The American Civil War - This Mighty Scourge of War

The world around war 91

Most northern Democrats railed against
this apparent shift in war aims. Working-
class northerners feared economic
competition from freed black people, with
no group more vocal in this regard than
recent Irish immigrants. Democratic-
newspaper editors and politicians prophesied
that various evils would follow Lincoln's
proclamation. Thousands of soldiers bluntly
stated their opposition to fighting for
emancipation, 'I don't want to fire another
shot for the negroes,' wrote a German-born
artillerist, 'and I wish all the abolitionists
were in hell.'

Unhappy with the course of the war, a
sizable portion of the Democratic Party
called for an armistice to be followed by
peace negotiations. Called Copperheads by
their opponents after the venomous
copperhead snake, these Democrats used the
Emancipation Proclamation, the
Conscription Act passed in the spring of
1863, claims of other Republican
transgressions against civil liberties, and the
Federal military disasters at Fredericksburg
and Chancellorsville to build formidable
support. Growing war weariness and the

An 1863 cartoon from Harper's Weekly shows a trio of

Democrats, their heads atop the bodies of copperhead

snakes, closing in to strike at a beleaguered female

representation of the Union. (Author's collection)

drumbeat of opposition from Copperheads

made the spring and early summer of 1863

one of the gravest periods of the war for

Lincoln and his supporters.

Still, the absence of southern Democrats

from Congress enabled the Republicans to

pass much of their legislative agenda in

1862-63. The National Bank Act of February

1863 sought to replace a plethora of state

banknotes with a national currency that

would promote economic development. The

Homestead Act, which carried through on

the old Free Soil idea of making western land

available to free white settlers, passed in

1862, as did the Land-Grant College Act,

designed to foster practical education in the

mechanical and agricultural arts. The Pacific

Railroad Bill of July 1862 offered substantial

government support for the construction of

the first transcontinental railroad. With all of

this legislation, Republicans sought to

construct a modern capitalist colossus.