Indiana in the Civil War an Introduction Jennifer L

Home , Alexander Asboth, Andrew Humphreys, Ex parte Milligan, Henry Smith Lane, Indianapolis Journal, The Fate of Liberty

Volume 13, Number 3, Fall 2013

A Journal of the History and Culture of the Ohio Valley and the Upper South, published in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Louisville, Kentucky, by Cincinnati Museum Center and The Filson Historical Society. Contents

3 Indiana in the Civil War An Introduction Jennifer L. Weber

7 Detectives and Spies U.S. Army Espionage in the Old Northwest during the Civil War Stephen E. Towne

27 Oliver P. Morton, Political Ideology, and Treason in Civil War Indiana A. James Fuller

46 Repudiating the Administration The Copperheads in Putnam County, Indiana Nicole Etcheson

65 Collection Essay Peter G. Thomson and theBibliography of the State of Ohio at the CMC Barbara J. Dawson

70 Collection Essay Documenting Women’s Civil War Experiences in the Ohio Valley at The Filson Eric Willey

77 Review Essay Cause and Consequence The Meaning of the Civil War Today Aaron Sheehan-Dean

84 Book Reviews

98 Announcements

on the cover: From top: William A. Bowles, Andrew Humphreys, Stephen Horsey, Horace Heffren, and Lambdin P. Milligan, the five men charged in the 1864 Indianapolis “Treason Trials.” From Benn Pitman, The Trials for Treason at Indianapolis: Disclosing the Plans for Establishing a North-Western Confederacy…(Cincinnati: Moore, Wilstach, & Baldwin, 1865). THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY Contributors

Jennifer L. Weber is associate professor of history at the University of Kansas. She is the author of Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North (2006), and the children’s book, Summer’s Bloodiest Days: The Battle of Gettysburg as Told from All Sides (2010), and co-editor of The Struggle for Equality: Essays on Sectional Conflict, the Civil War, and the Long Reconstruction (2011).

Stephen E. Towne is associate university archivist at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. He has written or edited books and articles on Civil War topics, including Civil War Secrets and Spies: Army Intelligence and Pro-Confederate Conspiracies in the Heart of the Midwest, forthcoming from Ohio University Press, on which this essay is based.

A. James Fuller is professor of history at the University of Indianapolis. A past president of the Indiana Association of Historians, he has published six books, including the edited collection, The Election of 1860 Reconsidered. He is under contract with Kent State University Press for a biography of Oliver Morton entitled, The Great War Governor: Oliver P. Morton and the Politics of Power in the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Nicole Etcheson is Alexander M. Bracken professor of history at Ball State University. She is the author most recently of A Generation at War: The Civil War Era in a Northern Community which won the 2012 Avery O. Craven Award from the Organization of American Historians. Her other publications include The Emerging Midwest: Upland Southerners and the Political Culture of the Old Northwest, 1787-1861 (1996), and Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era (2004).

Aaron Sheehan-Dean is the Fred C. Frey professor of history at Louisiana State University. He is the author of Why Confederates Fought: Family and Nation in Civil War Virginia (2007), and Struggle for a Vast Future: The American Civil War (2006), and editor of The View from the Ground: Experiences of Civil War Soldiers(2006).

2 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Indiana in the Civil War An Introduction Jennifer L. Weber

ivil War Indiana was a state set on simmer, a state that throughout the war seemed just on the edge of boiling over. With a heavy southern influence within its population, particularly in the downstate regions, CIndiana was riven by political differences during the war. Generally speaking, Republicans and Democrats divided the state, but the more serious break lay between Republicans and antiwar Democrats, who called themselves “peace men” but whom their foes called “Copperheads” after the treacherous snake. Considering themselves the ideological heirs of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, the Copperheads sheathed themselves in the Constitution. They took refuge in the most conservative interpretation of the document possible. Many of them questioned even the legality of the war, noting that the Constitution said nothing against secession. As the war rolled along, they took umbrage at many of the decisions that Congress and Abraham Lincoln’s administration made in the name of winning the war: calling out troops and announcing a blockade in the days after Fort Sumter but weeks before Congress met, paper currency, income taxes, suspending habeas corpus, and arresting newspaper editors. The draft stoked their worst fears of big government because the responsibility for raising troops had always lain with the states. Now, enrollers came knocking at the door, asking personal questions so they could find drafted individuals who did not show up for military service. Now, an entire federal bureaucracy existed to raise troops, a task formerly handled by leading citizens of the county. But nothing—nothing—enraged conservatives like the Emancipation Procla- mation. From the beginning of the war, conservatives labeled it a battle to extinguish slavery, not to reunite the country. See, they crowed, after Lincoln issued the preliminary proclamation in September 1862, they had been right. The man from Illinois had duped the country. The proclamation cemented the peace men’s belief that abolitionists controlled the government, and nothing could shake them from that position. Not far beneath these accusations lay an extremely racist worldview, one that approached fanatical even by the standards of the mid-nineteenth century. Their rhetoric, ugly in their time, provokes revul- sion in our own. The most moderate of the conservatives believed slavery the best and most appropriate institution for African Americans. In places such as New York and Cincinnati, immigrant laborers, an important constituency within the Copperhead movement, had a history of clashing with free blacks, whom they

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feared would undercut their wages. While many Copperheads expressed their opinions about race openly, others, men and women from various backgrounds, voiced their objections in constitutional terms. They included southerners living in the North, northerners whose parents had migrated from the South, Catholics, immigrants, and rock-ribbed conservatives. Whatever their background, they tended to frame their complaints in constitutional terms. While white suprem- acist beliefs clearly lay at the bottom of complaints about the Emancipation Proclamation, they grounded their best arguments in the Constitution. And so, when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, they objected (beyond their racist complaints) that the president had far exceeded the powers granted him by the Constitution and in the process had shredded southerners’ property rights while excusing his actions as a war measure. What made the Copperheads different in Indiana were their numbers, their concentration, and the threat they posed—characteristics underscored by the articles in this issue. While the number of antiwar Democrats who lived in Indiana and their percentage of the population remain unclear, only Ohio and Illinois had concentrations as large and in such proximity. Antiwar Hoosiers also resisted wartime measures to a degree rarely seen elsewhere. Hardly anywhere else, for instance, had a plot against the government advanced as far as Indianapolis printer H. H. Dodd’s when federal agents arrested him with a significant cache of guns and ammunition in his warehouse. The arrest of Dodd and others became national news, and their prosecution became known as the Indiana Treason Trials. Even now those trials resonate, largely through the Supreme Court decision they spawned, Ex parte Milligan. Plots, rumored and substantiated, swirled through the state, especially in the lower half, heavily populated by people with connections to the South. Republican Governor Oliver P. Morton, deeply worried about subversive activity, persuaded the federal government to give him money and manpower to investigate poten- tial conspiracies, especially those sponsored by secret societies such as the Knights of the Golden Circle and the Sons of Liberty. As Stephen E. Towne writes, these agents became part of a vast domestic intelligence network—one that extended through much of the North—composed of spies who worked for the army and the Provost Marshal General’s Bureau, the agency charged with administering and enforcing the draft. The information that these men collected went to governors and military officials in Washington. That the federal government engaged in domestic intelligence during the Civil War remains an aspect of the conflict, to paraphrase Lincoln, neither little noted nor long remembered. That is a shame, because the breadth and depth of information gathering that Towne outlines is breathtaking. One cannot help but think of the efforts of Woodrow Wilson’s administration in World War I and wonder what a comparative study of the two systems would yield.

4 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY JENNIFER L. WEBER

Morton confronted a more challenging political situation than nearly any other governor in the North. Only Governor Richard Yates of Illinois faced anything that even approached the interparty difficulties that Morton faced. His central problem was that Democrats controlled the Indiana General Assembly, and—so Morton believed—threatened to undermine the state’s contribution to the war effort and perhaps even pull Indiana out of the Union. Morton persuaded his fellow Republicans not to attend assembly sessions, thereby withhold- ing a quorum from the Democratic majority. When the state ran low on money, rather than have the assembly meet and pass a budget, Morton convinced private banks and then the federal government to loan the state enough cash to meet its financial obligations. His actions were constitutionally questionable, to say the least, but Morton kept the Democrats neutralized. Morton likewise tried to keep his political enemies in check by shutting down newspapers and arresting dissidents he deemed dangerous. Morton’s actions remain troubling, perhaps those of “a frequently vindictive man who ruthlessly smashed his political enemies and rivals when possible,” in A. James Fuller’s words. Before rushing to condemn Morton, though, Fuller also points out that Morton acted from motives more patriotic than self-serving. “Morton also pursued the Copperheads out of ideological principle,” Fuller writes. He denounced such men “as traitors who threatened to destroy the Union and the liberty it provided the American people. Rather than sit by and let secret societies overthrow the government, Morton used the expanded power of government to crush them in order to secure freedom and the Union.” Most Indianans did not experience political differences at the level of high politics or military intelligence. Like most northern civilians, they experienced these tensions at home, in their communities. And in Indiana, friction between neighbors could turn ugly, as the case of Putnam County reveals. Lying between Terre Haute, another Copperhead hotbed, and Indianapolis, Putnam County illustrated the threat that antiwar Democrats could pose. One of the leading figures in the county, a judge named Delana Eckels, reportedly cheered when he heard that Confederates had won the first major battle of the war at Bull Run in Virginia. When Unionists worried about whether the government could get a neutral hearing in court, this judge was exactly the kind of man they worried would sit on the bench adjudicating the case. Relationships in the county were already strained when the Enrollment Act became law in 1863. Now the federal government took charge of raising troops, and its bureaucratic arm, the Provost Marshal General’s Bureau, reached deep into the countryside. The federal government had unprecedented coercive power, and conservative Democrats objected, sometimes violently, as Nicole Etcheson demonstrates. Eckels’s son stabbed a recruiting officer. The judge, meanwhile, masterminded plots designed to frustrate the efforts of local draft officials. These

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officials did not come from outside the county; they were reliable and well known local men. When a pack of young men set upon the home of an enrolling officer in an attempt to steal his paperwork, the man’s wife and daughter played critical roles in protecting the man, also a justice of the peace, and the enrollment lists. Elsewhere in the county, a merchant who refused to contribute to a draft relief fund found his store burned to the ground in retaliation. Yet as ugly as the backlash against Republicans could be, Etcheson reminds us that Copperheads shared a point of view, beyond a mob mentality, that explains their actions:

If the Copperheads engaged in illegal or treasonous activities, it reflected their belief that Republican attacks on civil liberties, promotion of black equality, and prosecution of the war delegitimized the administration’s rule. Putnam’s Copperheads opposed a wartime administration that menaced the constitutional principles to which they, as Democrats, had adhered for their entire political careers. They opposed the draft because it violated their liberty and emancipation because it overturned white supremacy. In this, they embodied the northern antiwar movement that saw violence not as treason, but as free men’s last resort against Republican tyranny.

Until recently, historians had believed the argument of the late Frank Klement, who spent his career studying Copperheads in the Midwest. Klement claimed that Peace Democrats were marginal figures who posed no real threat to local, state, or federal governments. Any notion of them as engaged in larger conspiracies with secret societies resulted from Republican paranoia. More recent scholarship suggests that Republicans may have overreacted at times, but they had reason for concern. While most Copperheads may not have schemed to overthrow the government, they certainly sought political power through the ballot. Had they succeeded more broadly, they could have wreaked havoc with Lincoln’s efforts to prosecute the war. The articles in this issue contribute to a growing body of evidence that buttresses this claim and demonstrate the ripe possibilities of state and local studies. The closer to the ground one looks, the more interesting and surprising the social and political stories of the Civil War become. For those who think there is nothing new to say about the Civil War, look here.

