USA > Illinois > The era of the Civil War, 1848-1870 > Part 29
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48
The impression prevailed that the democratic party, as such, was discredited. Old liners, like Richardson, James C. Robinson, and Anthony L. Knapp, who had not joined the war following, were consorting with Vallandigham, the notorious Ohio copperhead; and the democratic state convention of Sep- tember 10 brought out a scant attendance with one-third of the counties entirely unrepresented. Yet in May, John A.
20 Illinois State Journal, August 20, 22, 23, September 11, 24, October 13, 1862; Robert Smith to Gillespie, October 16, 1862, Gillespie manuscripts; Joseph Medill to Trumbull, June 25, August 25, 1862, Trumbull manuscripts.
ABOLITIONISTS AND COPPERHEADS 297
Logan's vacant seat in congress was filled by William Joshua Allen, a peace democrat, who was elected over both another peace advocate and Colonel Isham N. Haynie, a war demo- crat.21 The November election, moreover, resulted in a sweep- ing democratic victory : the state ticket netted a majority of 14,000, the state legislature came completely under democratic control, while James C. Allen, the democratic candidate for congressman-at-large, was returned victor with eight of the other thirteen members of the delegation. This triumph assured the election of a democratic United States senator to take the place of Senator O. H. Browning in Douglas' seat.
The democrats waxed jubilant over these glad tidings. "The party which triumphed two years ago in every Northern State," proclaimed the Joliet Signal, November II, "and by sectionalism and slavery agitation provoked secession in the Southern States, and hurried us into a dreadful civil war, and caused our land to be drenched with the blood of its citizens, has been ignobly vanquished." More than this, the winners interpreted it as the rout of abolitionism and as a proper rebuke to the party that was trying to Africanize the north. The voter had registered his reaction to the democratic charge that the federal government was "seeking to inaugurate a reign of terror in the loyal states by military arrests and trans- portation to prisons out of the limits of these states, of citi- zens, without a trial, to browbeat all opposition by villainous and false charges of disloyalty against whole classes of patri- otic citizens, to destroy all constitutional guaranties of free speech, a free press, and the writ of 'habeas corpus.' " 22
Even the republican vote was not to be interpreted as an indorsement of Lincoln's policies, for the main body of the republicans was following the radical leadership of Senator Trumbull and Governor Yates. Governor Yates had thrown himself wholeheartedly into the struggle; and, disappointed with the president's reluctance to adopt more radical policies, he was inclined to question Lincoln's ability to lead the country on to victory. Lyman Trumbull even publicly proclaimed the
21 Illinois State Journal, May 28, 1862.
22 Illinois State Register, September 9, 1862.
298
THE ERA OF THE CIVIL WAR
incompetency of the administration.23 This thoroughgoing champion of freedom, to whom Lincoln had in 1855 graciously yielded the senatorial laurels as a more conservative champion of the antislavery cause, had now been transformed into a leader of the radical republican following in congress. Trum- bull was a man whose austere talents had little of that warmth that attracts a large circle of friends, yet his intellectual leader- ship and honesty, backed by a puritan conscience, won for him a political following that was a silent but effective tribute to his genius. As the author of the first confiscation act and as a leading figure in every movement for the effective prosecution of the war, every suggestion of his carried weight with those who were shouting the battle cry of freedom.
Trumbull's correspondents unburdened to him their dis- gust with the national administration. Lincoln seemed to place too much trust in conservative generals out of sympathy with the methods best calculated to bring the rebellion to a speedy close ; in his cabinet he listened too much to timid, incompetent, and conservative advisors, like "Seward and proslavery Blair and Bates." 24 Even after the definitive emancipation procla- mation of January 1, 1863, this dissatisfaction continued though checked slightly by the July victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg.
Meantime the democrats proceeded to enjoy the logical fruits of their victory. These were garnered in the legislative session of 1863. First, Congressman William A. Richardson, who had developed into a bitter opponent of the administra- tion, was selected for the vacated seat in the United States senate over Governor Yates, who had been given the compli- mentary republican nomination. The democrats then devoted their attention to their legislative program. Resolutions de- nouncing the policy of the federal administration, urging an armistice and a national convention at Louisville, in which Stephen T. Logan, Samuel S. Marshall, H. K. S. Omelveny, 23 Chicago Times clipped in Illinois State Register, June 6, 1862; Yates to Trumbull, February 14, 1862, Trumbull manuscripts.
