Lincoln’s Critics: The Copperheads

Many Americans mistakenly believe that Abraham Lincoln enjoyed nearly universal support during the Civil War. If they are aware of any opposition, it is in the form of the New York City Draft Riots in the summer of 1863. In fact, Lincoln had to deal with dissent from the very beginning of the war. Opposition to the war, to the administration’s policies, and to the president himself waxed and waned, depending on how well—or poorly—the army was doing in the field. When opposition to the war was fiercest, in the summer of 1864, Lincoln was under incredible pressure to stop the war at any cost. Lincoln resisted clamorous calls for a cease-fire, but he and many others thought it would cost him reelection that fall. That Lincoln was able to withstand the extraordinary pressures to halt the bloodshed, even at what he thought would be the expense of his presidency, underscores both his tenacity and his moral and political courage.The principal dissidents were known as Copperheads, conservative Democrats who harkened back to Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson as ideal presidential role models. The two were strict constructionists when it came to the Constitution, and philosophically they could be compared to present-day U.S. Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Republicans early in the war labeled the Peace Democrats as “Copperheads,” and by 1862 the term was in widespread use. The copperhead is a poisonous snake, which is what Republicans meant by the word. The Peace Democrats tried to turn the meaning on its head. The penny at the time was also called a copperhead, and Peace Democrats embraced the label because, with an image of Lady Liberty on one side, the copperhead reinforced the Peace Democrats’ insistence that they were resisting the president in defense of the Constitution and civil liberties.So why don’t we hear more about these dissidents? The very few historians to write about them—all in the mid-twentieth century—marginalized them. They said that Copperheads were few, and two of the three historians who studied them treated them as cranks. The main debate among those historians was whether the Peace Democrats were trying to overthrow the government, either state or federal. That is the wrong question. The better question is, What impact did Peace Democrats have in the political and military arenas? The answer is that they had significant influence, especially as the war wore on and the financial and human costs mounted into the stratosphere. Copperheads had an enormous effect on the Democratic Party, nearly taking control of it in 1864. While some Copperheads were unquestionably dabbling in plots to overthrow the government, most were probably being truthful when they said they were loyal Unionists. The majority wanted to effect change at the ballot box, not at gunpoint.The Copperheads were not, as many people assume, Southern sympathizers. Some were. But most were not. Copperheads came to the movement generally from three different backgrounds. First were Southerners who had moved north, or whose families were Southern. Second were immigrants, especially Catholic Germans and Irish. They had no love for the Republican Party, which had absorbed the nationalists who had rallied against them in the 1840s and 1850s, and which also contained a number of temperance advocates whose crusades against alcohol targeted a centerpiece of both cultures. Third were conservative Jacksonian Democrats, the strict constructionists. It was their talk of constitutionalism that became the lingua franca for the entire movement. Jacksonian Democrats believed that secession was constitutional because the Constitution (they rightly pointed out) says nothing about the terms of membership in the Union. Throughout the war, even as Confederates insisted on independence, Jacksonian Democrats and other Copperheads believed that the war would end immediately if the North would give the South what it had wanted before it seceded, including an unalterable amendment to the Constitution protecting slavery.Lincoln’s opponents were relatively quiet the first year of the war. They opposed Lincoln’s decision to call out the militia, which is a congressional prerogative; challenged his order to blockade Southern ports, which they claimed was an act of war before Congress declared war; and disputed the income tax and the suspension of habeas corpus. Dissidents, most notably newspaper editors who differed with the administration, were being thrown in jail. Other newspapers received visits from uniformed troops who destroyed their presses or just locked the door and shut down operations. Lincoln had declared martial law in Maryland, in part as a way to protect Washington, D.C., from the Confederate sympathizers who lived mostly in the eastern part of the state. The Copperheads claimed that Lincoln was a “tyrant” using unconstitutional methods to prosecute the war. Yet while support for the war effort was strong, the Peace Democrats went relatively unheard.That changed in the summer of 1862, when the Union suffered a series of bad defeats, culminating with the second battle at Bull Run. Many Union sympathizers gave up on the war that summer. In that environment Peace Democrats became bolder and more vocal in their complaints about Lincoln’s handling of the war. They beat the drum harder and louder in their critiques of the administration and adopted a new rallying cry that they would use for the rest of the war: “The Union as it was and the Constitution as it is.”The most fervent Copperhead criticism of the administration revolved around race. Copperheads were deeply racist, even by the standards of their own time. Their racial fears increased as slaves ran to Union lines in search of freedom. Laborers feared that freedmen would take their jobs. Others simply did not want African Americans anywhere near them. Whatever the case, Peace Democrats were convinced that abolitionists had brought on the war by stirring up so much trouble in the antebellum period. Under the Lincoln administration, abolitionists had far too much influence and were, claimed the Copperheads, running the government. (Never mind that Lincoln was a raging moderate who moved to the left only as the war forced his hand.) Tensions were so high in the summer of 1862 that race riots broke out in Toledo and New York.When Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862, the Copperheads were apoplectic—although it did give them the satisfaction of saying “I told you so.” The Emancipation Proclamation confirmed their worst suspicions of what they thought was the true agenda of Lincoln and the Republicans: freeing the slaves. Democrats performed well in the off-year elections six weeks later, but Republicans held their own. The Republicans lost seats in Congress, governorships in New York and New Jersey, and legislatures