Clement Vallandigham
Clement Vallandigham | |
---|---|
![]() Vallandigham, photographed at some point during his Congressional career (1858-1863) | |
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio's 3rd district | |
In office May 25, 1858 – March 3, 1863 | |
Preceded by | Lewis D. Campbell |
Succeeded by | Robert C. Schenck |
Member of the Ohio House of Representatives from the Columbiana County district | |
In office December 1, 1845 – December 5, 1847 Serving with Joseph F. Williams | |
Preceded by | Robert Filson |
Succeeded by | James Patton Joseph F. Williams |
Personal details | |
Born | Clement Laird Vallandigham July 29, 1820 Woodland Cemetery |
Political party | Democratic |
Spouse | Louisa Anna Vallandigham |
Alma mater | Jefferson College |
Signature | ![]() |
Clement Laird Vallandigham (
He served two terms for Ohio's 3rd congressional district in the United States House of Representatives. In 1863, he was convicted by an Army court martial for publicly expressing opposition to the war and exiled to the Confederate States of America. He ran for governor of Ohio in 1863 from exile in Canada, but was defeated.
Vallandigham died in 1871 in Lebanon, Ohio, after accidentally shooting himself in the abdomen with a pistol, while representing a defendant in a murder case for killing a man in a barroom brawl in Hamilton.
Early life
Clement Laird Vallandigham was born July 29, 1820, in New Lisbon, Ohio (now
In 1841, Vallandigham had a dispute with the college president at Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. He was honorably dismissed, but he never received a degree.[4]
Political career
Ohio legislature
Shortly after beginning to practice law in
While in the Ohio state legislature, Vallandigham voted against the repeal of the "
House of Representatives
Vallandigham ran for Congress in 1856, but he was narrowly defeated. He appealed to the Committee of Elections of the
In October 1859, a radical
Here was folly and madness. He believed and acted upon the faith which for twenty years has been so persistently taught in every form throughout the Free States, and which is but another mode of the statement of the doctrine of the 'irrepressible conflict'—that slavery and the three hundred and seventy thousand slaveholders of the South are only tolerated, and that the millions of slaves and non-slaveholding white men are ready and willing to rise against the 'oligarchy', needing only a leader and deliverer. The conspiracy was the natural and necessary consequence or the doctrine proclaimed every day, year in and year out, by the apostles of Abolition. But Brown was sincere, earnest, practical; he proposed no mild works in his faith, reckless of murder, treason, and every other crime. This was his madness and folly. He perished justly and miserably—an insurgent and a felon; but guiltier than he, and with his blood upon their heads, are the false and cowardly prophets and teachers of Abolition.[10]
Vallandingham was pro-slavery, described in a hostile newspaper as "perform[ing] the dirty work of the Southern slavocracy".
He was re-elected to the House in 1860. During the 1860 presidential campaign, he supported Stephen A. Douglas, although he disagreed with Douglas's position on "squatter sovereignty", which was used by detractors to describe popular sovereignty.[13]
On February 20, 1861, Vallandigham delivered a speech, titled "The Great American Revolution," to the House of Representatives. He accused the
Vallandigham strongly opposed every military bill, which led his opponents to charge that he wanted the Confederacy to win the war. He became the acknowledged leader of the anti-war Copperheads, and in an address on May 8, 1862, he coined their slogan: "To maintain the Constitution as it is, and to restore the Union as it was." It was endorsed by fifteen Democratic congressmen.[15]
Vallandigham lost his bid for a third full term in 1862 by a relatively large vote, which meant that he would be out of office early in 1863. However, his loss was at least partially caused by the redistricting of his congressional district.[16] Despite this loss, some still considered him to be a future presidential candidate.[17]
As a lame-duck Representative, Vallandigham delivered a speech in the House on January 14, 1863, entitled "The Constitution-Peace-Reunion." In it, he stated his opposition to abolitionism from the "beginning." He denounced Lincoln's violations of civil liberties, "which have made this country one of the worst despotisms on earth". Vallandigham openly criticized Lincoln's preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, charging that "war for the Union was abandoned; war for the Negro openly begun." He also condemned financial interests that were profiting from the war: "And let not Wall Street, or any other great interest, mercantile, manufacturing, or commercial, imagine that it shall have power enough or wealth enough to stand in the way of reunion through peace." Vallandigham added, "Defeat, debt, taxation, sepulchers, these are your trophies." Vallandigham's speech included a proposal to end the military conflict. He advocated an armistice and the demobilization of the military forces of both the Union and the Confederacy.[18]