24 T. Maple to Trumbull, December 28, 1862, Grant Goodrich to Trumbull, January 31, 1863, ibid. Senator Browning was the only prominent repub- lican to support the conservative middle ground taken by Lincoln, but he was treated by republican organs as a renegade. Chicago Tribune, July 2, 18, 1862.
-TO DAYIERS
STEPHENSON GENERADO
CARROLL
DE KALB
KANE
ADI! PAGE
WHITESIDE
LEE
BUREAU
WILL
HENRY
RUNDY
MERCER
PUTNAM
STARK
TENDERSON
BREN
KNOX
LIVINGSTON
OD
DO
IROQUOIS
....
PORD
..
SON
.DE WITT
LOGAN
MENARD
00
o
O
MACON
DAMONO
PIKE
SCOT
CHRISTIAN
GREENED
SHELBY
CLARK
CALHOUN
JERSEY
FINGHA
CRAWFORD
BOND
LAWRENCE
Democratic
53%
Union
47%
RAND
WHITE
FRANKLIN
MSON
65-75%
55-65%
MABSẮC
50-55%
ST CLAIR ??
WAYNE
DWARDS
WABASA
WASHINGTON.
(James C. Allen)
(E. C. Ingersoll)
CLAY
O
MARION
Vote for Congressman- at-Large 1862
M
IPING MONTGOMERY
HAMPAION VERMILION
McLEAN
KENDALL
-ROCK ISLAND
Over 75 %
OHNSO
-
ABOLITIONISTS AND COPPERHEADS 299
William C. Goudy, Anthony Thornton, John D. Caton were named as commissioners, were pressed through the house and were blocked in the senate only by the withdrawal of the repub- lican minority.25 This filibustering ended only after assur- ances that the regular business of the legislature would be taken up until disposed of; after the apportionment and appropria- tion bills had been passed a recess was taken until June. Since Governor Yates had vetoed the apportionment bill, the demo- crats made their plans to pass it over his veto. A habeas corpus bill to prevent illegal arrests, a bill to prevent the immigration , of Negroes, and resolutions reported by a joint committee on federal relations were also to be taken up. Irritated beyond endurance by his obstreperous opponents, Governor Yates interposed to end the session by proroguing the legislature - the first time in the history of the state that a governor had exercised this power. A vigorous protest against this action was drawn up and signed by the democratic members, who refused to recognize his authority ; the house formally remained in session for a fortnight.26
While the democratic majority of the legislature was pro- testing at its prorogation, there was held at Springfield, June 17, 1863, a democratic mass convention which, it was esti- mated, brought together forty thousand enthusiastic anti- administration democrats and their most influential leaders. Following addresses by Senator Richardson, Congressmen S. S. Marshall, James C. Robinson, J. R. Eden, J. C. Allen, and other responsible democrats, resolutions were adopted affirming the supremacy of the constitution in time of war as well as of peace; condemning the violations.of the bill of rights by the national administration ; pronouncing the action of Gov- ernor Yates in proroguing the legislature an act of usurpation; then, in the famous "twenty-third resolution" declaring that as the " further offensive prosecution of this war tends to sub-
25 These resolutions also denounced "the ruinous heresy of secession " and opposed recognition of the independence of the southern confederacy as inconsistent with the interests of the great northwest. House Journal, 1863, P. 373-375.
26 The question of the legality of Governor Yates' act was taken to the state supreme court which, however, sustained the governor. Illinois State Journal, June II, 1863 ; Illinois State Register, June 11, 1863; Joliet Signal, June 30, 1863; Chicago Times, October 30, November 7, 14, December 16, 25, 1863.
300
THE ERA OF THE CIVIL WAR
vert the constitution and the government, and entail upon this Nation all the disastrous consequences of misrule and anarchy" the convention was "in favor of peace upon the basis of a res- toration of the Union " for the accomplishment of which it pro- posed a national convention to settle upon the terms of peace.27
This was the forerunner of a series of meetings in which the democrats of Illinois voiced their desire for the restoration of peace, and such meetings afforded republican leaders an opportunity to exaggerate the animus of the democratic forces in the state. It was easy enough to construe specific items in the democratic indictment of administration policies as incon- trovertible evidences of disloyalty. Lincoln's proclamation was denounced in an imposing popular demonstration at Spring- field as "unwarrantable in military as in civil law; a gigantic usurpation, at once converting the war, professedly commenced by the administration for the vindication of the authority of the constitution, into a crusade for the sudden, unconditional and violent liberation of three million slaves." 28 Democratic journals insisted that the proclamation, in giving the south something definite to fight for in place of an abstraction, had caused the prolongation of the war; the Chicago Times sug- gested that it was properly called a "war measure" as one which would "protract the war indefinitely." 29 The conscrip- tion bill of 1863 was vigorously opposed under the leadership of Senator Richardson; in its enactment the democrats of Illi- nois acquiesced mainly because their state had furnished thousands of volunteers in excess of its quota.