6 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Detectives and Spies U.S. Army Espionage in the Old Northwest during the Civil War

Stephen E. Towne

.S. Army spies prowled the city streets and country lanes of the states of Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, and Michigan during much of the American Civil War. Their commanders variously called them detec- Utives, special agents, secret agents, or spies. They gathered information about developments in those states that worried federal officials. Detectives chased down deserters who took refuge in rural swamps and forests. They scoured riv- erfront docklands and loitered in saloons looking for draft dodgers. They sniffed out caches of firearms and shipments of gunpowder smuggled by citizens. They crisscrossed the Old Northwest—Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois— between the Confederate states in rebellion and Canada, trailing couriers carrying secret communications. Military authorities intercepted private mail and read their contents. Army spies maintained surveillance on leaders of the Democratic Party who voiced opposition to the policies of the administration of President Abraham Lincoln. They infiltrated, observed, and reported on secret conspirato- rial groups linked to the Democratic Party that planned revolutionary insurrection and armed attacks on army prisoner-of-war camps in the region. Commanders reported that information to Republican Party political leaders who, in turn, fed that information to Republican newspapers to embarrass the conspirators at critical times before the 1864 fall elections. Army spies testified in the Lincoln administration’s military commission trials that implicated Democratic leaders from Indiana and Illinois in various conspiracies. Espionage and intelligence operations in the Civil War played an important role in the military struggle. Both the U.S. Army and the rebel Confederate States of America employed spies to gather information on each other. Historians have understood the broad outlines of military intelligence operations during the war as efforts to gather information on opposing armies in the field, focusing their attention on the tactical intelligence operations of the Union Army of the Potomac that fought in Maryland and Virginia. These accounts have often relied on the self-promoting memoirs of a handful of wartime operatives, and historians have reveled in the romantic stories of feminine seduction or gender-role defiance of plucky women like Pauline Cushman, Rose Greenhow, and Elizabeth Van Lew. Driven by devotion to one cause or the other, these women beguiled

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Title Page, Report of the Judge Advocate General on the “Order of American Knights” or “Sons of Liberty”: A Western Conspiracy in Aid of the Southern Rebellion (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1864). CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER

8 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY STEPHEN E. TOWNE secrets from the foe or courageously smuggled information through the lines. Some of these stories emerged during the war as thrilling newspaper accounts of derring-do, and historians have been lulled into believing that espionage and intelligence work during the Civil War became the province of a handful of ama- teur adventurers or sleuths in crinoline and silk. Historians have also paid little attention to espionage where armies did not clash in battle. This essay shows how over the course of the conflict the U.S. Army developed an extensive intelligence apparatus in the Old Northwest, a region largely removed from the main theaters of war. A small bureaucracy arose in response to the need for reliable information about the growing threat of unrest and insurrection. The creation of this inves- tigatory tool enabled the army to undertake domestic surveillance operations to watch civilian non-combatants.1 In addition to uncovering the existence of an extensive domestic surveillance program, research on the development of army intelligence operations in the Northwest allows historians to reassess the region’s wartime politics and society. For years, scholars have relied on the writings of historians who dismissed the existence of wartime conspiracies in the North and argued that Republican governors and “politically-minded” army commanders fabricated accounts and evidence of plots to release Confederate prisoners and foment uprisings. Devious politicians concocted such stories for partisan political reasons to “smear” their Democratic rivals, historians concluded, and army officers participated in the smear campaigns to advance their careers. Apart from a tiny lunatic fringe, antiwar Democrats were loyal, conservative citizens who recoiled from the significant social and economic changes brought by Lincoln’s Republican ascendency. As dissenters rather than conspirators, they became victims of Republican per- fidy. Some scholars have recently challenged this narrative, pointing out that the antiwar Democrats—the so-called “Copperheads”—were politically strong and posed a powerful challenge to President Lincoln’s administration and his effort to suppress the rebellion. But the older view continues to appeal to many historians.2 This essay depicts the dangerous conditions that prevailed north of the Ohio River in states wracked by violence arising from profound ideological and political fissures. These deep divisions prompted neighbor to fight neighbor in defense of differing visions of the future of the United States. Democrats and Republicans alike formed armed secret political societies to protect themselves and advance their political beliefs. Secret Democratic groups became prominent political actors, encouraging desertion, obstructing draft enrollments, and plotting the release of Confederate prisoners-of-war. In response, genuinely anxious U.S. Army commanders and allied Republican state government officials investigated these movements and successfully uncovered widespread secret organizations that posed a threat to the political order. Their spies reported that the secret Democratic groups that resisted federal law and plotted insurrection

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constituted a significant minority of Democratic Party support. By uncovering large-scale plots, these spies played an important part in preventing insurrection in the Old Northwest. In 1861, in the first weeks and months after Confederates attacked U.S. Army troops and the North mobilized for war, the Northwest filled with widespread indignation at the rebel attack. Angry northerners clamored for vengeance, but the sentiment was not universal. Many people called for redoubled efforts to reconcile and compromise with the Confederates. Such calls derived not from pacifist beliefs but from views about the federal relationship between the states and the central government. Many northerners held strict state sovereignty views, arguing that the states possessed authority under the Constitution and the central government served merely as the states’ agent. States, they believed, possessed the right to leave the federal union. Accordingly, amid the calls to put down the rebellion, some residents of the Northwest expressed their sympathy for the rebels’ right to secede to protect slavery. During the secession crisis in the winter of 1860-1861, the editors of a Democratic newspaper in northeastern Indiana announced that “we favor the right of secession.” When war came, they continued to espouse state sovereignty views. Local Democratic figures—including future conspirator Lambdin P. Milligan—spoke to rallies of the “Genuine friends of the Union, & the Constitution—those who are opposed to waging an unjust, and unprofitable crusade against the Southern people.” The Democratic Party split apart, some followers allying with Republicans in the nationalist Union cause, while others upheld the states’ constitutional right to secede.3 Early in the war, reports of meetings, speeches, and other activities of persons who opposed a war of coercion against the Confederacy arrived on the desks of the Republican governors of the Northwest states. Illinois Governor Richard Yates received reports of strong support for the secessionists in parts of his state, especially in “Egypt,” the southern-most area that jutted deep into Dixie. Reports noted that Illinois men crossed the Ohio River to join Confederate forces. Others stated that secession flags flew in parts of the state. Influential men like David Davis, Lincoln’s campaign manager, and Orville Hickman Browning reported a “scheme” by “traitors” in league with rebels in Kentucky and Missouri. Other correspondents reported that armed groups drilled under a secession flag, and men vowed not to aid the war to

free slaves. Reports arrived stating that several coun- Illinois Governor Richard Yates (1815-1865). ties had lodges of the secret proslavery society called COURTESY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

10 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY STEPHEN E. TOWNE

the Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC). One correspondent noted that local Unionists had infiltrated a secret armed group that drilled in opposition to the war. Fear undoubtedly produced some reports, but those fears were real. Yates believed the information about “unlawful combinations” and “secret organizations” “reliable” and that it constituted a serious internal threat. The governors of Indiana and Ohio received similar reports of groups that cheered for Confederate President Jefferson Davis and vowed opposition to a war to force the return of the rebel states. The rebel victory at Bull Run in Virginia in July spurred many to cheer openly for the rebels and to organize both secretly and overtly against the war. People cut down U.S. flags, and reports of secret activities reached Indiana Governor Oliver P. Morton, including plans to sabotage railroad bridges. Morton believed that groups were acting secretly in his state and warned the War Department in Washington, D.C., “not to suffer affairs to drift on until it is too late.” Ohio Governor William Dennison privately voiced fears about the forma- tion of secret societies that the federal government needed to watch carefully.4 Along with state officials, U.S. attorneys and marshals charged with enforcing federal law throughout the Northwest fielded reports in their districts about underground movements and activities, including the smuggling of arms and other contraband. Citizens reported that secret, armed organizations existed to oppose the war effort and support secession. Federal officers took the reports seriously and attempted to investigate them. They reported their concerns to Attorney General Edward Bates and asked for instructions and assistance. The marshal for southern Illinois reported that he had credible evidence that people in his district corresponded with rebels in the South both to recruit for the Confederates and inhibit recruiting for the U.S. Army. Overwhelmed with the myriad legal issues posed by rebellion, Bates provided little guidance or tangible assistance to his subordi- nates. Moreover, he possessed no funds to give to law enforcement officers to investigate criminal acts. The Judiciary Fund, established by Congress to pay court officers for carrying out duties such as serving warrants and securing prisoners, afforded no funds for investigations. Secretary of the Interior Caleb Blood Smith of Indiana controlled the Judiciary Fund and strictly limited its use to the functions prescribed by law. In 1861 and 1862, he turned down requests from federal law enforcement officers for money to pay detectives to investigate criminal conspiracy.5

Ohio Governor William Dennison (1815-1882). Despite these bureaucratic frustrations, some fed- COURTESY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS eral law enforcement officers managed to investigate

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conspiracy in their districts, employing detectives who infiltrated secret groups. The most notable investigation occurred in northeastern Ohio in the summer and fall of 1861, where the U.S. marshal and attorney employed a “secret agent” who collected information on secret groups in several counties. Based on this information, the U.S. marshal in Cleveland arrested several locally prominent Democrats and the U.S. attorney brought them before a federal magistrate. Testimony given in preliminary hearings established the existence of a KGC organization in the area. The conspiracy case, however, collapsed on the eve of the trial in Cleveland federal district court. One witness died suddenly and threats from the persons under indictment caused another to flee town and join the army. The rest clammed up, refusing to testify.6 In 1862, amid continued reports suggesting the existence of secret societies that aimed to subvert the war effort, federal law enforcement authorities initiated grand jury investigations in Indiana. Over two hundred witnesses gave testimony. Jurors announced that evidence showed the KGC existed all over the state. Their report, released for publication, created a sensation throughout the Northwest. Further civil investigations in the following year produced numerous confessions of membership in the society. In the summer of 1862, the federal attorney in Cincinnati obtained confessions of KGC membership, and in 1863 a U.S. grand jury in Cleveland reported they had “no doubt” of the existence of secret organizations made up of “unprincipled men and villainous traitors.” But none of these investigations and confessions produced a trial, let alone a conviction, leaving civil officials no closer to understanding the threat the organizations posed. Despite Congress’s efforts to pass broadened legal definitions of criminal conspiracy, civilian inquiries failed to bring conspirators to trial, highlighting the weakness of state and federal law enforcement authorities in investigating com- plex criminal activities. Neither state nor federal civil authorities had the inves- tigatory resources required to tackle the problem. They saw the problem, but lacked the tools to address it.7 If civilian law enforcement officials lacked resources, the U.S. Army, which maintained a presence throughout the northern states, did not. Beginning in the summer of 1862, the army, with its wealth of manpower and wartime resources, stepped in to fill the investigative void. On August 8, the War Department issued an order authorizing civil authorities to arrest and jail anyone who discouraged volunteer enlistments or gave “aid and comfort” to the enemy; the order also sus- pended the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus to those arrested. Prompted by the order, the army turned its energies to investigating the sources of dissension and disloyalty in the North. In 1862 and early 1863, local commanders at military posts in the Northwest initiated investigations of perceived threats to the integrity and effectiveness of their forces. They saw the growth of opposition to the war in the northern states and the slowing of volunteer enlistments for the army.

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Desertion rates rose as soldiers became disenchanted with military life, especially after President Lincoln’s Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862 made ending slavery in the Confederacy integral to the war effort. Soldiers slunk away from their units, and commanders had evidence that civilians took part in organized efforts to discourage enlistments and encourage desertion.8 In order to stop the growing rot in the army’s ranks, officers investigated conditions in their units and surrounding communities. The first army efforts to spy on local communities in the Northwest occurred in the summer of 1862 around Cairo, deep in the “Egypt” of southern Illinois. Prompted by widespread unrest, partisan tensions, and threats of violence directed at war supporters that predated the August 8 War Department order, Major Joseph W. Merrill, the post provost marshal, working under orders from post commander Brigadier General William K. Strong, began investigating antiwar activities in the surrounding counties. In a sweep of several communities, troops arrested a number of local Democratic leaders for participation in the KGC, including William “Josh” Allen, the local congressman. Other army investigations followed. The military takeover of domestic investigations was unplanned, uncoordinated, gradual, and occurred on an ad hoc, post-by-post, commander-by-commander basis. Nonetheless, the shift would have profound political and constitutional consequences.9 The first army efforts to investigate conspiracy and the existence of secret organizations in Indiana occurred in December 1862, when Colonel Henry B. Carrington dis- covered that soldiers in army camps around Indianapolis had joined secret organizations that aimed to encourage desertion. He quickly investigated the matter, employing as spies soldiers who had learned the secret handshakes and signals of the groups, and arresting and court martialing soldiers who confessed to membership. Carrington alerted President Lincoln and Sec- retary of War Edwin M. Stanton, as well as Governor Morton, of his findings. The governor connected the effort to weaken the army through desertions to the dangerous political struggle with antiwar Democrats Brigadier General Henry B. Carrington (1824-1912). in Indiana who advocated the end of COURTESY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