Post-congressional activities
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After General
The authority for Burnside's order came from a proclamation of September 24, 1862 in which President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and made discouraging enlistments, drafts, or any other "disloyal" practices subject to martial law and trial by military commissions.[20]
Arrest and military trial
On May 5, 1863, Vallandigham was arrested as a violator of General Order Number 38. His enraged supporters burned the offices of the
The specifications of the charge against Vallandigham were:
Declaring the present war "a wicked, cruel, and unnecessary war"; "a war not being waged for the preservation of the Union"; "a war for the purpose of crushing out liberty and erecting a despotism"; "a war for the freedom of the blacks and the enslavement of the whites"; stating "that if the Administration had so wished, the war could have been honorably terminated months ago"; that "peace might have been honorably obtained by listening to the proposed intermediation of France"; that "propositions by which the Northern States could be won back, and the South guaranteed their rights under the Constitution, had been rejected the day before the late battle of Fredericksburg, by Lincoln and his minions", meaning thereby the President of the United States, and those under him in authority; charging "that the Government of the United States was about to appoint military marshals in every district, to restrain the people of their liberties, to deprive them of their rights and privileges"; characterizing General Orders No. 38, from Headquarters Department of the Ohio, as "a base usurpation of arbitrary authority", inviting his hearers to resist the same, by saying, "the sooner the people inform the minions of usurped power that they will not submit to such restrictions upon their liberties, the better"; declaring "that he was at all times, and upon all occasions, resolved to do what he could to defeat the attempts now being made to build up a monarchy upon the ruins of our free government"; asserting "that he firmly believed, as he said six months ago, that the men in power are attempting to establish a despotism in this country, more cruel and more oppressive than ever existed before."
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Vallandingham wrote that he knew his public opinions and sentiments aided the Confederate war effort, raised public skepticism against the Lincoln administration, raised sympathy for the Confederate soldiers, and encouraged Northerners to violate the wartime laws of the Union.[22]
The peace proposal of France was true. Vallandigham had been requested by Horace Greeley to assist in the peace plan.[23]
Captain James Madison Cutts served as the judge advocate in the military trial and was responsible for authoring the charges against Vallandigham.[24] During the trial, testimony was given by Union army officers who had attended the speech in civilian clothes, that Vallandigham called the president "King Lincoln."[25] He was sentenced to confinement in a military prison "during the continuance of the war" at Fort Warren, Massachusetts.[26] Vallandingham only called one witness in his defense, Congressman Samuel S. Cox. According to University of New Mexico School of Law Professor Joshua E. Kastenberg, because Cox was another well-known anti-war Democrat, his presence at the military court likely harmed Vallandigam's attempts at arguing his innocence.[27]
On May 11, 1863, an application for a writ of habeas corpus was filed in federal court for Vallandigham by former Ohio Senator
On May 16, 1863, there was a meeting at Albany, New York, to protest the arrest of Vallandigham. A letter from Governor Horatio Seymour of New York was read to the crowd. Seymour charged that "military despotism" had been established. Resolutions by John V. L. Pruyn were adopted.[31] The resolutions were sent to Lincoln by Erastus Corning. In response to a public letter issued at the meeting of angry Democrats in Albany, Lincoln's "Letter to Erastus Corning et al." of June 12, 1863, explained his justification for supporting the court-martial's conviction.
In February 1864, the Supreme Court ruled that it had no power to issue a writ of habeas corpus to a military commission (Ex parte Vallandigham, 1 Wallace, 243).