Democrats, moreover, were unsparing in their denunciation of the complete disregard of personal liberty evidenced in the arbitrary arrest of critics of the administration, and in the
27 Moses, Illinois, 2: 687-688 ; Illinois State Register, May 27, 29, 30, June 2, 4, 5, 18, 1863 ; Illinois State Journal, June 18, 1863; Ottawa Republican, June 18, 20, 1863; Chicago Tribune, June 20, 1863; Joliet Signal, June 23, 1863. A resolution denied that the democratic party was wanting in sympathy for the soldiers in the field; the evidence of the sincerity of this declaration, $47,400 was raised at the meeting by subscriptions and pledges which Colonel W. R. Morrison was directed to distribute in aid of sick and wounded Illinois volunteers.
28 Illinois State Register, January 6, 1863; Illinois State Journal, January 7, 16, 1863; Jonesboro Gazette, January 10, 1863.
29 Chicago Times, September 24, 1863; Joliet Signal, March 24, 1863; Cairo Democrat, September 20, 1863.
301
ABOLITIONISTS AND COPPERHEADS
denial of freedom of speech and of the press. In the late summer of 1863 there took place a wide suspension under executive order of the writ of habeas corpus, the one remain- ing guarantee of personal liberty.30 All administration sup- porters, even, could not agree with the Illinois Staats-Zeitung when it declared on April 19, 1862, that "Those who, in time like the present talk of the right of habeas corpus, sympathize with the rebels." The Chicago Times, October 1, 1863, there- fore assailed the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus as " an act so bold, so flagrant, so unprecedented, and involving to so great an extent the rights, the liberties, and even the lives of the people, that its legality and propriety cannot be too thor- oughly discussed." The Belleville Democrat, September 26, 1863, called it "the death of liberty;" it "makes the will of Abraham Lincoln the supreme law of the land, and the people, who have made him what he is, the mere slaves of his caprice." Claiming that President Lincoln had finally surrendered him- self to the radicals and that the subjugation of the south to these radical policies was a practical impossibility, many began to urge the termination of the war if necessary by a compro- mise. The proposition for a peace conference at Louisville received wide support; it was suggested as a necessary prelim- inary that President Lincoln "with draw his unconstitutional emancipation proclamation." 31
It was the task of administration officials to drive this oppo- sition underground; but, since official action could not be thor- ough, the leaders of public opinion took it upon themselves to crush it by a skillful appeal to the patriotism of the masses. In favorable locations champions were easily found to admin- ister severe thrashings as a rebuke to the anti-war spokesman. Neighbors who more quietly shared the same views left many a loose-tongued critic of the government to his own defense when some band of union regulators brought him to silence by threats and intimidation, if not by physical violence. Vigi- lance committees to hunt out and punish secession sympathizers were organized against the advice of the more levelheaded; 32
30 Chicago Times, September 17, 19, 25, 1863.
31 Joliet Signal, April 14, 1863.
32 Chicago Tribune, April 24, 1861.
302
THE ERA OF THE CIVIL WAR
they soon made free speech a byword, so far as criticism of governmental policy was concerned, and freedom of public assembly an obsolete right. It was generally believed that only such methods could hold back a flood of "copperheadism" that threatened to engulf the union cause in Illinois.
Every democrat who did not openly and actively support the administration and the war was labelled a venomous "cop- perhead," at once a southern sympathizer and a traitor to the union. At the beginning of the war, indeed, sympathy for the south was very widespread; democratic papers in southern Illinois had placed the blame for secession on the abolitionist rather than the slavocrat. This feeling continued and was often translated into action, varying from cheers for Jefferson Davis to active aid for the rebel cause ; military companies were recruited to aid the south and prominent public men encour- aged enlistment. A half dozen prominent democratic journals boldly suggested the division of the state so that Egypt might consider the possibility of joining the southern confederacy - William J. Allen, member of congress after 1862, openly pro- posed this to John A. Logan, at the same time advising men to go south to fight.33
The most outspoken opposition to the government was finally driven underground. By a system of wholesale arbi- trary arrests, so offensive as to bring out protests from radical republican legislators, like Senator Trumbull, and army officers like General Palmer, the work of intimidating persons sus- pected of disloyalty had been given a good start. Among the victims of arbitrary arrests for disloyal practices were to be found many persons who in the previous decade had taken a prominent part in state politics. In September, 1862, Benja- min Bond, United States marshal under Fillmore and a promi- nent conservative, was arrested by Lincoln's appointee to the same office. In the course of time other state prisoners were rounded up, including W. J. Allen, member of congress, Judge John H. Mulkey, Judge Andrew D. Duff, Judge C. H. Con- stable, state senator William H. Green of Massac county, Levi
33 Canton Weekly Register, January 29, April 9, 1861; Central Illinois Gazette, October 21, 1864; Illinois State Journal, July 30, 1862; J. H. Brown and S. M. Thrift to Trumbull, May 26, 1862, Trumbull manuscripts.
