metropolitan Record was the official Catholic newspaper in New York City. Reflecting Irish American opinion, it supported the war until 1863 before becoming a Copperhead organization. In the spring and summer of 1863, the paper urged its Irish working-class readers to pursue armed resistance to the draft passed by Congress earlier in the year. When the draft began in the city, working-class European Americans, largely Irish, responded with violent riots from July 13 to 16, lynching, beating and hacking to death more than 100 black New Yorkers and burning down black-owned businesses and institutions, including the Colored Orphan Asylum, an orphanage for 233 black children. On August 19, 1864, John Mullaly was arrested for inciting resistance to the draft.
Even in an era of extremely partisan journalism, Copperhead newspapers were remarkable for their angry rhetoric. Wisconsin newspaper editor Marcus M. Pomeroy of the La Crosse Democrat referred to Lincoln as "Fungus from the corrupt womb of bigotry and fanaticism" and a "worse tyrant and more inhuman butcher than has existed since the days of Nero ... The man who votes for Lincoln now is a traitor and murderer ... And if he is elected to misgovern for another four years, we trust some bold hand will pierce his heart with dagger point for the public good".Mark Wahlgren Summers, A Dangerous Stir: Fear, Paranoia, And the Making of Reconstruction (2009) p. 38
Copperhead resistance
The Copperheads sometimes talked of violent resistance and, in some cases, started to organize. However, they never actually made an organized attack. As war opponents, Copperheads were suspected of disloyalty, and their leaders were sometimes arrested and held for months in military prisons without trial. One notable example was General Ambrose Burnside's 1863 General Order Number 38, issued in Ohio, which made it an offense (to be tried in military court) to criticize the war in any way. The order was used to arrest Ohio congressman Clement L. Vallandigham when he criticized the order itself,Michael Kent Curtis, "Lincoln, Vallandigham, and Anti-War Speech in the Civil War", William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 7 (1998) pp. 105-191. and, on May 1, 1863, declared that the war was being fought not to save the Union but to free enslaved blacks. He was court-martialed by the Army and sentenced to imprisonment, but Lincoln commuted the sentence to banishment behind Confederate lines.Frank L. Klement, "Clement L. Vallandigham's Exile in the Confederacy, May 25 – June 17, 1863", Journal of Southern History (1965): 149–163. in JSTOR.
The Democrats nevertheless nominated Vallandingham for governor of Ohio in 1863. He left the Confederacy and went to Canada, where he campaigned for governor but lost after an intense battle.
Vallandingham operated behind the scenes at the 1864 Democratic convention in Chicago. The convention adopted a largely Copperhead platform and selected Ohio Representative George Pendleton, a Peace Democrat, as the vice-presidential candidate. However, it chose a pro-war presidential candidate, General George B. McClellan. The contradiction severely weakened the party's chances to defeat Lincoln.
Probably the largest Copperhead group was the Knights of the Golden Circle. Formed in Ohio in the 1850s, it became politicized in 1861. It reorganized as the Order of American Knights in 1863 and again in early 1864 as the Order of the Sons of Liberty, with Vallandigham as its commander. One leader, Harrison H. Dodd, advocated the violent overthrow of the governments of Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri in 1864. Democratic Party leaders and a Federal investigation thwarted his "Northwest Conspiracy".
Despite this Copperhead setback, tensions remained high. These tensions would contribute to physical altercations between Copperheads, Republicans, and Union soldiers in Illinois towns such as Paris, Mattoon, and ultimately in Charleston. The Charleston Riot took place on March 28th, 1864 and ended with six Union soldiers and two Copperheads dead. This event drew the attention of President Lincoln, and became national news.
Indiana Republicans then used the sensational revelation of an antiwar Copperhead conspiracy by elements of the Sons of Liberty to discredit Democrats in the 1864 House elections. The military trial of Lambdin P. Milligan and other Sons of Liberty revealed plans to set free the Confederate prisoners held in the state. The culprits were sentenced to hang, but the Supreme Court intervened in Ex parte Milligan, saying they should have received civilian trials.Frank L. Klement, The Copperheads in the Middle West.
Characteristics The values of the Copperheads reflected the Jacksonian democracy of an earlier agrarian society. The Copperhead movement attracted Southerners who had settled north of the Ohio River, and the poor and merchants who had lost profitable Southern trade.Mary Beth Norton, et al. A People and a Nation: A History of the United States, Vol. I (Houghton Mifflin Co., 2001), pp. 393–395.Eugene H. Roseboom, "Southern Ohio and the Union in 1863." Mississippi Valley Historical Review (1952): 29–44. in JSTOR. They were most numerous in border areas, including southern parts of Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana (in Missouri, comparable groups were avowed Confederates).Robert H. Abzug, "The Copperheads: Historical Approaches to Civil War Dissent in the Midwest." Indiana Magazine of History (1970): 40–55. online.
The movement had scattered bases of support outside the lower Midwest. A Copperhead element in Connecticut dominated the Democratic Party there.Joanna D. Cowden, "The Politics of Dissent: Civil War Democrats in Connecticut." New England Quarterly (1983): 538–554. in JSTOR. The Copperhead coalition included many Irish American Catholics in eastern cities, mill towns and mining camps (especially in the Pennsylvania coal fields). They were also numerous in German Catholic areas of the Midwest, especially Wisconsin.Weber, Copperheads (2006).
Historian Kenneth Stampp has captured the Copperhead spirit in his depiction of Congressman Daniel W. Voorhees of Indiana:
Historiography
Two central questions have run through the historiography of the Copperheads: "How serious a threat did they pose to the Union war effort and hence to the nation's survival?" and "To what extent and with what justification did the Lincoln administration and other Republican officials violate civil liberties to contain the perceived menace?"
The first book-length scholarly treatment of the Copperheads was The Hidden Civil War: The Story of the Copperheads (1942) by Wood Gray. In it, Gray decried the "defeatism" of the Copperheads and argued that they deliberately served the Confederacy's war aims. Also in 1942, George Fort Milton published Abraham Lincoln and the Fifth Column, which likewise condemned the traitorous Copperheads and praised Lincoln as a model defender of democracy.
Gilbert R. Tredway, a professor of history, in his 1973 study Democratic Opposition to the Lincoln Administration in Indiana found most Indiana Democrats were loyal to the Union and desired national reunification. He documented Democratic counties in Indiana having outperformed Republican counties in recruiting soldiers. Tredway found that Copperhead sentiment was uncommon among the rank-and-file Democrats in Indiana.