Expulsion
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Lincoln, who considered Vallandigham a "wily agitator," was wary of making him a martyr to the Copperhead cause, and on May 19, 1863, he ordered Vallandigham to be sent through the enemy lines to the Confederacy.[11][32] When he was within Confederate lines, Vallandigham said: "I am a citizen of Ohio, and of the United States. I am here within your lines by force, and against my will. I therefore surrender myself to you as a prisoner of war."[33]
On May 30, 1863, a meeting was held at Military Park in Newark, New Jersey, where a letter was read from New Jersey Governor Joel Parker that condemned the arrest, trial, and deportation of Vallandigham as "were arbitrary and illegal acts. The whole proceeding was wrong in principle and dangerous in its tendency." However, the meeting was sparsely attended.[34] The New York World reported on the meeting in Albany. Burnside suppressed publication of the World.[35] On June 1, 1863, another protest meeting was held in Philadelphia.[36]
On June 2, 1863, Vallandigham was sent to Wilmington, North Carolina, by Confederate President Jefferson Davis and was briefly put under guard as an "alien enemy."[37]
President Lincoln wrote the "Birchard Letter" of June 29, 1863 to several Ohio congressmen; it offered to revoke Vallandigham's deportation order if they would agree to support certain policies of the Administration.
Vallandigham travelled to
Vallandigham then left the Confederacy on a
Vallandigham asked the question in his address or letter of July 15, 1863, "To the Democracy of Ohio:" "Shall there be free speech, a free press, peaceable assemblages of the people, and a free ballot any longer in Ohio?"[43]
Vallandigham lost the 1863 Ohio gubernatorial election in a landslide to the pro-Union War Democrat John Brough by a vote of 288,374 to 187,492.[44]
The Northwestern Confederacy
In Canada, sometime around March 1864, Vallandigham became a leader of the
Vallandigham crossed back to the US "under heavy disguise" on June 14 and gave a passionate speech at an impromptu Democratic convention in Hamilton, Ohio, the next day.[47] In that speech, he felt it necessary to lie about his involvement in a "subversive organization" that he failed to name.[48]
Lincoln was informed of his return. On June 24, 1864, Lincoln drafted a letter to Governor Brough and General Samuel P. Heintzelman and stated to "watch Vallandigham and others closely" and to arrest them if necessary. However, he did not send the letter, and it appears that he decided to do nothing about Vallandigham's return.[49] In late August, Vallandigham openly attended the 1864 Democratic National Convention in Chicago as a district delegate for Ohio.[50]
The reception by the convention to Vallandigham was mixed. Vallandigham received "vehement applause."[51] At one point, Vallandigham's name was called out by the audience and the response was "applause and hisses."[52] There were "cheers and hisses" on another occasion that he spoke.[53]
Vallandigham promoted the "peace plank" of the platform, which declared the war a failure and demanded an immediate end of hostilities.[54] In his acceptance letter, George B. McClellan made peace conditional on the Confederacy being ready for peace and to rejoin the Union.[55] McClellan's stance conflicted with the Democratic Party Platform of 1864 which stated that "immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view to an ultimate convention of the States, or other peaceable means, to the end that, at the earliest practicable moment, peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal union of the States."[56] Vallandigham supported his party's nomination of McClellan for the presidency but was "highly indignant" when McClellan repudiated the party platform in his letter of acceptance of the nomination.[57] For a time, Vallandigham withdrew from campaigning for McClellan.[58] The contradiction between the party platform and McClellan's views weakened Democratic efforts to win voters over.
In late September 1864, the conspiracy trial of Harrison H. Dodd, William A. Bowles, Andrew Humphreys, Horace Heffren, and
In April 1865, Vallandigham testified at the conspiracy trial of the American Knights in Cincinnati. He admitted to conversing with Jacob Thompson, the Confederate agent in Canada.[63] The intended revolt never materialized.