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the war on the South and the separation of the Northwest from the Northeastern states. Thereafter, Morton insisted that the army station Carrington in Indianapolis to assist him in investigating the machinations of the antiwar conspirators. Despite his wish to fight at the front, Carrington spent most of the rest of the war in Indianapolis directing investigations of secret organizations in cooperation with Morton. He and the governor investigated conspiracies they sincerely believed posed a significant threat to the war-fighting effectiveness of the army and the integrity of the Union.10 As in Indiana, the post commander in United States Secretary of War Edwin P. Stanton (1814-1869). Cincinnati, Ohio, reacted to daunting threats to the CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER army presented by desertions, draft-dodging, and civilians arming to resist the draft. In March 1863, he obtained authority from Major General Horatio G. Wright, the commander of the multi-state Department of the Ohio (encompassing Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and parts of Kentucky, with headquarters at Cincinnati), to establish a corps of detectives. Consisting of both hired civilians and soldiers detailed for special duty, these detectives ranged all over the department. They paid special attention to arms trafficking to disaffected groups and individuals, and visited communities where armed groups rallied to defend deserters from arrest. They tracked arms salesmen and traced shipments of guns and gunpowder to violence-torn precincts in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. Purchases of guns and powder became so widespread among antiwar Democrats that Wright prohibited arms and ammunition sales throughout the region for months. Post commanders in a multi-state area attempted (and mostly failed) to stop shipments of guns and gunpowder from getting into the hands of persons deemed disloyal to the federal government.11 Perceiving the widespread unrest in the North, Union commanders in the South with mandates to quell occupied areas behind the lines also sent their own detectives northward to investigate conditions. The head of detectives for the Department of the Cumberland headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, dispatched spies into the Northwest to track down communications through the lines between Confederates and sympathizers in the North. In another instance, a general in western Kentucky sent a captain into southern Illinois to scout out the landscape. The officer confirmed the existence of the KGC throughout the region. These commanders shared Major General Horatio G. Wright their findings with their northern counterparts in the hope of (1820-1899). aiding the effort to suppress disloyalty. In the spring of 1863, as COURTESY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

14 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY STEPHEN E. TOWNE the challenge from antiwar Democrats grew increasingly violent, army post commanders in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan established their own detective bureaus staffed by a mixture of hired civilians and soldiers. Officers issued their soldiers civilian clothing to venture into communities to sniff out arms shipments. Others posed as deserters to find the networks that provided hide- outs, food, and arms to runaway soldiers. For the rest of the war, detectives provided significant information to local commanders who used it to make arrests of deserters and their abettors and to quell unrest. In this effort, the ad hoc network of army spies uncovered the influence of secret organizations behind the efforts to resist the authority of the government.12 In addition to the detective corps formed by army post and district commanders, the Enrollment Act passed by Congress in March 1863 established a nationwide espionage network of “special agents” under the Provost Marshal General Bureau, part of the War Department. In operation in the Northwest by late May-early June, their duty was to find and arrest deserters and draft dodgers. Agents acted as detectives and spies, sometimes in disguise, to track down their quarry, often infiltrating groups that harbored, protected, and armed deserters. Agents frequently cooperated with military commanders in operations to round up and arrest deserters and draft dodgers, sharing intelligence about the secret organizations that smuggled arms, resisted arrests, or attacked draft enrollment officers. Many of the agents were former soldiers discharged for a disability or whose enlistments had expired. The local district provost marshals hired them to nose around their home counties and surrounding areas. They undertook dangerous work, and some were killed doing their duty. Regulations allowed four agents for each congressional district, but sometimes War Department officials authorized extra agents when the local problem proved severe. In one case in 1863, a district provost marshal in western Illinois had nine- teen agents scouring the landscape for deserters and working to infiltrate the groups that harbored them. The state commander of the Provost Marshal General Bureau in Ohio reported in the summer of 1863 that his spies watched the movements of the secret group’s leaders, “some of whom hold high political places.”13 Together, the detective forces from the regional army commanders and the Provost Marshal General Bureau succeeded in gathering information on secret organizations behind much of the unrest in the northwestern states. In Illinois, detectives worked to counteract the local armed groups that threatened enrollment officers and parties of soldiers sent to arrest deserters. Officers received assistance from pro-war Republican Union League secret society members, who informed on the activities of their partisan foes. In Detroit, post commanders and Provost Marshal General Bureau officers hired spies to keep careful watch on Clement L. Vallandigham while he sojourned in exile at Windsor, Canada, and ran for governor of Ohio in absentia. They also watched the host of rebels, escaped POWs, and deserters who congregated in Canada.14

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Army intelligence efforts in the Northwest achieved their first important successes in 1863. In July, the Provost Marshal General Bureau in Indiana, coop- erating with officers from the Department of the Cumberland, shadowed and arrested the founder of the KGC, George W. L. Bickley, in New Albany, Indiana, and packed him off to prison without charges. In October, soldiers acting as spies for commanders in Ohio infiltrated a group that plotted attacks on POW camps in the state to release Confederate troops. Working together, troops and U.S. marshals arrested several men and women in Columbus, Cincinnati, and across the river in Covington, Kentucky, and indicted them for treason and conspiracy in federal court. Acting on records seized during the arrests, authorities in Indiana quietly ordered local militia units to be on alert for a feared uprising and attack on the Camp Morton POW facility. At the same time, spies in Illinois and Ohio learned that the KGC had reorganized and changed its name to the Order of American Knights (OAK). (Later, on President Lincoln’s orders, the army tracked down and arrested the leader of the OAK, Phineas C. Wright, while on a recruiting trip in Michigan.) Finally, spies working out of Detroit army headquarters and informants who circulated among the rebels in Canada alerted commanders to a plan by Confederate agents in Canada to attack the Johnson’s Island POW camp. In preparation, officers reinforced the prison garrison and patrolled Lake Erie with gunboats. The attack failed to come off when the British government in Canada independently got wind of the plot and alerted Washington. Secretary Stanton shared the information with the press, thus spooking the plotters. The army’s early intelligence successes reflected the diligent effort and information sharing between post commanders and the Provost Marshal General Bureau.15 Notwithstanding such intelligence-gathering successes, significant dangers loomed. Republican war policies took their toll on conservative Democrats. The emancipation of African American slaves, economic mobilization, suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, military arrests of civilians, widespread violence against the Democratic press and suppression of speech, and other developments increased tensions. The presidential election year of 1864, when the growing strength, ambition, and menace of the secret organizations posed the greatest threat to stability, proved critical in the Northwest. As part of the strategic push to destroy Confederate resistance in Virginia, Georgia, and the Southwest, War Department leaders sent almost all federal troops to the front and stripped the Northwest bare. State commanders and political leaders believed themselves nearly defenseless against the threat of regional civil war. As a consequence, political leaders and army officers redoubled their efforts to counteract the threat of insurrection. For local commanders, intelligence gathering and espionage played a key role in their efforts against secret organizations. Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, the new military commander of the army’s Northern Department (the former Department of the Ohio excluding most of Kentucky), Major General

16 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY STEPHEN E. TOWNE

“A Plan of the Military Prison Situated on the South side of Johnsons Island.” CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER

Samuel P. Heintzelman, quickly ascertained the restiveness—nearly to the point of civil war—of the region he commanded. Some of the army officers in his department had good information on the sources of unrest in the region and the threat from rebels in Canada. State governors also had informants and spies working for them. Heintzelman relied upon Henry Carrington for running spies and collecting information from his headquarters in Indianapolis, while officers in Detroit kept a close watch on the northern frontier. Carrington built an effective spy network in Indiana made up of hired civilians and soldiers detailed to undertake spy missions. His many informers reported that the secret groups numbered in the tens of thousands in Illinois and Indiana, and were a growing presence in Ohio, Michigan, and Kentucky.16 A Kentuckian, Felix G. Stidger, loaned by army headquarters in Louisville, proved Carrington’s most effective spy. Sent to Indiana, Stidger quickly infiltrated the Indiana secret group, which had renamed itself the Sons of Liberty. The Indiana conspirators sent him to Kentucky to assist their counterparts in building the Major General Samuel P. Heintzelman organization in the commonwealth. Consequently, (1805-1880). he had access to records and information about the CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER

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organization in both states, and he reported regularly to army commanders in both Indiana and Kentucky. One night, in early June 1864, leaders of the Sons of Liberty in Indianapolis directed Stidger to carry a sheaf of secret records to Louisville to assist their counterparts. Before the morning southbound train arrived, the spy smuggled the records to Carrington’s headquarters, where the general’s staff worked through the night to hand-copy the documents and return them to Stidger. The records later formed the basis of an Indianapolis newspaper exposé that embarrassed and weakened the conspiracy at a time when com- Union spy Felix G. Stidger (1836-1908). manders believed they had insufficient troops to From Stidger, Treason History of the Order break up the order. Stidger also provided details of Sons of Liberty, formerly Circle of Honor, succeeded by Knights of the Golden of plots to sabotage government warehouses and Circle, afterward Order of American steamboats as well as collusion with Confederate Knights…(Chicago: The Author, 1903). THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY guerrillas operating in Kentucky. Other spies and informants provided important information to Carrington and Governor Morton. The governors and military commanders of Ohio, Illinois, and the post commander of Detroit, each of whom had his own spies and informers, also gathered information on the threat they saw looming. Beginning in the spring of 1864, the governors and generals in the Northwest began to confer with each other about how best to counteract the dangers posed by secret conspiracies.17 Aggressive and geographically widespread investigations undertaken by Major General William S. Rosecrans, commander of the Department of the Missouri headquartered in St. Louis, confirmed the serious danger from secret organizations in the Northwest. Rosecrans’s spies ranged throughout the North, venturing as far as New York City and Canada, in pursuit of information. He shared his findings with Heintzelman and the northwestern governors to devise a way to defeat the secret groups. Previous attempts by the governors to alert Washington authorities to the threat of insurrection had fallen on deaf ears. President Lincoln especially dismissed their concerns, focusing his attention on fighting in the South. Rosecrans, believing the groups posed an existential threat to the Union, took it upon himself to call the president’s attention to the seriousness of the situation. In June 1864, Lincoln sent his private secretary, John Hay, to St. Louis to confer with Rosecrans. Hay returned to Washington impressed by the gravity of the intelligence gathered, but the president again dismissed the warnings and provided no reinforcements or policy direction for the commanders and governors in the Northwest. Further appeals failed to raise a sense of urgency in Washington.18

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Without guidance from national leadership and left to their own devices, the governors and generals made their own plans to break up the secret groups. Major General Stephen G. Burbridge, commander of the District of Kentucky, aided these efforts. His aggressive measures to suppress Confederate guerrillas active in the commonwealth became a catalyst for the generals and governors north of the Ohio River. Armed with reports from spies, including Stidger, that conspirators plotted an uprising in early August, he lobbied his counterparts to preempt the attack by arresting the state leaders of the secret groups. He obtained agreement from Heintzelman and Morton, but Governors John Brough of Ohio and Yates of Illinois feared they did not have sufficient forces on hand to quell uprisings should the rank and file members of the organizations react violently to the arrests. In the meantime, Morton secured approval from Secretary of War Stanton to publish a newspaper exposé of the records that Stidger had smuggled into the army’s hands, and Rosecrans produced a similar exposé about the conspirators in Missouri. More important, Burbridge and Rosecrans—backed by military forces in Kentucky and Missouri—made sweeping arrests of the leadership of the organizations in the two states.19 In late July and early August, evidence suggests that Washington came around to lending support to the generals and governors in the West. With the Union war effort in Virginia and Georgia bogged down and Lincoln’s reelection prospects appearing dire, Washington leaders realized the need for drastic measures. No doubt prompted by the continuous prodding of the western governors, Secretary Stanton sent trusted aide Judge Advocate General Joseph Holt west with orders to investigate the secret plots. Holt visited with the governors and generals and reported that the conspiracies were real, significant, and threatened revolution in the Northwest. “It is for the Government to determine,” he concluded, “whether, consistently with its own safety or with its duty to the country, it can longer endure this knife of the domestic traitor at its throat.” Finally convinced, the War Department provided support and guidance to the beleaguered westerners. Among other moves, Stanton approved troop reinforcements for all the POW camps in the Northwest and other measures to improve internal security. Records show that the War Department also issued orders to army department generals throughout the North and occupied South authorizing them to watch and arrest certain individuals. In a short period of time, Stanton had significantly increased the surveillance powers of the United States government.20 Notwithstanding the new assistance from Washington, only fortuitous timing and a few lucky breaks for the northern governors and army commanders prevented open rebellion in August. Carrington and Burbridge’s top spy, Felix Stidger, reported that the conspirators planned to free Confederate prisoners and provoke general insurrection in early or mid-August to coincide with guerrilla raids on the Ohio River border and with Camp Morton in Indianapolis a