303
ABOLITIONISTS AND COPPERHEADS
D. Boon, an old democratic wheel horse, and M. Y. Johnson and David Sheean, lawyers of Galena.34 Several of these were "honorably discharged " after weeks of confinement, not, how- ever, without the taint in reputation that in the public mind follows such treatment.
The suppression of opposition journals was attempted to check unrestrained defiance of governmental policies; few democratic editors followed the lead of James W. Sheahan of the Chicago Morning Post in supporting the war policy of the government without giving up the democratic point of view. Certain vigorous critics like the Peoria Demokrat were denied the privilege of the mails early in the war.35 In July, 1862, the circulation of the Quincy Herald in Missouri was forbidden by military order on the assumption that it encouraged the rebel bushwhackers. In the same summer the arrests of the editor and publishers caused the temporary suspension of the Paris Democratic Standard while the Bloomington Times office was destroyed by a union mob. In December, John C. Doble- bower, editor of the Jerseyville Democratic Union, fled to escape arrest.
Early in 1863 the Chicago Board of Trade and Y. M. C. A. started a boycott of the Chicago Times, and the Chicago and Galena railroad for a time prohibited its sale on the com- pany's trains. In February, General Hurlbut at Memphis, and other post commanders forbade the circulation of the Times within their respective districts. On June I, without waiting to confer with the war department, General A. E. Burn- side, in command of the department of the northwest, issued general order number 84 which proclaimed the suppression of
34 J. M. Palmer to Trumbull, January 3, 1862, Trumbull manuscripts ; Koerner, Memoirs, 2: 173; Senate Journal, 37 congress, I session, 40; White, Life of Trumbull, 191-200. Both Sheean and Johnson, however, successfully sued the federal marshal for arrest and false imprisonment, and Sheean was soon elected mayor of Galena. Johnson's case was carried in 1867 to the federal supreme court; the judges applied the principle of ex parte Milligan and pronounced decisively against arbitrary arrests; the court referred the case to jury trial in Jo Daviess county, where Johnson was awarded a judgment of one thousand dollars and costs. Illinois State Register, January 28, 1863, July 15, 1867; Chicago Evening Journal, November 15, 1865; Chicago Tribune, July 9, 1867; Portrait and Biographical Album of Jo Daviess and Carroll Counties, 192-193, 206-211.
35 Rockford Register, October 19, 1861; Canton Weekly Register, October 22, 1861.
304
THE ERA OF THE CIVIL WAR
the Chicago Times and of the Jonesboro Gazette, "on account of the repeated expression of disloyal and incendiary state- ments." Before daybreak on June 3, a military detachment from Camp Douglas took possession of the Times printing establishment. Within a few hours a meeting of prominent citizens of both political parties presided over by the mayor unanimously agreed to request the president by telegraph to rescind Burnside's order-a request which was reinforced by the personal solicitation of Senator Trumbull and Repre- sentative I. N. Arnold of the Chicago district. The lower house at Springfield simultaneously passed a resolution con- demning the Burnside order. In Chicago that evening a mass · meeting of twenty thousand representative voters gathered and enthusiastically resolved that the freedom of speech and of the press should be upheld by the subordination of the military power to the civil authority. The next day, while sixteen carloads of soldiers from Springfield were on their way to Chicago to handle the crisis there, President Lincoln responded to the pressure of public opinion in Chicago by revoking the order suppressing the Times. At Urbana the troops were stopped by telegraph and informed of Lincoln's action, where- upon General Burnside wisely recalled the whole order.36
With that date official interference with freedom of the press came to an end, and public opinion was left to do the work of discouraging carping and disloyal criticism. One of the most irritating critics of the administration was the Chester Picket Guard, only a short distance from the military depot at Cairo; in July, 1864, just after it had been refitted and fur- nished with new presses, a mob of soldiers and civilians sacked and completely destroyed the whole equipment.37
The contemporary judgment of these cases of interference with freedom of press may be found in the silent disapproval voiced by subscribers to the persecuted journals; after its ill- treatment the circulation of the Chicago Times increased
36 War of the Rebellion, Official Records, series I, volume 23, part 2, p. 381 ; Illinois State Journal, February 14, 18, June 3, 6, 8, 1863; Illinois State Register, June 3, 5, 10, 1863; Chicago Times, June 30, 1863; Writings of Lincoln, 6: 306. The Belleville Democrat, June 13, 1863, suggested that Lincoln's action alone prevented civil war.