in Indiana and Lincoln’s home state of Illinois, both of which went to the Copperheads. But Republicans had not lost as much ground as parties in power generally had in congressional elections.Whatever satisfaction Lincoln may have gained from the election dissipated soon after, with another serious blow to the Army of the Potomac at Fredericksburg in December 1862. There the Union took 12,600 casualties (killed, wounded, and captured) to the Confederate’s 5,000. Debacle hardly begins to describe the outcome. “Who is responsible for this terrible repulse?” demanded Harper’s Weekly, usually a bastion of Republican thought. Northerners “have borne, silently and grimly, imbecility, treachery, failure, privation, loss of every suffering which can afflict a brave people. But they can not be expected to suffer that such massacres as this at Fredericksburg shall be repeated.” In Boston, an attorney wrote, “My confidence is terribly shaken. So is everybody’s. Things have never looked so black to me as at this moment.”It was in this environment that the Emancipation Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863. At the same time, talk of the Midwest seceding and forming a third country, or perhaps joining the Confederacy, reached a crescendo. Lincoln worried about the state of the nation. At his front he had one enemy, the Confederates. At his back he had the Copperheads. In a rare display of concern, Lincoln confessed to a senator his fears about what he called “the fire in the rear.”Dwindling support for the war effort was evident in lower enlistments for the Union army. The situation was grave enough in the summer of 1862 that the federal government began demanding that states meet manpower quotas for the army. Several states were forced to institute conscription to meet the call. Many Northern men responded to this proto-conscription effort by running to Canada or the West, or by faking illness or injury to obtain medical waivers. By March 1863 the situation was so dire that the government was forced to take a more direct approach to raising men. Congress approved the Enrollment Act, the first federal conscription act in American history (unless one counts the draft that the Confederates had imposed almost a year earlier). This law provided for a bureaucracy unlike any that Americans had seen before. The Provost Marshal General’s Bureau was charged with administering and enforcing the draft. At least one office had to be set up in every congressional district in the North. The marshals and their aides, enrolling officers, and spies collected all kinds of information on men who were eligible for the draft and on those who might interfere with the same. Information about dissidents was sent directly to Washington, D.C., to the Provost Marshal General. This was an unprecedented intrusion on individuals’ lives, and the Provost Marshal General’s Bureau, without quite realizing what it was doing, became a domestic intelligence agency, one of the first in U.S. history.The draft was a serious impingement on the liberties of eligible Northern men. They could not even travel if a draft was afoot. Copperheads tapped into a deep well of resentment. They now began actively to undermine the war effort, encouraging draft dodging and desertion. Women were not immune to prosecution for harboring deserters, even if the men in question were husbands, sweethearts, or brothers. In some parts of the country, opposition to the draft was so intense that government agents dared not enter certain counties. In others the Provost Marshal General’s Bureau had trouble hiring men to enroll draft-age men, the job was simply too dangerous.Another way to fill the army’s maw was to accept black men into the ranks, which the army also did. Common sense that this would be a to men because it their of being In this black men in a reinforced the that this was not a war for and never had they it had a war of from the very to In Union troops were in a at even they had a manpower the In a had the most out of his home in the of the tried by a military and to the rest of the war in a military his Democrats were and Republicans were more a with an that to have for more a his the had never did not want to his or a So he the and had to the Confederates. he did not much the Southerners they so by he to That he would on the from as the Democrats’ for of in Lincoln and the a as the main of the and the Army of the Potomac back troops a at The battle was so for that he never his to an the rest of the war he would be on the he did not have enough men to In the West, Union broke the Confederate that for weeks had from his The of the on gave the Union control the from to the of It also the Confederate of in could not the for a draft broke out in New York It into a race and it the most civil in American Draft riots broke out in and in many parts of the North feared their would especially in near New York In the enrolling agents to be the summer as the draft and riots to with the summer but Lincoln and the Republicans to serious political on the Democrats as their for They to on African and the centerpiece of their was why men were for the black race. The Democrats believed this was a way to the They did not that the men of the Union had against the Peace the Democratic in in the Many believed that the were the war by out against it and by with the of raising men. They in home that the Copperheads their and those of their and This was the Copperheads almost never the cost to In many of the men in to home and beat up or their who the movement. worried about a civil war in their state if They not have went down in only a of the The had the effect of up Lincoln and the Peace Democrats, at least for the looked to a and more 1864, and received a in March when Lincoln as in of all the Northerners with that the war would be before the end of the they they had a enough to as out to his in early to three main under in in and in were to their Confederate not directly in this were to down the so that could not be sent to the main as a from the not directly in the a were to believe that was a different of one his were in with the of who to more on the was the Army of Northern and he When the Army of the Potomac to the of the in early or When the Confederates out of their at and even his decision to into battle at to a few of the two into a six lost men and the support of many in the North. became known as the That he had nothing more a to for his to the at war is nothing every who a or his to is an of a New York Copperhead a a “I don’t he in so many into it of Lincoln’s were to when that in in this to of the one that it was the battle of the of received no from the other In the West, had back of in to to while his men the summer in New the and in the in in Lincoln to fire one of the responsible in down on the of in early and he into a support for the war was In the of