Post-war
In 1867, Vallandigham continued his stance against African-American
Vallandigham returned to Ohio, lost his campaigns for the Senate against Judge
In 1871, Vallandigham won the Ohio Democrats over to the "New Departure" policy, which would essentially neglect to mention the Civil War, "thus burying out of sight all that is of the dead past, namely, the right of secession, slavery, inequality before the law, and political inequality; and further, now that reconstruction is complete, and representation within the Union restored." He also affirmed "the Democratic party pledges itself to the full, faithful, and absolute execution and enforcement of the Constitution as it now is, so as to secure equal rights to all persons under it, without distinction of race, color, or condition." It also called for civil service reform and a
Death and burial
Vallandigham died in 1871 in Lebanon, Ohio, at the age of 50, after he accidentally shot himself in the abdomen with a pistol. He was representing a defendant, Thomas McGehean,[69] in a murder case for killing a man in a barroom brawl in Hamilton, Ohio. Vallandigham attempted to prove the victim, Tom Myers, had in fact accidentally shot himself while he was drawing his pistol from a pocket while rising from a kneeling position. As Vallandigham conferred with fellow defense attorneys in his hotel room at the Lebanon House, later the Golden Lamb Inn, he showed them how he would demonstrate this to the jury. Selecting a pistol he believed to be unloaded, he put it in his pocket and enacted the events as they might have happened, snagging the loaded gun on his clothing and unintentionally causing it to discharge into his stomach.
Although he was fatally wounded, Vallandigham's demonstration proved his point, and the defendant, Thomas McGehean, was acquitted and released from custody (only to be shot to death four years later in his saloon).[70] Surgeons probed for the pistol ball, thought to have lodged in the vicinity of Vallandigham's bladder, but were unable to locate it, and Vallandigham died the next day of peritonitis. His last words expressed his faith in "that good old Presbyterian doctrine of predestination".[71] Survived by his wife, Louisa Anna (McMahon) Vallandigham, and his son Charles Vallandigham, he was buried in Woodland Cemetery in Dayton, Ohio.
Legacy
Vallandigham was eulogized by
John A. McMahon, Vallandigham's nephew, was also a U.S. Representative from Ohio.
In popular culture
Vallandigham's deportation to the Confederacy prompted
Vallandigham is a character in some alternate history novels. In Ward Moore's Bring the Jubilee (1953) and William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's The Difference Engine (1990), Vallandigham defeated Lincoln in the presidential election of 1864 after the South won the Civil War. In Harry Turtledove's The Guns of the South (1992), he is elected Vice-President in the same year for the same reason.
In
See also
- Copperhead (politics)
- List of unusual deaths
- List of people pardoned or granted clemency by the president of the United States
References
- ISBN 978-0547487144. Retrieved January 5, 2016.
- ^ Vallandigham 1872, pp. 7–10.
- ^ a b c "Clement Vallandigham", Ohio History Central.
- ^ Vallandigham 1872, pp. 24, 31.
- ^ Flower, Frank Abail. Edwin McMasters Stanton, the Autocrat of Rebellion, Emancipation and Reconstruction. p. 252 fn, Boston, MA: George M. Smith & Co., 1905.
- ^ Vallandigham 1872, p. 53.
- ^ Vallandigham 1872, p. 100.
- newspapers.com.
- ^ Vallandigham, Clement Laird, Speeches, Arguments, Addresses and Letters of Clement L. Vallandigham, pp. 201–205, New York: J. Walter and Co., 1864.
- ^ a b "(Untitled)". The Liberator. Boston, Massachusetts. November 11, 1859. p. 1.
- ^ a b "Clement L. Vallandigham", National Park Service.
- ^ "Representative Clement Vallandigham of Ohio", Historical Highlights, US House of Representatives.
- ^ Vallandigham 1872, p. 137.
- ^ Vallandigham, Clement Laird. "The Great American Revolution of 1861", The Congressional Globe: Containing the Debates and Proceedings of the Thirty-Sixth Congress: Also of the Special Session of the Senate, edited by John C. Rives, 235–243. Washington, DC: Congressional Globe Office, 1861.
