The Copperheads

Could the presidential election of 2008 shape up as an analog of the election of 1864? That question came to mind as we were reading on Friday James Taranto's "Best of the Web Today," which commented on Senator Reid's raising of the white flag in respect of the current war. "I believe ... that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week," said the man from Nevada.

Mr. Taranto juxtaposed that quote with an excerpt from the Democratic Party's notorious platform of 1864, which declared that "after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war ... justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand 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."

That juxtaposition sent us into our study to refresh our memory in respect of the Copperheads. The epithet, taken from the poisonous snake, was used to denote those Democrats who sided with, or sought accomodation with, the South during the Civil War. New York City was crawling with them (the Union League Club that graces the city today was established by their opponents). The election of 1864 was the one in which the Democrats ran General McClellan against Lincoln, who defeated McClellan in a landslide.

The person who might be called the ideological leader of the Copperheads was a two-term congressman from Ohio, Clement Vallandigham. In the middle of the war, he was constantly carrying on about states' rights and about the abuses of the Constitution. He was opposed to military spending, "leading his opponents," as it was put in Wikipedia, "to allege that he wanted the Confederacy to win the war." He eventually ran afoul of General Burnside's General Order Number 38.

That was the order that said "habit of declaring sympathies for the enemy" would not be tolerated in the Military District of Ohio. Burnside, according to a Web site called ohiohistorycentral.org, brought Vallandigham up on charges of "publicly expressing ... sympathy for those in arms against the Government of the United States, and declaring disloyal sentiments and opinions, with the object and purposes of weakening the power of the Government in its efforts to suppress an unlawful rebellion."

Here in New York, the arrest of Vallandigham moved the Democrats to rally in front of the state capitol in Albany, where, as it is related in Jennifer Weber's book "Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln's Opponents in the North," they protested about constitutional rights but did nothing to sway the president. Ms. Weber quotes a wonderful letter Lincoln wrote to Democrats in Ohio: "You claim that men may, if they choose, embarrass those whose duty it is, to combat a giant rebellion, and then be dealt with in turn, only as if there was no rebellion. The constitution itself rejects this view."

Despite all the protest, Vallandigham was convicted and sentenced, as ohiohistorycentral.org phrased it, "to remain in a United States prison for the remainder of the war." A challenge to the constitutionality of all this was rejected by the Supreme Court, which, in ex parte Vallandigham, concluded it couldn't tell a military commission what to do. Lincoln, fearing imprisonment would backfire, had Vallandigham sent through the Confederate lines and into exile, which the Copperhead spent in Canada trying — from a hotel room in Windsor, Ontario — to get elected governor of Ohio.

The voters rejected him overwhelmingly, though he again appeared — we like the way Wikipedia put it — "publicly in Ohio" and, in 1864, "openly attended" the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. It was there that he wrote what is called the "peace plank" of the platform that was quoted by Mr. Taranto. McClellan supported the war and included Vallandigham on his ticket as secretary of war. They lost. Vallandigham died at the age of 50 when , Wikipedia says, he accidentally shot himself with a pistol.

It would, no doubt, be a mistake to make too much of the analog between 1864 and 2008. For one thing, the victory of the Union was more clearly on the horizon than victory in the war on Islamist terrorism is today. By the election of 1864, Sherman was pressing his "surge" around Atlanta, and Richmond was in the Union's sights. But that only throws the Democratic Party's default into sharper relief. We have no doubt that there will come victory in the war in which our country is today engaged and that the modern-day Vallandighams — though we don't treat them the way Lincoln did — will be remembered as were the Copperheads.