the took to Lincoln the from the term only when he also if Lincoln were Lincoln’s were with of the New York with almost for at he of of and of new of human Lincoln to meet with three Confederate agents in Canada to talk about to about that the agents even had the to in such did sent and a presidential to for the Lincoln his terms to the that if the agents were he could out and to the North that the Confederates were the At the same time, Lincoln to two men to on an to to out Jefferson on a told them. The Confederates wanted independence, not Lincoln’s terms were and Their were There would be no as as these two men were in The could only on the or at the ballot at home to and the military situation in the Confederate almost and in held the of and to them only when they had him a of the moved on to Maryland, which is at the very of the down the before that too many were in on him and that he was not he had his men when it to a in back to bad to the same another Union took in It came to be known as the of had under Confederate lines and of into the When the some of the Union troops and at the Others ran into the around The Confederates moved into and fire on the men in the Northern were by this was were in every state of the of from the The most was that Confederates in Canada were with Copperheads to a near one of the near was most the and to the such were more In a was to take the in the from and Illinois, and out of the Union. They would either form a new or the Confederate of The in for a to with the Southern army and Southern of war. was in when his and and a of and to but a him in the Confederates and a Copperhead called the of Liberty out an to with the Democratic to be held at the end of in Confederate and Copperheads were to on the they of war at were to to the and on a Confederate sympathizers the North would and from other and to take control of the The Confederate government the and gave the enough to and in the case, and the Union army up in in This gave the Northern When with the that their opposition to Lincoln and the war might in their being or the of Liberty They their Confederate to to what with the election political were of the Republican and of The New York thought that the did not about and was of also thought that Americans were to that the president or not give up and was not for the Union but for the of who ran Republican in New York was about the Lincoln’s reelection was an he “The are for to their on a of Republicans to meet September in to a the of this was whose was that is be Democrats up their on the In the with him to this In other Peace Democrats on one of their race. The in its that was to for the war. The black was not a but one whose was Many men of the was on Lincoln to as a for and to an end to the war. The situation came to a when the Republican in New the the to the If the election were held that he would the states of New and he might every state. Lincoln’s on military and the we are not to have in any under this is Many he thought was all that was them and that Lincoln the that not was the the of the of the he would turn it on independence, and the would that he was the true Lincoln thought about the and adopted he a to meet with and an on the of the Union other including would be with was that this would a terrible to especially those who were in the Union army. a year Lincoln had a in which he the role black were in the war. they their for they be by the the of freedom. the being be he told his in 1863. before his Lincoln had he would not the freedmen to for saying that he would be in time in if he did. was the with of political Lincoln had to the decision of his political and his own moral or in Lincoln to the In the of his he would be of the to meet with Lincoln changed his mind and the a to would be the would be it in he told now to a to his it in an and of his to the back of the The which Lincoln with them election as for some it that this not be it be to so with the as to the Union the election and the as he have his election on such ground that he can not it in for their at the end of the rest of the country, the Copperheads were They had that summer as more Northerners had their call for an end to the war. They had to be Lincoln’s of reelection to be The the support for and the and to them in moderate Democrats to a of on the with the presidential thought this would the of the men, and at no cost. They that the so they of the Army of the would the was in in what many Democrats did not was that the had so and the who had in and the army had Republican and most of its men they would take the was not the Democrats’ or even was the decision to the with a number of This to be a terrible the the administration of trying to the of the Union. The president had and that the Constitution never the the at the Copperhead that Lincoln was a The most and the war a and called for to end including a were with their and adopted it almost They left on the was Democrats around the were The the of and the Constitution and with the with all the with which the administration to the and his Republicans were nearly in their Harper’s called the It had of against Southerners who the war and no of for the is not a in it that can any or for his not a that the of a Harper’s and out to be among the worst in American political the broke took on the Union was and The so all almost people in the North were that they would the war and that it was simply a of out the The New York not an to “The of a the that the end of the war is near at It that would be of the The New York a Republican was even more The it was such such such that the could nothing but and to the of the war. editors could not but take a at the it is that at such an be and Copperheads and men a to this the at a of the Democrats had said in their especially of their and the Republicans in their The in a to the the a was in September by the a that brought that part of to It brought no of satisfaction that was whose army had the North so in broke army at wrote, a in the more and to the Union all the in the sent the Democrats into the Democratic to himself from the The to the they had to their and their the they were that the Democrats would in the fall. It was a in ground for the support for the Republican is not at generally are and every for the Union not in but it just now as if we would before a the summer of of did on to and the North did on to the war. But the of the summer of it that was a perhaps in the war. and many Northern to give up that summer and Lincoln to for at almost any Lincoln’s to with and to give up in for to the in the North that Lincoln was to nearly him his political The opposition, whose power had in the three enjoyed the of Northern and its to unprecedented were responsible for the that and a military The at by in the Lincoln and The from that to a of and

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