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chief target. Indiana, however, remained almost bereft of federal troops because Stanton’s promised reinforcements had not yet arrived. With growing apprehen- sion, Carrington’s network observed as armed men filtered into the city on trains from all over the state. Quite by chance, veteran troops sent home to muster out unexpectedly arrived in the city from the South, and the reinforcements finally arrived. These troops allowed the government to present a façade of strength that deterred the plotters. Furthermore, rattled Democratic Party leaders, fearful of the consequences that the planned uprising might bring, persuaded the plotters to hold off. These establishment leaders quietly met with Carrington and implored him to take bold steps, even advising him to arrest leaders of the radical element in their own party. Apprised of the collapse of the Indianapolis plot, General Heintzelman confided to his private journal that Indiana had had a “narrow escape from a civil war.” He added, “Nothing but the arrangement of troops prevented it,” as well as “the determination of some leading Democrats not to aid” the uprising.21 In another stroke of luck, Governor Morton received a tip from an uniden- tified informant that conspirators were in the process of shipping a large cache of revolvers and ammunition from New York City to Indianapolis, part of which they had stored in the warehouse of a prominent local Democrat. Troops raided the warehouse and seized the arms and records of the state Sons of Liberty organization. Afterwards, troops arrested H. H. Dodd, the owner of the warehouse and leader of the state Sons of Liberty. Likewise, a rebel turncoat alerted Detroit army headquarters to plans by Confederate agents to lead an uprising in Chicago to free the POWs in Camp Douglas during the Democratic National Convention. Southern agents led by Confederate Captain Thomas Henry Hines had slipped into the United States from Canada and made their way to Chicago with plans to lead local conspirators in the attack on the camp. The rumor of the arrival of reinforcements for the camp swirled around the city during the convention and fortunately deterred the plotters. Heintzelman, present in the city during the convention, wrote in his journal: “there’s a rumor that we have 5,000 troops here. We may as well let them believe so.” August 1864 proved the critical wartime month in the Northwest, when lucky breaks forestalled uprisings and federal leaders acknowledged the danger of insurrection. As part of Washington’s new recog- nition of the seriousness of the conspiracies, Stanton supplanted Carrington with Brevet Major General Alvin P. Hovey in the Indiana command and ordered Hovey to act aggressively to make arrests and try conspirators by military commissions. Carrington remained as spymaster. Hovey’s subsequent arrests and military trials of the conspirators in Indiana that autumn, among them Dodd, Lambdin P. Milligan, and William A. Bowles, resulted from Washington’s orders.22

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Title page, William A. Bowles, Analytical View of the Testimony Given on the Part of the Government, in the Case of the United States vs. H. H. Dodd, and same against William A. Bowles and Others, in the Treason Trials… (New Albany, In.: Norman & Matthews, 1865). THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

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In the fall of 1864, testimony of army spies and informants formed the back- bone of the evidence against Dodd, Milligan, and the other conspirators in the military commission treason trials in Indianapolis. Spies took the stand to relate what they saw and heard in secret meetings. Their testimony secured convictions of the plotters and created a sensation in the press. During the Indianapolis trial, army intelligence in Chicago broke up yet another plot to free POWs at Camp Douglas on the eve of the November presidential election. Commanders put the arrested plotters on trial by military commission in Cincinnati, where spies again testified. After Lincoln won reelection and the rebellion began to collapse, the army took steps to cut their payrolls and reduce expenditures. Commanders broke up their intelligence bureaus and fired the detectives who had played an important part in preventing insurrection in the North. Most of those involved, the paid civilians, soldiers, and the mass of unpaid informants, conveniently forgot about the ungentlemanly and sordid activities they undertook as spies. After the war, spymaster Carrington estimated that between two to three thousand informants had provided him with details on secret meetings, arms shipments, travel movements, and other matters from all over Indiana and the Northwest.23 This compressed narrative of spies and counter-insurrection in the Old Northwest leads to several conclusions. First, federal government leaders, preoc- cupied with the challenges brought on by civil war, failed to react to the growth of a large and sophisticated criminal conspiracy in the North. Leaders of the federal law enforcement apparatus—Edward Bates and Caleb Smith—did not equip their local officers with the means to investigate and uncover evidence of secret criminal activities. Their failure resulted in part from restrictive laws that prescribed the duties and actions of law enforcement officers. Bureaucratic infighting also limited their thinking. Federal neglect and conflict rendered civilian law enforcement unable to investigate effectively a widespread criminal conspiracy during a period of social and political tumult. As a result, U.S. Army commanders acted in their stead to gather information on movements that threatened to harm the integrity of the army as a fighting force and impair the war effort in general. Military forces engaged directly in domestic espionage. Acting under orders, soldiers served as detectives to watch civilians in the North and uncover shipments of arms to groups that harbored deserters and obstructed draft enrollments. Soldiers infiltrated secret groups to learn about their plans and provide information to commanders about possible threats. The army also hired civilians to undertake surveillance activities and routinely opened private mail. Under the Lincoln administration, the federal government developed a large ad hoc military bureaucracy to watch many people throughout the North, including elected political leaders. Contrary to some historians, the governors of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois and military commanders in those and other states did not fabricate evidence about large conspiracies that threatened

22 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY STEPHEN E. TOWNE the war effort. They sincerely believed the reports they received from their detectives as well as the spies acting under army commanders. Abundant and clear evidence revealed that groups of armed men met in secret throughout the region and planned violent, revolutionary action to subvert the war effort. In some rural communities these armed groups terrorized local populations, attacking people who supported the war effort or those who assisted in the arrest of deserters and draft dodgers. By 1864, a large number of armed groups, motivated by anger at the Lincoln administration’s policies and fear of the reach of government into their lives, reacted with violence. These groups aimed to destabilize the North to undermine Lincoln’s reelection chances, posing a real threat to the integrity of the United States at a time of national upheaval. Hand in hand with the rise of military espionage in the North was the use of military commissions to try civilians. Starting in Cleveland in 1861, federal law enforcement authorities tried but failed to bring conspirators to trial in federal courts. Instead, authorities opted to employ military tribunals to try civilians for treason and conspiracy. The Indianapolis and Cincinnati treason trials, followed by the Lincoln assassination trials, are the chief examples of military intervention into law enforcement during this period. After the war, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in the case Ex parte Milligan that military courts could not try civilians when martial law was not in effect and the civil courts remained open and func- tioning. In later times of stress, Americans have seen national leaders choose to bring persons to trial in military courts rather than employ civil courts, their reasons having more to do with expediency and the greater likelihood of obtaining convictions than a concern for justice. Again, military power has intruded into civil law enforcement. Finally, the study of army espionage in the Northwest illustrates that the region was a battleground during the Civil War. Rather than a quiet hinterland united behind Lincoln and the Union war effort, the region was wracked by mur- derous violence growing out of fundamental political and ideological divisions. And army espionage enabled regional military commanders and political leaders to counteract and defeat the revolutionary movement that threatened to weaken the ability of Lincoln’s government to put down rebellion.

1 Historian Edwin C. Fishel has written extensively on military intelligence operations in the Army of the Potomac, which fought in Maryland and Virginia. See his The Secret War for the Union: The Untold Story of Military Intelligence in the Civil War (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1996); and “The Mythology of Civil War Intelligence,” Civil War History 10 (Dec. 1964), 344-67. Historian William Feis follows Union General Ulysses S. Grant’s tactical battlefield intelligence activities from his early experiences in Missouri to Virginia, with special attention to his use of intelligence assets while supervising the Army of the Potomac; see his Grant’s Secret Service: The Intelligence War from Belmont to Appomattox (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002). For “secret service” potboilers, see William Gilmore Beymer, Scouts and Spies of the Civil War (1912; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003); Lafayette C. Baker, History of the United States Secret Service (Philadelphia: L. C. Baker, 1867); Allan Pinkerton,

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The Spy of the Rebellion: Being a True Story of the Spy System Benedict, “Abraham Lincoln and Federalism,” Journal of of the United States Army during the Late Rebellion (New the Abraham Lincoln Association 10, no. 1 (1988), 1-45. York: G. W. Carlton, 1883). General histories of U.S. Huntington Democrat, Dec. 27, 1860, quoted in the espionage contain superficial accounts of Civil War intel- Huntington Indiana Herald, Jan. 9, 1861; J. F. Duckwall ligence activities. See, for example, Nathan Miller, Spying to Laz Noble, Aug. 10, 1861, in Adjutant General of for America: The Hidden History of U.S. Intelligence (New Indiana Records, Indiana State Archives, Indianapolis York: Marlow, 1989); Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, American (hereafter ISA). This letter is reprinted in Richard F. Nation Espionage: From Secret Service to CIA (New York: Free and Stephen E. Towne, eds., Indiana’s War: The Civil War Press, 1977); and Jeffreys-Jones, Cloak and Dollar: The in Documents (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2009), History of American Secret Intelligence (2002; New Haven: 127-28. For a study of the pro-war / antiwar split in the Yale University Press, 2003); Christopher Andrew, For the Democratic Party during the war years, see Joel H. Silbey, President’s Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American A Respectable Minority: The Democratic Party in the Civil Presidency from Washington to Bush (New York: Harper War Era, 1860-1868 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977). Collins, 1995). For a history of army internal security and surveillance activities that overlooks the development of 4 Thomas A. Burgess to Oziah M. Hatch, Apr. 27, 1861, intelligence bureaus in the North during the Civil War, see Oziah M. Hatch Papers, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Joan M. Jensen, Army Surveillance in America, 1775-1980 Library, Springfield, Il. (hereafter ALPL); Browning diary (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991). entry of Apr. 22, 1861, in The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning . . . , Theodore C. Pease and James G. Randall, 2 Frank L. Klement argued that antiwar Democrats fell vic- eds., 2 vols. (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, tim to partisan smear campaigns concocted by Republican 1925-1933), 1:465; David Davis to Richard Yates, May politicians and army officers and that only a tiny minority 1861, R. J. Wheatley to Richard Yates, July 26, 1861, W. of Democrats conspired against the United States. See his O. Hays to Richard Yates, Aug. 15, 1861, J. M. Galbraith The Copperheads in the Middle West (Chicago: University to Richard Yates, Aug. 4, 1861, Lewis Hammach to of Chicago Press, 1960); Dark Lanterns: Secret Political Richard Yates, Aug. 20, all in Yates Family Papers, ALPL; Societies, Conspiracies, and Treason Trials in the Civil War Richard Yates to J. I. McCawley, Aug. 10, 1861, Wabash (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984); Yates Collection, ALPL; William C. Kise to Oliver P. and The Limits of Dissent: Clement L. Vallandigham and Morton, Aug. 6, 1861, 10th Indiana Volunteer Infantry the Civil War (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, Correspondence, Adjutant General of Indiana Records, 1970). Other historians anticipated or followed Klement’s ISA; Morton to Thomas A. Scott, Aug. 31, 1861, in lead. For a negative portrayal of Indiana Republican Governor Oliver P. Morton Telegraph Books (hereafter Governor Oliver P. Morton, see Kenneth M. Stampp, OPMTB), vol. 1:182-83, ISA (reprinted in The War of Indiana Politics during the Civil War (1949; Bloomington: the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Indiana University Press, 1978). For a scathing depiction Union and Confederate Armies, 70 vols. [Washington, of Illinois Republican Governor Richard Yates, see Jack D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1880-1901], ser. Junior Nortrup, “Richard Yates: Civil War Governor 3, vol. 1:473-74 [hereafter OR]); Diary of William T. of Illinois” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois Urbana- Coggeshall, entries of July 28 and 31, 1861, ALPL. Champaign, 1960); Nortrup, “Yates, the Prorogued Legislature, and the Constitutional Convention,” Journal 5 David L. Phillips to Caleb B. Smith, May 12, 1861, of the Illinois State Historical Society 62 (Spring 1969), Southern Illinois 1860-1863, Letters Received re Judiciary 5-34; and Nortrup, “Gov. Richard Yates and Pres. Accounts, Record Group 60 (hereafter RG), General Lincoln,” Lincoln Herald 70 (Winter 1968), 193-206. Records of the Department of Justice; David L. Phillips to Jennifer L. Weber argues that antiwar Democrats posed a Edward Bates, May 13, 1861, “Southern District of Illinois serious political threat to the Lincoln administration and (US Marshal),” Letters Received, RG 60, both National the successful continuation of the Union war effort; see Archives, College Park, Md. (hereafter NA-CP); David L. her Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents Phillips to Richard Yates, Sept. 21, 1861, Richard Yates in the North (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). Papers, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale Special More recently, Robert M. Sandow rejects Weber’s critique, Collections, Morris Library, Carbondale; Richard Bates to claiming it only echoes the wartime Republican “myth”; Flamen Ball, May 4, 1861, Titian J. Coffey to Montgomery see his Deserter Country: Civil War Opposition in the Blair, May 8, 1861, Edward Bates to Asa S. Jones, May 21, Pennsylvania Appalachians (New York: Fordham University 1861, Edward Bates to Robert F. Paine, May 24, 1861, Press, 2009), 5-6, 7, 181n17. For an insightful critique of Titian J. Coffey to Robert F. Paine, Sept. 19, 1861, Titian the Copperhead historiography, see Thomas E. Rodgers, J. Coffey to Flamen Ball, Sept. 2, 1861, all in RG 60, “Copperheads or a Respectable Minority: Current Letters Sent by the Department of Justice: General and Approaches to the Study of Civil War-Era Democrats,” Miscellaneous, 1818-1904, National Archives, Washington, Indiana Magazine of History 109 (June 2013), 114-46. D.C. (hereafter NA); Flamen Ball to Edward Bates, Aug. 30, 1861, RG 60, “Southern District of Ohio (US Attorney)”; 3 For an analysis of federalist ideologies, see Michael Les and Caleb B. Smith to E. Delafield Smith, Apr. 16, 1861,