37 Cairo Democrat, April 9, July 30, 1864; Jonesboro Gazette, July 30, 1864; Belleville Democrat, July 30, 1864; Chester Picket Guard, November 29, 1865.
ABOLITIONISTS AND COPPERHEADS 305
materially among the common people. Both war and peace democrats, moreover, challenged the gross usurpation of power by the military authorities and decried the recourse to mob violence. Other champions of civil rights came from among that body of spirited radicals who, while dissatisfied with the slow progress that was being made against the south and slavery, heartily disapproved interference. The State Journal had in anticipation undertaken to declare as early as June 25, 1861 : " Public men are, to a certain extent, public property, and the people and the Press are free to praise or censure their actions. We would never see this right abridged." 38
The justification for drastic action by individuals or by government authorities was found in the so-called "crimes of the copperheads," which terrorized not only individuals but whole communities. They were so numerous and varied that there was a fearful uncertainty as to when and how the cop- perheads might next strike. Many carried on an active and open propaganda to discourage enlistments and to obstruct the operation of the conscription law -the enrollment in prepara- tion for the draft arousing widespread opposition. Fulton county and vicinity had more than their share of draft troubles; in June, 1863, the enrolling officers in certain districts were driven off forcibly by armed mobs, and after repetitions of this experience a military force was sent to protect the provost marshal and his deputies. In spite of such protection, how- ever, the draft resisters attacked the officers and in two instances at least there were fatal shootings. Olney was for three days besieged by a mob of 500 men, who threatened to burn the town unless the enrollment lists were given up.39
Another serious offense charged against the copperheads was that of influencing desertion, which in the spring of 1863 became especially serious. Desertions were, indeed, the result either of the advice and aid of relatives and friends, or of any anti-war agency that stressed the view that this was an unholy and anti-democratic war - an attempt on the part of the "abo-
38 Illinois State Journal, June 25, 1861 ; Jonesboro Gazette, January 31, 1863. 39 Canton Weekly Register, June 29, 1863, October 31, 1864; Rushville Times, May 13, 20, 1869; Evansville (Indiana) Journal clipped in Rockford Register, August 1, 1863; Biographical and Reminiscent History of Richland, Clay, and Marion Counties, 422-423.
306
THE ERA OF THE CIVIL WAR
litionists " to break down the democratic party. From June I to October 10, 1863, 2,001 arrests were made in Illinois, and in the three following months 800 deserters were apprehended. By the end of the war there were 13,046 desertions of enlisted men from Illinois. In January, 1863, following wholesale desertions and fraternization with the rebels that assumed the proportions of a mutiny the One hundred and ninth regiment, recruited largely from the heart of Egypt, was arrested, dis- armed, and placed under guard at Holly Springs, Mississippi. The One hundred and twenty-eighth regiment at Cairo suf- fered so heavily from desertions that there remained in March, 1863, only thirty-five men in the ranks.40 Federal troops detailed to arrest the numerous deserters in southern Illinois counties often found themselves thwarted not only by the con- cealment of the renegades but by the armed opposition of mobs formed to prevent their arrest. In some instances backsliders were rescued from the custody of officers; in other instances they failed with a heavy loss in killed and wounded.
Armed resistance on the part of the anti-war forces was a constant fear in the minds of union men. A heavy demand for Colts' revolvers, guns, and ammunition was noticed by storekeepers whose supplies were drained by buyers from cop- perhead districts. Guerrilla bands, formed in the rural regions of southern Illinois, conducted demonstrations in places as large as Charleston, Jacksonville, and Vandalia ; a band operating in Union county destroyed property of loyal men and assaulted unionists who fell in its hands. Armed rebel sympathizers often met in numbers for military organization and drill. Union men were seized and whipped and sometimes driven from their homes; in numerous instances they were shot down, even in their own homes, by rebel sympathizers.41
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.