378 Chapter 14 The War to Save the Union
Congress. Most Democrats supported measures nec-
essary for the conduct of the war but objected to the
way the Lincoln administration was conducting it.
The sharpest conflicts came when slavery and race
relations were under discussion. The Democrats
adopted a conservative stance, as reflected in the slo-
gan “The Constitution as it is; the Union as it was;
the Negroes where they are.” The Republicans
divided into Moderate and Radical wings. Political
divisions on economic issues such as tariffs and land
policy tended to cut across party lines and, so far as
the Republicans were concerned, to bear little rela-
tion to slavery and race. As the war progressed, the
Radical faction became increasingly influential.
In 1861 the most prominent Radical senator was
Charles Sumner, finally recovered from his caning by
Preston Brooks and brimful of hatred for slavehold-
ers. In the House, Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania
was the rising power. Sumner and Stevens were
uncompromising on all questions relating to slaves;
they insisted not merely on abolition but on granting
full political and civil rights to blacks. Moderate
Republicans objected vehemently to treating blacks
as equals and opposed making abolition a war aim,
and even many of the so-calledRadical Republicans
disagreed with Sumner and Stevens on race relations.
Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio, for example, was a
lifelong opponent of slavery, yet he disliked blacks
(whom he called by a racial slur). But prejudice, he
maintained, gave no one the right “to do injustice to
anybody”; he insisted that blacks were at least as
intelligent as whites and were entitled not merely to
freedom but to full political equality.
At the other end of the political spectrum stood
the so-called Peace Democrats. These Copperheads
(apparently a reference to a time when some hard-
money Democrats wore copper pennies around their
necks) opposed all measures in support of the war.
They hoped to win control of Congress and force a
negotiated peace. Few were actually disloyal, but their
activities at a time when thousands of men were risk-
ing their lives in battle infuriated many Northerners.
Lincoln treated dissenters with a curious mixture
of repression and tolerance. He suspended habeas
corpus in critical areas and he applied martial law
freely. Over 13,000 persons were arrested and held
without trial, many, as it later turned out, unjustly.
The president argued that the government dared not
stand on ceremony in a national emergency. His
object, he insisted, was not to punish but to prevent.
Arbitrary arrests were rarely, if ever, made for purely
political purposes, and free elections were held as
scheduled throughout the war.
The federal courts compiled an admirable record
in defending civil liberties, although when in conflict
with the military, they could not enforce their decrees.
InEx parte Merryman(1861), Chief Justice Taney
held General George Cadwalader in contempt for fail-
ing to produce a prisoner for trial when ordered to do
so, but Cadwalader went unpunished and the prisoner
continued to languish behind bars. After the war, in
Ex parte Milligan (1866), the Supreme Court
declared illegal the military trials of civilians in areas
where the regular courts were functioning, but by that
time the question was of only academic interest.
The most notorious domestic foe of the adminis-
tration was the Peace Democrat Congressman
Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio, who was sent to
prison by a military court. There were two rebellions
in progress, Vallandigham claimed, “the Secessionist
Rebellion” and “the Abolitionist Rebellion.” “I am
against both,” he added. But Lincoln ordered him
released and banished to the Confederacy. Once at
liberty Vallandigham moved to Canada, from which
refuge he ran unsuccessfully for governor of Ohio.
“Perish offices,” he once said, “perish life itself,
but do the thing that is right.” In 1864 he returned
to Ohio. Although he campaigned against Lincoln in
the presidential election, he was not arrested. Lincoln
was no dictator.Behind Confederate Lines
The South also revised its strategy after Bull Run.
Although it might have been wiser to risk everything
on a bold invasion of the North, President Davis
relied primarily on a strong defense to wear down the
Union’s will to fight. In 1862 the Confederate
Congress passed a conscription act that permitted the
hiring of substitutes and exempted many classes of
people (including college professors, druggists, and
mail carriers) whose work could hardly have been
deemed essential. A provision deferring one slave
owner or overseer for every plantation of twenty or
more slaves led many to grumble about “a rich man’s
war and a poor man’s fight.”
Although the Confederacy did not develop a
two-party system, political strife undermined the
cause. Southern devotion to states’ rights and individ-
ual liberty (for white men) caused endless trouble.
Conflicts were continually erupting between Davis
and southern governors jealous of their prerogatives
as heads of “sovereign” states.
Finance was the Confederacy’s most vexing prob-
lem. The blockade made it impossible to raise much
money through tariffs. The Confederate Congress
passed an income tax together with many excise taxes
but all told they covered only 2 percent of its needs
by taxation. The most effective levy was a tax in kind,
amounting to one-tenth of each farmer’s production.