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and Caleb E. Smith to George A. Coffey, May 22, 1861, 11 Captain Andrew C. Kemper to Major N. H. McLean, Letters Sent Concerning the “Judiciary,” 1854-1869, RG 48, Mar. 17, 1863, and Captain Andrew C. Kemper to Records of the Department of the Interior, in NA-CP. James L. Ruffin, Mar. 15, 1863, both in RG 393, U.S. Army Continental Commands Records, Part IV, Post of 6 Cleveland daily newspapers provided detailed reports of Cincinnati, Ohio, Records, Letters Sent; Major N. H. the preliminary federal hearings before a U.S. ccommis- McLean to Henry B. Carrington, Mar. 17, 1863, RG sioner at Cleveland. See the Cleveland Daily Plain Dealer, 393, Part I, Department of the Ohio Records, Telegrams Daily Cleveland Herald, and Cleveland Morning Leader, Sent, all in NA. starting Oct. 8, 1861. 12 William Truesdail to Major General William S. 7 Oliver P. Morton to Edwin M. Stanton, June 25, 1862, Rosecrans, Apr. 22, 1863, RG 393, Part I, Department Governor Oliver P. Morton Papers, Letter Press Book, of the Cumberland Records, Register of Letters Received; vol. 1:9-17, ISA (printed in OR, ser. 3, vol. 2:176-77); Captain Thomas J. Larison to Brigadier General Oliver Morton to Edward B. Allen, July 14, 1862, Alexander Asboth, Apr. 21, 1863, RG 94, Records of the Edward B. Allen Papers, Indiana Historical Society, Adjutant General of the United States, Asboth Papers; Indianapolis; Indianapolis Daily Journal, Aug. 4, 1862; Brigadier General John S. Mason to Brigadier General Affidavits of Calvin B. Hess, Aug. 14, 1862, and Thomas Jacob D. Cox, May 8, 1863, RG 393, Part II, District of Simpson, Aug. 12, 1862, in RG 94, Turner-Baker Ohio Records, Register of Letters Received, all in NA. Papers, Case Files of Investigations by Levi C. Turner and Lafayette C. Baker, 1861-1866, NA; Daily Cleveland 13 Works on the Civil War conscription system include Herald, July 18, 1863. Eugene C. Murdock, Patriotism Limited, 1862-1865: The Civil War Draft and the Bounty System (Kent, Oh.: 8 For information on the August 8, 1862 War Department Kent State University Press 1967); Murdock, One order, see Mark E. Neely Jr., The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Million Men: The Civil War Draft in the North (Madison: Lincoln and Civil Liberties (New York: Oxford University State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1971); James W. Press, 1991), 52-53. For a study of desertion, see Ella Geary, We Need Men: The Union Draft in the Civil War Lonn, Desertion during the Civil War (1923; Lincoln: (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1991); and University of Nebraska Press, 1998). Jason Miller, “To Stop These Wolves’ Forays: Provost Marshals, Deserters, the Draft, and Political Violence on Chicago Daily Tribune 9 , June 14, Aug. 26, 1862. the Central Illinois Home Front,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 105 (Summer, 2012), 202-24. 10 Affidavit of Washington F. Andrews, Carrington Family Captain Benjamin F. Westlake to Lieutenant Colonel Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University James Oakes, Nov. 11, Dec. 19, 1863, RG 110, Provost Library, New Haven, Ct. (hereafter YUL); Carrington to Marshal General Bureau Records, 9th District Illinois, Stanton, Dec. 22, 1862, OR, ser. 2, vol. 5:108; Henry Letters Sent, National Archives-Great Lakes Region, B. Carrington to Edwin M. Stanton, Dec. 22, 1862, RG Chicago, Il. (hereafter NA-GLR); Robert E. Sterling, 153, Judge Advocate General Records, Court Martial “Civil War Draft Resistance in the Middle West” (Ph.D. Case Files, Military Commission Trial of Humphrey, diss., Northern Illinois University, 1974), 527-29; Milligan, Horsey, and Bowles, NA; Oliver Morton to Colonel Edwin A. Parrott to Brigadier General James Edwin Stanton, Jan. 2, 1863, in RG 107, Records of B. Fry, July 24, 1863, RG 110, Register of Letters Sent, the Office of the Secretary of War, Letters Received by NA-GLR (also printed in OR, ser. 3, vol. 3:567). the Secretary of War (Main Series), 1861-1870, NA; Oliver Morton to Edwin Stanton, Jan. 2, 1863, and 14 James Oakes to James B. Fry, June 8, 1863, RG 110, Edward D. Townsend to Oliver Morton, Jan. 3, 1863, Letters and Circulars Sent; and Report of John Macafee, both OPMTB, vol. 16:70-71, ISA. Morton reported his Sept. 26, 1863, RG 110, Letters Received 1st District understanding of the plan to separate the Northwest from Michigan, both NA-GLR; George S. Goodale to the Northeast to Lincoln and Stanton; see William R. unknown, Sept. 17, 1863, RG 393, Part I, Register Holloway to John G. Nicolay, Oct. 24, 1862, Letter Press of Letters Received; and Captain Stephen E. Jones Book, vol. 1 (June 1862-Jan. 1863), Morton Papers, to George S. Goodale, Sept. 30, 1863, RG 393, Part ISA (full text of letter printed in Nation and Towne, I, District of Kentucky, Press Copies of Letters Sent, eds., Indiana’s War, 132-33); Oliver Morton to Abraham Captain S. E. Jones, both NA. Lincoln, Oct. 27, 1862, and Oliver Morton to Edwin M. Stanton, Feb. 9, 1863, both in Edwin McMasters 15 Major J. M. Wright to Brigadier General N. C. McLean, Stanton Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Aug. 8, 16, 1863, RG 393, Part I, District of Kentucky (hereafter LC). Full text of latter letter also found in W. Records, Press Copies of Letters Sent, Judge Advocate of the H. H. Terrell, Indiana in the War of Rebellion: Report of District of Kentucky; John S. Mason to Colonel William the Adjutant General of Indiana, 8 vols. (Indianapolis: Hoffman, Nov. 6, 1863, RG 393, Part IV, Post of Columbus, Alexander H. Conner, 1865-1869), 1:21-22. Ohio, Records, Letters Sent; and David Turnbull to Captain

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James Woodruff, Nov. 6, 1863, RG 109, Union Provost 19 Lieutenant Colonel Thomas B. Fairleigh to Captain J. Marshal’s File of Papers Relating to Two or More Civilians, Bates Dickson, July 4, 1864, RG 393, Part I, District all in NA; Affidavit of R. L. Jeffries, Nov. 2, 1863, RG 110, of Kentucky Records, Letters Received; John Brough Letters Received 1st District Indiana; and Lieutenant Colonel to Edwin Stanton, July 28, 1864, and Richard Yates to J. R. Smith to Lorenzo Thomas, Nov. 13, 1863, RG 110, Edwin Stanton, June 18, 1864, both RG 107, Office of Letters Sent by the Military Commander at Detroit, both the Secretary of War Records, Letters Received by the in NA-GLR; Lieutenant R. D. Minor to Admiral Franklin Secretary of War Main Series 1861-1870; and Henry Buchanan, Feb. 2, 1864, in Official Records of the Union Carrington to Captain C. H. Potter, July 30, 1864, RG and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion, 30 vols. 393, Part I, Northern Department Records, all in NA; (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1895), ser. 1, vol. Journal entry of July 30, 1864, Heintzelman Papers, 2:822-28. For an alternate view of the source who divulged LC; Indianapolis Daily Journal, July 30, 1864; St. Louis the plot to Canadian authorities, see Robin W. Winks, Missouri Daily Democrat, July 28, 1864. Canada and the United States: The Civil War Years (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1960), 149-50. 20 Joseph Holt to Edwin Stanton, July 29, 1864, and Richard Yates to Edwin Stanton, Aug. 4, 1864, vol. 22, Stanton 16 Major General Samuel P. Heintzelman to James Oakes, Papers, LC; Joseph Holt to Edwin Stanton, July 31, Aug. Mar. 14, 1864, and Samuel Heintzelman to Major 5, 1864 (quote), OR, ser. 1, vol. 39, part 2:212-15, and ser. General Henry W. Halleck, Mar. 15, 1864, both in RG 3, vol. 4:577-79; Charles A. Dana to Samuel Heintzelman 393, Part I, Northern Department Records, Letters Sent; and Major General S. G. Burbridge, Aug. 1, 1864, RG 107, and A. C. Harding to Samuel Heintzelman, Mar. 1, Office of the Secretary of War Records, Letters Sent by the 1864, RG 153, Records of the Judge Advocate General, Secretary of War Relating to Military Affairs, 1800-1889, NA. Court Martial Case Files, Military Commission Trial of Humphrey, Milligan, Horsey, and Bowles, all in NA; 21 “J. J. Eustis” [Felix G. Stidger] to Henry Carrington, Lieutenant Colonel J. R. Smith to Major Granville E. July 1, 1864, RG 153, Judge Advocate General Records, Johnson, Mar. 10, 1864, Carrington Family Papers, YUL. Court Martial Case Files, Case of Harrison H. Dodd; Henry Carrington to C. H. Potter, Aug. 9, 16, 1864, RG 17 Felix G. Stidger to Captain Stephen E. Jones, May 13, 393, District of Indiana Records, Letters Sent; and Henry 1864, RG 153, Reports on the Order of American Carrington to C. H. Potter, Aug. 15, 1864, RG 393, Knights, Sanderson Reports (1864), NA; Felix G. Stidger, Northern Department Records, Telegrams Received, all Treason History of the Order of Sons of Liberty, formerly in NA; Indianapolis Daily Journal, Aug. 23, 1864; Journal Circle of Honor, succeeded by Knights of the Golden Circle, entry of Aug. 21, 1864, Heintzelman Papers, LC. afterward Order of American Knights . . . (Chicago: The Author, 1903); Indianapolis Daily Journal, July 30, 1864; 22 Lieutenant Colonel Bennett H. Hill to C. H. Potter, Aug. 9, journal entries for Apr. 5, 12, 16, 17, 1864, Samuel P. 1864, RG 393, District of Michigan Records, Press Copies Heintzelman Journal, Samuel P. Heintzelman Papers, LC. of Letters Sent, NA; Colonel James G. Jones to James B. Fry, Aug. 20, 1864, RG 110, Provost Marshal General Bureau 18 Major General William S. Rosecrans to Lieutenant General Records for Indiana, Registers of Letters Received, NA-GLR; Ulysses S. Grant, Apr. 26, 1864, RG 393, Part I, Department Journal entry of Aug. 29, 1864, Heintzelman Papers, LC; of the Missouri Records, Letters Sent, NA; William Rosecrans Henry W. Halleck to Samuel Heintzelman, Aug. 22, 1864, to U. S. Grant, May 1, 1864, OR, ser. 1, vol. 34, part III:381; and E. D. Townsend to Alvin P. Hovey, Sept. 14, 1864, both Samuel P. Heintzelman pocket diary entry for May 10, 1864, in RG 94, Office of the Adjutant General Records, Generals’ journal entry for May 13, 1864, and William Rosecrans to Papers, Papers of Alvin P. Hovey, NA. Samuel Heintzelman, May 25, 1864, all in Heintzelman Papers, LC; William Rosecrans to Abraham Lincoln, June 2, 23 An abridged transcript of testimony given in the military 1864, RG 393, Part I, Department of the Missouri Records, commission trials in Indianapolis appeared in 1865; see Benn Telegrams Sent; and Abraham Lincoln to William Rosecrans, Pitman, ed., The Trials for Treason at Indianapolis, Disclosing June 7, 1864, RG 393, Part I, Department of the Missouri the Plans for Establishing a North-Western Confederacy Records, Letters Received, both in NA (latter letter printed in (Cincinnati: Moore, Wilstach, and Baldwin, 1865). Colonel The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Roy P. Basler, ed., 9 Benjamin J. Sweet to Captain B. F. Smith, Nov. 23, 1864, vols. [New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953- RG 393, Part IV, Post of Chicago, Illinois Records, NA 1955], 7:379); John Hay diary entries of June 15, 17, 1864 in (printed in OR, ser. 1, vol. 45, part 1:1077-83). Congress Inside Lincoln’s White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of published the full transcript of the military commission trial John Hay, Michael Burlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger, of the Chicago conspirators held at Cincinnati; see Executive eds. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997), Documents Printed by Order of the House of Representatives 202-208; Hay to John G. Nicolay, June 20, 1864, in At during the Second Session of the Thirty-ninth Congress, 1866- Lincoln’s Side: John Hay’s Civil War Correspondence and Selected 1867 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, Writings, Michael Burlingame, ed. (Carbondale: Southern 1867). Indianapolis Daily Journal, May 25, 1871. Illinois University Press, 2000), 85.