- ^ Vallandigham 1872, pp. 205–207.
- ^ Vallandigham 1872, pp. 215–217.
- The MacMillan Company, 1927.
- ^ Vallandigham, Clement Laird. "The Constitution – Peace – Reunion". Appendix, Congressional Globe: Containing the Speeches, Important State Papers and the Laws of the Third Session Thirty-Seventh Congress, edited by John C. Rives, 52–60. Washington, DC: Globe Office, 1863.
- ^ Vallandigham, Clement Laird, The Trial Hon. Clement L. Vallandigham, by a Military Commission: and the Proceedings Under His Application for a Writ of Habeas Corpus in the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of Ohio, p. 23. Cincinnati: Rickey and Carroll, 1863.
- The Century Co., 1920.
- ^ Vallandigham 1863a, p. 11.
- ^ Vallandigham 1863a, pp. 11–12.
- ^ Porter, George Henry. Ohio Politics During the Civil War Period. p. 148, fn 1, New York. 1911.
- ^ Joshua E. Kastenberg, Law in War, Law as War: Brigadier General Joseph Holt and the Judge Advocate General's Department in the Civil War and Early Reconstruction, 1861–1865 (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2011), 106.
- ^ Vallandigham 1863a, p. 23.
- ^ Vallandigham 1863a, p. 33.
- ^ Id.
- ^ Vallandigham 1863a, p. 40.
- ^ Vallandigham 1863a, pp. 259–272.
- ^ Pittman, Benn, The Trials for Treason at Indianapolis, Disclosing the Plans for Establishing a North-Western Confederacy. p. 253, Cincinnati, OH: Moore, Wilstach & Baldwin, 1865.
- ^ Vallandigham 1872, pp. 288–293.
- ^ Vallandigham 1872, p. 34.
- ^ Vallandigham 1872, p. 300.
- ^ "Vallandigham Meeting in Newark." The New York Times. May 31, 1863.
- ^ Porter 1911, p. 167.
- ^ Vallandigham 1872, pp. 293–295.
- ^ Long, E. B., and Long, Barbara. The Civil War Day by Day (New York: Da Capo Press, Inc., 1971)
- ^ Jones, John Beauchamp, A Rebel War Clerks Diary at the Confederate States Capital, Volume I, pp. 357–358.
- ^ Reinish, Henery. "Vallandigham and the Invasion of Lee". The New York Times, September 4, 1863.
- ^ "Citizens, Patriots, and Soldiers Look Here!", Rare Americana.
- ^ "Clement Laird Vallandigham Biography Page". Historical Times Encyclopedia of the Civil War. 2010. Retrieved June 4, 2012.
- ^ Buescher, John. "Civil War Peace Offers Archived 2010-12-02 at the Wayback Machine." Teachinghistory.org, accessed September 2, 2011.
- ^ Vallandigham 1872, p. 319.
- ^ Kirkland 1927, p. 39.
- ^ Vallandigham 1872, pp. 373–374.
- ^ Castleman, John Breckenridge. Active Service. pp. 145–146, Louisville, KY: Courier-Journal Job Printing, 1917.
- ^ Porter 1911, p. 195.
- ISBN 978-0451494443.
- ^ Nicolay & Hay 1889, p. 535.
- ^ National Democratic Committee (1863). Official Proceedings of the Democratic National Convention Held in Chicago in 1864. Chicago: The Times Steam Book and Job Printer. p. 16.
- ^ National Democratic Committee 1863, p. 9.
- ^ National Democratic Committee 1863, p. 24.
- ^ National Democratic Committee 1863, p. 26.
- ^ Porter 1911, p. 196.
- ^ National Democratic Committee 1863, p. 60.
- ^ "'The 1864 Democratic Party Platform,' Teaching American History". Archived from the original on November 9, 2012. Retrieved November 6, 2012.
- ^ Vallandigham 1872, p. 367.
- ^ Porter 1911, p. 197.
