Clement Vallandigham

Clement Laird Vallandigham ( ; July 29, 1820 – June 17, 1871) was an American politician and leader of the Copperhead faction of anti-war Democrats during the American Civil War. 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 Lisbon, Ohio), to Clement and Rebecca Laird Vallandigham. His father, a Presbyterian minister, educated his son at home."Clement Vallandigham"
Ohio History Central.

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.

Edwin M. Stanton, the future Secretary of War under President Lincoln, was Vallandigham's close friend before the Civil War. Stanton lent Vallandigham $500 for a law course and to begin his own practice. Both Vallandigham and Stanton were Democrats, but they held opposing views on slavery. Stanton was an abolitionist; Vallandigham an anti-abolitionist.

Political career

Ohio legislature

Shortly after beginning to practice law in Dayton, Ohio, Vallandigham entered politics. He was elected as a Democrat to the Ohio legislature in 1845 and 1846, and served as editor of a weekly newspaper, the '' Dayton Empire'', from 1847 until 1849.

While in the Ohio state legislature, Vallandigham voted against the repeal of the " Black Laws" (laws against the civil rights of African-Americans), but he did want the question put to a referendum by the voters. In 1851, Vallandigham sought the Democratic nomination to be Ohio's lieutenant governor, but the party declined to nominate him.

House of Representatives

Vallandigham ran for Congress in 1856, but he was narrowly defeated. He appealed to the Committee of Elections of the House of Representatives, claiming that illegal votes had been cast. The House eventually agreed, and Vallandigham was seated on the next to last day of the term. The delay was due to "the division which had arisen in the Democratic party upon the Lecompton lavery in Kansasquestion." He was reelected by a small margin in 1858.

In October 1859, radical abolitionist John Brown raided Harper's Ferry, Virginia, seizing the United States Army Arsenal. Vallandigham happened to be passing through, and joined a group of government officials who interrogated the captured Brown as to his aims, which Brown stated were an attempt to set off a rebellion of slaves to secure their freedom. His comment on Brown was:

Vallandingham was pro-slavery, described in a hostile newspaper as "perform ngthe dirty work of the Southern slavocracy". He was always a vigorous supporter of constitutional states' rights."Clement L. Vallandigham"
National Park Service. He believed the federal government had no power to regulate any legal institution, which slavery at the time was. He also believed the states had an implied right to secede and that, legally, the Confederacy could not militarily be conquered. Vallandigham was a believer in low tariffs and that slavery was a matter for each state to decide. During the ensuing war, he would become one of Lincoln's most outspoken critics.

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.

On February 20, 1861, Vallandigham delivered a speech titled "The Great American Revolution" to the House of Representatives. He accused the Republican Party of being "belligerent" and advocated a "choice of peaceable disunion upon the one hand, or Union through adjustment and conciliation upon the other." Vallandigham supported the Crittenden Compromise, which was a last minute effort to avert the Civil War. He blamed sectionalism and anti-slavery sentiment for the secession crisis. Vallandigham proposed a series of amendments to the Constitution. The United States would be divided into four sections: North, South, West, and Pacific. The four sections would each have the power in the Senate to veto legislation. The Electoral College would be modified, with the term of President and Vice-President increased to six years and limited to one term unless two-thirds of the electors agreed. Secession by a state could only be agreed to if the legislatures of the sections approved it. Moving between the sections was a guaranteed right.

Vallandigham strongly opposed every military bill, leading 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.

Vallandigham lost his bid for a third full term in 1862 by a relatively large vote, which loss meant he would be out of office early in 1863. However, his loss was at least partially due to redistricting his congressional district. Despite this loss, some still considered him to be a future presidential candidate.

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 Confederacy.

Post-congressional activities

After General Ambrose E. Burnside issued General Order Number 38, warning that the "habit of declaring sympathies for the enemy" would not be tolerated in the Military District of Ohio, Vallandigham gave a major speech on May 1, 1863. He charged that the war was no longer being fought to save the Union, but it had become an attempt to free the slaves by sacrificing the liberty of white Americans to "King Lincoln".

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.

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 '' Dayton Journal'', the Republican rival to the ''Empire''. Vallandigham was tried by a military court on May 6 and 7. Vallandigham's speech at Mount Vernon, Ohio, was cited as the source of the arrest. He was charged by the Military Commission with "Publicly expressing, in violation of General Orders No. 38, from Head-quarters Department of the Ohio, sympathy for those in arms against the Government of the United States, and declaring disloyal sentiments and opinions, with the object and purpose of weakening the power of the Government in its efforts to suppress an unlawful rebellion."

The specifications of the charge against Vallandigham were:

All of which opinions and sentiments he well knew did aid, comfort, and encourage those in arms against the Government, and could but induce in his hearers a distrust of their own Government, sympathy for those in arms against it, and a disposition to resist the laws of the land.

The peace proposal of France was true; Vallandigham had been requested by Horace Greeley to assist in the peace plan.

Captain James Madison Cutts served as the judge advocate in the military trial, and he was responsible for authoring the charges against Vallandigham. During the trial, testimony was given by Union army officers who attended the speech in civilian clothes, that Vallandigham called the president "King Lincoln". He was sentenced to confinement in a military prison "during the continuance of the war" at Fort Warren in Massachusetts. 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 a well-known anti-war Democrat, his presence at the military court likely harmed Vallandigam's attempts at arguing his innocence.

On May 11, 1863, an application for a writ of ''habeas corpus'' was filed in federal court for Vallandigham by former Ohio Senator George E. Pugh. Judge Humphrey H. Leavitt of the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of Ohio upheld Vallandigham's arrest and military trial as a valid exercise of the President's war powers. Congress had passed an act authorizing the president to suspend ''habeas corpus'' on March 3, 1863.

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 the Hon. John V. L. Pruyin were adopted. The resolutions were sent to President 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, explains 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

Lincoln, who considered Vallandigham a "wily agitator", was wary of making him a martyr to the Copperhead cause and on May 19, 1863, ordered him sent through the enemy lines to the Confederacy. 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."

On May 30, 1863, a meeting was held at Military Park in Newark, New Jersey

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