26 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Oliver P. Morton, Political Ideology, and Treason in Civil War Indiana A. James Fuller

n May 4, 1876, Oliver P. Morton rose in the United States Senate and delivered a speech detailing Ohis actions as Civil War governor of Indiana. In the centennial year, Morton served the Hoosier State as a senator and was a leading candidate for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. His prominence sparked criticism and the New York World had published a story implying that Morton had misused federal Indiana Governor Oliver P. Morton (1823-1877). government appropriations to Indiana dur- From William Dudley Foulke, Life of Oliver P. Morton, 2 vols. (Indianapolis: Bowen-Merrill, 1899). ing the war. A frequently vindictive man CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER who ruthlessly smashed his political enemies and rivals when possible, Morton defended his record and rallied the support of fellow senators who quickly testified to his personal honesty. In the course of his defense in the Senate, Morton explained why he had made some of his most controversial decisions as governor, including helping uncover Copperhead conspiracies in the Midwest. He remembered that “the State was honeycombed with secret societies,” as groups of southern sympathizers undertook treasonous plans to take Indiana out of the Union and into the Confederacy. Morton worked with Union Army officials to infiltrate the secret societies, especially the infamous Knights of the Golden Circle, a group that later called itself the Sons of Liberty. In the late summer of 1864, the governor and his allies in the military moved against the Copperheads, seizing papers and weapons and arresting the leaders of the conspiracy, in time for the news to help the Republican Party in the election that fall.1 The Indianapolis treason trials became a stark symbol of resistance and treason, and of Governor Morton’s controversial actions on the divided Civil War home front of Indiana. For those who feared the rapid expansion of government in the name of the war, arresting half a dozen Copperheads proved nothing less than evidence of tyranny. For such individuals, authorities like Morton smashed those who dared to resist the government’s policies. They viewed the arrests and

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trials as unjust, the work of oppressors out to destroy liberty. For those who feared the disloyalty of Hoosiers opposed to the war, the trials reassured them that officials like Morton were diligently rooting out the treacherous traitors who hated the Union and hoped to destroy it and attach Indiana to the Confederacy. Such individuals viewed the government’s actions as right and good, the work of loyal and competent men out to save the Union from great peril. The conspiracy and the government investigation that led to the arrests and military trials of leading Indiana Copperheads revealed Morton’s significant role in combating opposition on the home front. While he certainly used the events of 1864 to his political advantage, Morton also pursued the Copperheads out of ideological principle. Adhering to the ideology of freedom, Union, and power that animated the Republican Party during the Civil War, Morton acted in ways consistent with those ideas. He denounced the accused men as traitors who threatened to destroy the Union and the liberty it provided the American people. Rather than sit by and let secret societies overthrow the government, Morton used the expanded power of government to crush them in order to secure freedom and Union.2 Instead of interpreting the governor’s actions as the product of a coherent ideology, historians have made much of Morton’s political opportunism in the 1864 trials. Following the lead of his Democratic opponents who labeled the governor unscrupulous and accused him of using the harebrained ideas of a few misguided men to political advantage, some scholars have argued that Morton and the Republicans all but created the specter of conspiracy to win votes. Most notably, Frank L. Klement, whose interpretation of the Copperheads influenced half a century of scholarship, characterized the events surrounding the treason trials as nothing less than a political scheme concocted by Morton and the region’s head of military intelligence, General Henry B. Carrington. In contrast, Klement interpreted the secret societies as the misguided creations of conservative Democrats who feared the growing power of government and the expansion of industrial capitalism, opposed the war and the draft, and worried about the consequences of emancipation and equality for African Americans. When legitimate political opposition through the electoral process failed, some turned to organizations like the Knights of the Golden Circle. Klement portrayed Morton as the true villain of the tale, and Democrats as defenders of the old Jeffersonian- Jacksonian tradition of limited government who tried to resist Republican efforts to centralize power and expand the reach of government into the lives of citizens. They also hoped to resist the growing power of Eastern capitalists and the moral sensibilities of evangelical Christians who they viewed as a dangerous extension of New England Puritanism.3 As a historian trained in the Progressive Era, Klement believed economic issues and class conflict dominated history. Thus in his narrative Morton became the ruthless tool of the capitalists attacking poor Democrats who stood for

28 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY A. JAMES FULLER farmers and the working class and defended freedom against the growing power of capitalist interests. Klement conceded that these guardians of liberty usually held racist ideas, but he insisted that they were not dangerous traitors who might have overthrown the government and taken Indiana out of the Union. Instead, Klement depicted them as victims of Morton and his fellow Republicans. Indeed, a secret society like the Sons of Liberty, “though its aims were honorable, could be very vulnerable. War hysteria readily turns a partisan vine into poison ivy. An administration which can control public opinion readily blackens the reputation of its critics.” Writing during the Cold War and in the immediate aftermath of the Red Scare and McCarthyism, Klement saw an over-zealous government swept away by hysteria that went too far in its efforts to find enemies within. Morton and the Republicans used fear to their advantage, turning the public against the Copperheads. For their part, the conspirators contributed to their own destruction because “Democratic secret societies could not keep their secrets.” Klement borrowed and inverted Morton’s words, noting, “It was easy for Republican governors or army officers to honeycomb such secret societies with spies.”4 Klement viewed the treason trials themselves as a desperate political move by Morton. With Republican prospects in the 1864 elections looking unfavorable, the governor “needed more than a paper exposé” to persuade voters to reelect him and other Republicans, including President Abraham Lincoln. To win votes, “arrests and treason trials could be more convincing.” And so, “Morton asked for the arrest of leading members of the Sons of Liberty” and Carrington, who owed the governor many favors, obliged. The officers who oversaw administration spies encouraged their charges to invent evidence and stretch the truth, creating tales of subversive activity that linked the Copperheads to treason. Armed with these dubious reports, the military arrested leading Copperheads and brought them to trial. Morton utilized the charges of treason to paint with a broad brush and label all Democrats as traitors, exploiting the fear of an armed rebellion in Indiana to scare voters into supporting the Republicans.5 Other scholars have concurred with the Klement thesis and depicted Copperheads as conservative Democrats caught up in the hysteria of the Civil War and attacked unfairly by Morton, a villainous opportunist. They insist that no real threat or treason existed. Indeed, in 1949, Kenneth M. Stampp, foreshadowing Klement’s work, described Morton as an opportunist, a man whose ambition and talent made him a formidable politician who would do anything to win and keep power. While Stampp credited Morton for his many contributions to the war effort, he generally interpreted the governor as a ruthless opportunist who changed his political views to fit the situation. Other historians see Morton not as a villain, but rather as a paranoid man beset by fear. In his classic Lincoln and the War Governors, William B. Hesseltine argued that Morton’s paranoia about threats to Indiana and the Midwest offset his considerable leadership talents. Constantly worried about invasion by

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illusory Confederate armies and paralyzed by concerns about Copperhead uprisings and secret societies, the governor became an irritating annoyance, a thorn in the side of the heroic Lincoln who as president outsmarted and outmaneuvered the war governors in his efforts to the save the Union.6 Even those sympathetic to Morton have seen his actions during the 1864 treason trials as opportunistic. His only biographer, William Dudley Foulke, admitted in 1899 that Morton exploited the situation to political advantage. Foulke noted that Morton kept close tabs on the Copperheads and their societies, and that “many of the secret agents employed were his emissaries.” A close examination of the events, Foulke concluded, revealed “how completely these organizations were under his control, how he played with them as a cat with a mouse.” Foulke believe that Morton “even permitted” the secret societies “to grow and develop that he might fasten conviction more securely upon them and overthrow them utterly when the time should be ripe for their destruction.” In her balanced interpretation of Morton, Emma Lou Thornbrough argued that while a few of the Copperheads “were involved in a treasonable, if harebrained plot,” there existed no widespread conspiracy constituting a real threat to the Union. Instead, the governor used the situation politically. “If there had been a real danger,” Thornbrough concluded, “Morton surely would have acted more promptly and arrested the conspirators before the day on which the uprising was scheduled to occur instead of play a cat- and-mouse game with them.”7 In contrast, recent studies by scholars such as Stephen E. Towne and Jennifer L. Weber show that the Copperheads represented a genuine threat to the Union. Towne has begun to dismantle the Klement thesis systematically, finding that Klement often missed or ignored important evidence that contradicted his argument. According to Towne, the Copperheads organized a conspiracy, stockpiled weapons, and made plans for violent action. The threat reached its height in the summer of 1864 when the conspirators hoped to influence the election and turn the tide of war. Weber contends that the Copperheads did, indeed, defend the old Jeffersonian-Jacksonian traditions of states’ rights and individual liberty, working to resist the growth of national power and what they perceived as the erosion of freedom at the hands of Republicans. But such efforts included plans for insurrection that reached their pinnacle in the summer of 1864. Ironically, Copperheads’ actions galvanized support for the Lincoln administration and Republicans like Morton, especially among Union soldiers whose crucial votes helped to carry the election that fall. Thus, some antiwar Copperheads organized real secret societies and devised plans for violent action that went so far as to prepare for an armed rebellion against the government. In this view, Morton seems less paranoid, less of an opportunist, and his actions more legitimate. If traitors at work on the home front constituted a real threat, Union leaders had to move against them.8

30 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY A. JAMES FULLER

Union soldier Robert Winn expresses his preference for Oliver Morton over Abraham Lincoln, letter of Feb. 25, 1864, Winn-Cook Family Papers. THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

The story of the Indianapolis treason trials began when Indiana’s Copperheads organized themselves into secret societies. They turned first to the Knights of the Golden Circle, a group founded in the 1850s to support the expansion of the United States, especially in the Southwest. When the Civil War began, the Knights of the Golden Circle rallied southern sympathizers. Although its exact origins remain unclear, Dr. William A. Bowles, an eccentric resident of French Lick with a checkered past, probably founded the Indiana chapter of the organization. A physician who built the first resort at the French Lick mineral spring, Bowles had served in the Mexican-American War and brought infamy to Indiana when his apparent drunken behavior at the Battle of Buena Vista prompted his regiment’s retreat. The hero of Buena Vista, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, defended Bowles at the subsequent court martial trial, but the near-disaster disgraced Indiana troops now labeled as cowards. A southern sympathizer, the doctor held proslavery views and reportedly brought slaves to French Lick to work at his hotel. When the war began, he openly proclaimed his sympathy for the Confederate cause and readily told anyone who would listen about his plans to take Indiana out of the Union and make it a slave state.9 Whether Bowles actually founded the Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC), he certainly belonged to the group and became a part of the Sons of Liberty (or the Dr. William A. Bowles (1799-1873). Order of the Sons of Liberty), another secret society From Felix G. Stidger, Treason History of the Order of Sons of Liberty, for- that served as either a front for the KGC or merged merly Circle of Honor, succeeded by with that parent organization in 1863. The leaders Knights of the Golden Circle, afterward Order of American Knights… of the Sons of Liberty hatched the treason conspir- (Chicago: The Author, 1903). acy that led to the dramatic arrests and trials in 1864. THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