- ^ Pittman 1865, pp. 37–38.
- ^ a b Pittman 1865, p. 24.
- ^ Pittman 1865, p. 28.
- ^ Pittman 1865, p. 25.
- ^ "The American Knights; The Testimony of Mr. Vallandigham", The New York Times. April 4, 1865.
- ^ "Vallandigham on the Issues of the Hour – Negro Suffrage and Negro Equality – The National Finances". The New York Times. August 14, 1867.
- ^ Vallandigham 1872, p. 422.
- ^ Vallandigham 1872, p. 430.
- ^ Vallandigham 1872, pp. 438–444.
- ^ Vallandigham 1872, p. 446.
- ^ Vallandigham 1872, p. 516.
- ^ Cone, Stephen Decatur (1901). Biographical and historical sketches: a narrative of Hamilton and its residents from 1792... Hamilton, Ohio: Republican Publishing Company. p. 144.
- ^ Vallandigham 1872, p. 529.
- ^ Vallandigham 1872, pp. 567–573.
- ^ Kass, Amy; Kass, Leon (2012). "National Identity and Why It Matters". What So Proudly We Hail. Making American citizens through literature. Retrieved October 15, 2020.
- ^ Hale, Edward Everett. "The Man Without a Country". p. 116, The Outlook, May–August 1898.
Bibliography
- Kirkland, Edward C. (1927). The Peacemakers of 1864. Archived from the original on June 5, 2011. Retrieved August 25, 2017.
- Nicolay, John; Hay, John (May 1889). "Abraham Lincoln: A History. Vallandigham". The Century. 38: 127–137.
- Pittman, Benn (1865). The Trials for Treason at Indianapolis, Disclosing the Plans for Establishing a North-Western Confederacy. Cincinnati, OH: Moore, Wilstach & Baldwin.
- Porter, George Henry (1911). Ohio Politics During the Civil War Period. New York: Kessinger.
- Vallandigham, Clement Laird (1863a). The Trial Hon. Clement L. Vallandigham, by a Military Commission: and the Proceedings Under His Application for a Writ of Habeas Corpus in the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of Ohio. Cincinnati: Rickey and Carroll.
- Vallandigham, James (1872). A Life of Clement L. Vallandigham. Baltimore: Turnbull Brothers.
- Primary sources
- Vallandigham, Clement Laird (1863b). The Record of Hon. C. L. Vallandigham on Abolition, the Union, and the Civil War. New York : J. Walter & Co.
- Vallandigham, Clement Laird (1864). Speeches, arguments, addresses, and letters of Clement L. Vallandigham. New York : J. Walter & Co.
Further reading
- Gottlieb, Martin. Lincoln's Northern Nemesis: The War Opposition and Exile of Ohio's Clement Vallandigham (McFarland, 2021).
- Hosmer, James Kendall (1907). Outcome of the Civil War, 1863–1865. New York, London, Harper & Bros. (extensive coverage on Vallandigham)
- Hostetler, Michael J. "Pushing the Limits of Dissent: Clement Vallandigham's Daredevil Tactics." Free Speech Yearbook 43 (2009): 85–92.
- Hubbart, Hubert C. "'Pro-Southern' Influences in the Free West, 1840–1865," Mississippi Valley Historical Review (1933), 20#1 pp. 45–62 in JSTOR
- Klement, Frank L. The Limits of Dissent: Clement L. Vallandigham and the Civil War (1998), a standard scholarly biography
- Mackey, Thomas C. Opposing Lincoln: Clement L. Vallandigham, Presidential Power, and the Legal Battle over Dissent in Wartime (Landmark Law Cases and American Society). (University Press of Kansas, 2020) online review
- Randall, James G. (1926). Constitutional Problems under Lincoln. Urbana, University of Illinois Press.
- Roseboom, Eugene H. "Southern Ohio and the Union in 1863," Mississippi Valley Historical Review (1952) 39#1 pp. 29–44 in JSTOR
- Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 27 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 862.
External links
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