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The ringleader, Harrison H. Dodd, was a native of upstate New York who first moved to Ohio and then to Indianapolis, where he worked as a printer and became active in the Democratic Party. Long concerned with the encroachment of government power on the freedom of individuals, he grew especially worried about what he considered the unchecked abuses of the military authorities in Indiana during the war. He joined the Order of American Knights, another offshoot or front for the KGC, and became the leader of the Sons of Liberty, although he may never have used that name for his organization. Through his secret network, Dodd began resisting the policies of Lincoln and Morton, the Republicans he most blamed for exploiting the war to trample on individual rights and liberties. Soon his printing business in Indianapolis became the headquarters of the secret organizations opposed to the war.10 A third leader of the Indiana Copperheads, Lambdin P. Milligan, was a Huntington, Ohio, lawyer and political candidate. Milligan held to the old Jeffersonian-Jacksonian principles of agrarianism and limited government. In his view, the Republican Party, in promoting industrial capitalism and the centralization of power in the national government, threatened the fabric of the American experiment. Republican policies directly contravened the agrarian capitalism and states’ rights outlook Lambdin P. Milligan (1812-1899). that Milligan held dear. He strongly criticized From Felix G. Stidger, Treason His- Lincoln and Morton from the outset of the tory of the Order of Sons of Liberty, war and feared that with each passing day the formerly Circle of Honor, succeeded by Knights of the Golden Circle, after- country drew closer to tyranny and the end of ward Order of American Knights… liberty. Milligan believed his bitter outcries and (Chicago: The Author, 1903). THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY secret activities represented nothing less than a last stand for freedom. In his mind, the Sons of Liberty carried on the tradition of the American Revolution and when his bid for the Democratic nomination for governor failed in 1864, he concluded the time for violent action had arrived.11 Opposition to the war ebbed and flowed over time in Indiana. It grew strongest when the war went badly for the North or when specific government policies seemed to confirm Copperhead charges of tyranny. In 1862, battlefield defeats, combined with the beginning of conscription and the preliminary emancipation proclamation, pushed many Hoosiers to the Democratic Party to express their disappointment in the unsuccessful war effort, their outrage at the draft, and Lincoln’s decision to make the war about slavery. In 1863, the same issues continued to plague Republicans politically. Resistance to the draft prompted military action at home, with patrols of soldiers seeking deserters and confronting those

32 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY A. JAMES FULLER who refused conscription. The Emancipation Proclamation upset many whites in Indiana who supported a war to save the Union, but not one to free the slaves. Whether they opposed emancipation because of racism or because they thought it unconstitutional (or both), these citizens hoped to curb the growing power of the government. When northern officials arrested newspaper editors, they raised the issue of freedom of speech. In addition, some of those arrested lan- guished in jail for long periods thanks to Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus. To many Hoosiers, Republicans appeared to trample on civil rights and liberties at every turn, all in the name of defeating the rebellion. As a result, resistance to the war stretched across a broad spectrum of Indiana politics. Some, like many Quakers, embraced nonviolent religious views and opposed the draft. Others, mostly Democrats, held to libertarian principles of individualism and feared the growing power of government that Republicans centralized in Indianapolis and Washington, D.C. Still others supported the Confederacy and the southern cause, espousing states’ rights and proslavery views. Indiana Democrats divided into factions, with the War Democrats joining the Republicans in support of the Union, while Peace Democrats consisted of a coalition of opponents of the war.12 Many, probably most, of the Democratic opponents of the war remained loyal to the Union. They opposed Republican policies on legitimate, constitutional grounds and hoped to win elections in order to stop the abuses of power they feared would destroy the country. But some, like Dodd and Bowles, considered taking action against the government, led the Sons of Liberty, and openly recruited new members. In their zeal to enlist others, their organizations became not-so-secret societies. They concocted various plans, including gathering weapons, assassinating politicians, and even overthrowing the state government. Indeed, the conspirators dreamed of seizing control of Indiana and taking the state out of the Union either to join the southern Confederacy or to create an independent Northwest Confederacy. These men simultaneously pursued legitimate politics, vying for nomination to office within the Democratic Party. But in the context of the war, the line between treason and loyalty blurred as men of principle struggled to find the means to oppose the government. Even loyal Democrats who won office knew men who belonged to the Sons of Liberty and some elected officials belonged to the organization themselves. The blurring of lines and loyalties enabled Republicans like Morton to paint the Democrats with a broad brush, and declare that only War Democrats—now part of the Union Party—were loyal. All other Democrats, Republicans argued, were traitors.13 The Indiana Sons of Liberty began to plan an uprising in Indianapolis in the late summer of 1864. They made contact with Confederate agents operating out of Canada and received money for the purchase of weapons to carry out their attack. The plan called for the Sons of Liberty to seize the state arsenal and free the Confederates held prisoner at Camp Morton in the state capital.

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Although later historians believed that only a few hundred Copperheads, at best, were willing to take up arms against the government, the leaders of the movement asserted that they had tens of thousands of men. With chapters of the Sons of Liberty in forty counties across the state, even a few men in each locale could wreak havoc and require the Union military to divert troops to put down the uprising. When Harrison Dodd received a shipment of four hundred revolvers, it seemed that the specter of a fifth column rising up in the Union rear could become a real threat.14 But Morton did not stand idly by. Instead, he vigorously hounded his political opponents, including the conspirators. The not-so-secret societies of Copperheads attracted the attention of the press as well as the governor who discussed them in his annual messages to the legislature and reports to the national government. He badgered the War Department with constant telegrams and reports of traitorous activities in the state. On his own initiative, the governor used state and local resources and personnel to investigate the Copperheads until the national authorities finally responded. Thereafter, Morton worked closely with the chief of military intelligence in the Midwest, General Carrington. The two officials gathered information on the secret societies and forwarded it to the War Department in Washington. Although the Lincoln administration largely ignored their initial reports, the governor and the general continued to send along intelligence about a treasonous conspiracy in Indiana until the national government paid attention. Morton and Carrington’s investigation depended on spies who infiltrated the Sons of Liberty. Carrington employed a number of detectives who served as covert operatives and several of them, including Felix G. Stidger, gained access to the secret Copperhead organization to gather information. Infiltrating the Sons of Liberty did not prove difficult as the eccentric, talkative, and always hospita- ble William Bowles openly shared incriminating information with anyone who would listen. Copperheads eagerly accepted new members because they wanted to build their movement and increase their political and military strength. Going undercover required little effort for Union detectives like Stidger, whose information enabled Carrington to submit a full-scale exposé to Governor Morton that detailed the activities of the Sons of Liberty. Carrington’s report estimated that some thirty thousand Sons of Liberty across the state were actively arming for an insurrection that would bring an internal civil war to Indiana. With this information in hand, the governor and the national authorities waited.15 Meanwhile, the conspiracy began to fall apart. As more members of the Sons of Liberty learned of the plan, some concluded it was a bad idea that smacked of treason and would not work. Others argued against the timing of the uprising, believing it would rally support for Morton and Lincoln just before the fall elections. Instead of stopping abuses, such men believed the uprising would enable Republicans to win the election. Divided by internal bickering, the Copperheads

34 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY A. JAMES FULLER

Horace Heffren (1831-1883), Stephen Horsey (1823-1898), and Andrew Humphreys (1821-1904). From Felix G. Stidger, Treason History of the Order of Sons of Liberty, formerly Circle of Honor, succeeded by Knights of the Golden Circle, afterward Order of American Knights…(Chicago: The Author, 1903). THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

failed to strike as planned. Nonetheless, in August 1864, at Morton’s urging, the government moved in and military officials seized Harrison Dodd’s papers and the pistols he had stockpiled in his office. With evidence in hand, the authorities arrested a handful of Copperheads, including Dodd, Milligan, Bowles, Horace Heffren, Stephen Horsey, and Andrew Humphreys, in the late summer and early fall. The government charged the men with treason and brought them before a military court. Dodd escaped and fled to Canada, which many saw as evidence of his guilt. Tried in absentia and found guilty, he received the death sentence. A military court convicted three others—Milligan, Bowles, and Horsey—and gave them the death penalty, while Humphreys received a sentence of hard labor for the duration of the war. The government dropped the charges against Heffren and released him. After the war, in Ex parte Milligan, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the conspirators had a constitutional right to a trial in civilian court. The decision resulted in commuted sentences and the government released the remaining prisoners. With Union victory, the charges of treason had become superfluous, and the Copperheads had collapsed and faded from memory. During the war, however, the trials captured the public’s fearful imagination at a moment advantageous to the Republicans and Morton emerged triumphant.16 In the fall of 1864, the treason trials influenced the election the way some Sons of Liberty worried it might. The press splashed the story across newspaper headlines and fears of a Copperhead rebellion behind the lines swept across the Midwest. The partisan press helped Morton and the government by reporting on the arrests and trials in sensationalized fashion. Although the authorities released Indianapolis Democratic newspaper editor J. J. Bingham shortly after his arrest for participation in the conspiracy, the threat of government action cowed many opposition

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Title page, Review of the Decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, in the Cases of Lambdin P. Milligan and others, the Indiana Conspirators (Washington: Union Congressional Executive Committee, 1867). THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

journalists into silence. Indeed, Bingham testified against the other conspirators, revealing inside knowledge that belied his protestations of innocence. In this climate, few Democrats summoned the courage to speak out against the government’s actions. Instead, the trials rallied support to the Union cause and the Republicans

36 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY A. JAMES FULLER

carried the election. Governor Morton and President Lincoln both won reelection by wide margins over their Democratic opponents, helped by the vote of Union soldiers who rallied to support the government by overwhelming margins. The men furloughed home to vote remembered that the governor had been the “Soldiers’ Friend” in his tireless efforts to keep them supplied and equipped and they returned the favor at the ballot box. The charges of treason left soldiers feeling betrayed by traitors at home, and intensified their support of the government. By 1864, Union veterans and troops at home on leave often joined the state militia in battling Copperheads who dared to hold public meetings in Indiana communities. Voting that fall allowed them to strike another blow against the hated traitors. Civilian voters joined the soldiers in supporting Morton and the Republicans and large majorities flocked to express their disdain for the Copperheads by supporting the government. Because the treason trials helped the Republicans in the 1864 elections, historians have concluded that Morton delayed taking action against the Sons of Liberty in order to make political gains. He moved against the traitors, scholars have concluded, when it gave his party the greatest advantage.17

Governor Oliver Morton, the “Soldiers’ Friend,” visits the camp of the 9th Indiana Infantry. From the Diary of Jonathan Harrold, Sept. 30, 1862. THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Was Morton a political opportunist or a Union hero? Was he paranoid or a man who saw a legitimate threat? Treason, of course, lies in the eye of the beholder and one person’s freedom fighter is another’s terrorist. Thus, what Morton and the Republicans saw as treason many Copperheads viewed as legitimate action taken in the defense of liberty against tyranny. Morton’s timing in engineering the arrests reflected the need for government agents to gather more information and evidence, and find all of the conspirators they could. As a result, they delayed action, as is common among law enforcement officials, and waited until the last possible minute to break up criminal activity. Ultimately, historians need to consider Morton’s actions not only in the context of the immediate events leading up to the treason trials but from the perspective of his entire career. Such an examination reveals that Morton certainly used the opportunity to his political advantage— reflecting the nature of politics—but it also shows that he acted out of principle.

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During the Civil War era, a new Republican ideology of freedom, Union, and power replaced the doctrines of free labor that motivated many of the party’s early leaders. While the various coalitions of the party had come together in the 1850s around an antislavery stance that allowed for agreement on the economic principles of free labor, the war demanded that Republicans move from opposition to leadership during a great crisis. Pragmatism often dictated policy. But Morton joined other Republicans in creating and applying a new nationalist ideology that explained their actions during the conflict. They focused on two goals—freedom and Union—thereby linking the two central reasons northerners fought the Civil War: opposition to slavery and the preservation of the Union. Of course, freedom remained a contested idea within as well as outside the party and leaders like Morton defined it in different ways at various times. In the late 1850s, it meant freedom from the slave power that seemed to control the country through the Democratic Party. During the war, it came to mean the end of slavery and freedom to expand the role of government. In their nationalist thinking, the Republicans held the Union dear and saw secession as treason. They viewed southerners as rebels who refused to follow the Constitution and accept the founding principles of the nation. Nationalists like Morton held the Union sacred and believed breaking it up constituted a traitorous act. Preservation of the Union motivated Republican politicians and the northern public more broadly, but they wrapped the idea of freedom into their nationalism. With emancipation, Republicans expanded their definition of freedom. By 1863, securing freedom for the slaves and preserving the Union had become the goals of the northern war effort and two central tenets of Republican ideology.18 To achieve these goals, Republicans turned to the third part of their nationalist ideology: power. Republicans concluded that the rebellion required new ways of thinking about the role of government. For decades, Americans had argued about and struggled with the tension between liberty and power. Such conflicts had regularly animated the politics of Jacksonian America. The political ideology of republicanism rested on the notion that power posed a danger to individual liberty and many Americans feared the concentration, con- solidation, and centralization of power as a result. Nonetheless, the wartime Republican Party concluded that the threat posed by secession and war to freedom and Union demanded the expansion and use of power. The Republicans’ new nationalist ideology allowed the party to cohere and explain their wartime actions. But their embrace of national power proved more than a justifica- tion for the expansion of government. Instead, the party’s nationalism inspired sincere belief and provoked men to take action. In particular, the new ideology motivated Morton’s efforts to defend liberty, save the nation, and wield the power necessary to achieve those goals.19

38 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY A. JAMES FULLER

A brief summary of Morton’s life shows that he often combined practical political considerations with principled stands on the issues. Born and raised in Wayne County, Indiana, Morton first worked as a hat maker, then attended Miami University in Ohio, and later became an attorney and a judge. A successful lawyer, his real passion lay in the political arena and his time on the bench only whetted his appetite for elected office. A rising star in the Democratic Party in a district dominated by Whigs, Morton made a name for himself when he stood by his antislavery principles during the controversy provoked by the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. His views caused the Indiana Democracy to expel him from their ranks and he soon joined the nascent movement that became the Republican Party. This new organization nominated him as their gubernato- rial candidate in 1856 and although defeated in that election his strong showing made him a leading state Republican. Morton displayed a tendency toward prag- matic politics in 1860 when he agreed to a deal in which Henry S. Lane became the Republican candidate for governor while Morton ran for lieutenant governor. According to the deal, if the Republicans won a majority in the legislature, Lane would resign and the legislative majority would elect him to the U.S. Senate, enabling Morton to become governor. The plan worked; after two days in office Lane resigned and Morton took the governor’s chair on January 16, 1861.20 The Civil War shaped Morton’s governorship and he worked tirelessly on behalf of the Union. As one of Lincoln’s strongest supporters, he proved an aggressive recruiter of soldiers, and his efforts helped Indiana raise the second largest number of troops among northern states. Often using creative accounting and ingenuity in procurement, Morton became the “Soldiers’ Friend,” working with the Indiana Sanitary Commission, churches, and women’s groups to keep the troops supplied. Although he still sometimes defended states’ rights, he emerged from the war as a staunch nationalist and the most powerful figure in Indiana politics. Morton built a political machine in the Hoosier state designed to support friends and punish enemies. During the war years, he claimed to set aside partisanship and organized the Union Party, which included War Democrats as well as Republicans. But in reality he remained partisan and ruthless, fighting all who opposed him as well as any who did not fully support the Union cause. After the war, he used his power to win election to the U.S. Senate, where he wielded considerable influence throughout the Reconstruction era. But he won his fame as the Civil War governor of Indiana. The fortunes of war and the unpopularity of the Lincoln’s promised Emancipation Proclamation enabled Democrats to win control of the state legislature in the 1862 elections, sparking a political fight during which they tried to curb Morton’s power and take control of the war effort. The governor and Republicans resisted and near the end of the 1863 legislative session, the minority bolted to prevent the Democrats from implementing their plans. Although the legislature had not passed the appropriations necessary to

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keep state government running, Morton refused to call it into special session. Instead, he entered his period of “one man rule,” running Indiana from his office, borrowing money from bankers and the War Department, and creatively mov- ing funds around in ways that sometimes skirted and sometimes violated the law. Democrats decried his actions as tyranny and labeled him a dictator. The 1864 arrest of the Copperhead conspirators and their subsequent treason trials only confirmed Democrats’ worst fears.21 When Morton agreed to seek reelection and accepted the Union Party nomination for governor in 1864, his use of state power became a central election issue. Morton responded to Democratic charges with a combination of opportunism and principle. In his acceptance speech at the February convention, he decried as traitors the Peace Democrats who refused to join the Republicans and War Democrats in the Union Party. He lambasted “Copperhead action in the legislature” and denounced Democratic efforts to curb his power. Rather than guarding the principles of liberty as they claimed, the governor insisted that Peace Democrats really wanted to help the Confederacy win the war “by with- drawing or cutting off” the North’s “resources so that” the Union “shall not be able to furnish, clothe, feed, or maintain an army.” This tactic, Morton argued, helped the Confederacy achieve battlefield victories in a way “far less costly and bloody to both parties.” Morton defended his and Lincoln’s actions, including the Emancipation Proclamation, while labeling Peace Democrats “men of one idea,” committed to “the preservation of the institution of slavery. They are the guardians of slavery left on duty in the Free States, while the rebellion is seeking to work out the destruction of the Government.” Peace Democrats might claim to defend freedom and limited government, but according to Morton they used such arguments only to cover their real, treasonous motives. The governor took full advantage of the opportunity to use the language of bitter partisan politics to win votes.22 But Morton also held true to his ideology of freedom, Union, and power. He believed that both the legislative actions of the Democrats and the conspiracies of the secret societies threatened to ensure the survival of slavery. The government had to realize emancipation because it represented not only freedom for the slaves, but liberty for the North. To free itself from the control of the southern slave power that had for too long dominated the national government, the North had to end the evil institution. The president and Congress had no power in peacetime “to interfere with slavery in the States where it exists,” but the war gave the government that authority as “the rebellious conduct of the slave owners” took away their constitutional protections. Ironically, the rebels of the South had forged with their own hands “the bolt which was launched for their destruction.” When the South “voluntarily rejected the protection of the Federal Constitution,” slavery “advanced from behind the bulwarks where it had

40 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY A. JAMES FULLER

Ballots for the Republican ticket of Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, and the Democratic ticket of George B. McClellan and George H. Pendleton, 1864 presidential election. CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER been entrenched in safety so many years” and “stood naked before its natural enemies—Liberty, Morals, Religion, and the public safety, and has fallen pierced by a dart from each.”23 Morton acknowledged Democratic claims to standing against tyranny and admitted that the government “has in a few cases arrested and imprisoned persons, who, by speeches and writing, were striving to destroy the Government, and giving aid and comfort to the rebellion.” But those arrests did not justify “a combined assault on the Government,” and Morton wondered why Democrats shed “no tears…over the horrible sufferings and persecutions” of Union soldiers held prisoner in the South. He also accused southerners of murdering and imprison- ing Unionists in the Confederate states. Morton believed freedom was, indeed, at

FALL 2013 41 OLIVER P. MORTON, POLITICAL IDEOLOGY, AND TREASON IN CIVIL WAR INDIANA

stake, but the freedom of slaves and Union men, not of traitorous editors hiding behind free speech, mattered most to the governor. Morton insisted that the government must save the Union; here was its “great duty of the hour, displacing and putting aside all other considerations.” Until the government secured the Union, “all political discussions, all efforts of reconstruction, so called, are vain.” Only when “the armies of the rebellion are crushed or scattered, and resistance to the Government has ceased,” could victorious northerners address other issues. He rejected any notion of compromise, arguing that any man willing to consider that option during the war “must be a traitor or a fool.” As Morton noted, “compromise implies concession on both sides and what could we concede to them short of the independence of their Confederacy and the destruction of the Union, and what else would they ask us to concede?” Compromise was no longer possible; both freedom and Union needed protection by the government.24 To protect liberty and save the Union, the government needed power, including the power to end slavery. Thus, Morton defended the Emancipation Proclamation as a means of making war. He wondered how some men could claim that slaves were property and gnash their teeth over emancipation while not com- plaining about the loss of life and property required to save the Union. He argued that such hypocrisy revealed the proslavery inclinations of the Peace Democrats. Furthermore, emancipation deprived the South of its labor force, making it far more difficult for the Confederacy to win on the battlefield. Constitutionally, rebellion justified emancipation, while the nature of war made it an effective weapon to wield against the South. Morton never lapsed in this defense of his actions. In his 1876 Senate speech, he argued that he used his power to defend liberty and save the Union. He proudly noted that separate audits had confirmed his honesty and the righteousness of his actions. “My course,” he added, “was approved by the people of Indiana, by my re-election as Governor in 1864, by a majority of more than 20,000, and by the election of a Republican Legislature and Republican State officers.” At least for Morton, victory stood as evidence that he was right. Whether crushing the Copperheads, expanding the power of the governor, or supporting emancipation, nationalism gave Morton’s actions a clear and consistent rationale. Thus in 1864, Morton’s ideology and opportunism combined. He believed that the conspirators represented a threat to freedom and the Union and he exercised power to eliminate that threat. That his actions also helped him and the Republicans win the election did not gainsay his sincere belief that “the State was honeycombed with secret societies” and men who actively conspired against the government. For Morton, the ideology of freedom, Union, and power justified his efforts to break the political opposition and root out treason in Civil War Indiana.25

42 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY A. JAMES FULLER

Oliver P. Morton’s May 1876 Address to the Senate. From Indiana Republican State Central Committee, Oliver P. Morton, of Indiana: Sketch of his Life and Public Services (Indianapolis: Journal Company, 1876). CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER

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1 Oliver P. Morton, “Personal Explanation,” Congressional 10 On Dodd, see Rehnquist, “Civil Liberty and the Civil Record, May 4, 1876, in Indiana Republican State War,” 932. Central Committee, Oliver P. Morton of Indiana: Sketch of His Life and Public Services (Indianapolis: Journal 11 For more on Milligan, see ibid.; and Thornbrough, Company, 1876). Indiana in the Civil War Era, 216.

2 This ideological framework comes from Michael S. 12 For opposition to the war in Indiana, see Stampp, Green, Freedom, Union, and Power: Lincoln and His Party Indiana Politics, 186-91; Thornbrough, Indiana in the during the Civil War (New York: Fordham University Civil War Era, 18-224; Stephen E. Towne, “Killing the Press, 2004). Serpent Speedily”; and Richard F. Nation and Stephen E. Towne, eds., Indiana’s War: The Civil War in Documents 3 Frank L. Klement, The Copperheads in the Middle West (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2009), 125-27, 155-59. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960). In Indiana Quakers Confront the Civil War (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1991), 20-25, Jacquelyn S. 4 Ibid., 191. Nelson argues that nearly a quarter of Indiana Quakers joined the Union Army. She contends that Quakers 5 Ibid., 191-205. who opposed the war on religious grounds faced little harassment from the authorities. Governor Morton’s long 6 Kenneth M. Stampp, Indiana Politics during the Civil War acquaintance with members of the Society of Friends in (1949; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978); his native Wayne County no doubt influenced his own William B. Hesseltine, Lincoln and the War Governors approach to such conscientious objectors. For Quaker (New York: Knopf, 1948). For a full discussion of this opposition to the war, see ibid., 79-94. historiography, see Stephen E. Towne, “Scorched Earth or Fertile Ground: Indiana in the Civil War, 1861-1865,” 13 Congressman Daniel Voorhees offers an excellent The State of Indiana History 2000: Papers Presented at in example of a politician who blurred the line between the Indiana Historical Society’s Grand Opening , Robert M. legitimate opposition and treason. For details about

Taylor Jr., ed. (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, Voorhees, see Charles S. Voorhees, comp., Speeches of 2001), 391-415. Daniel W. Voorhees, of Indiana, Embracing His Most Prominent Forensic, Political, Occasional and Literary 7 William Dudley Foulke, Life of Oliver P. Morton: Addresses (Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1875). For Including His Important Speeches, 2 vols. (Indianapolis: a study that reveals how loyal Democrats mixed with Bowen-Merrill, 1899), 1:374; Emma Lou Thornbrough, conspirators in the Sons of Liberty in one Indiana county, Indiana in the Civil War Era, 1850-1880 (Indianapolis: see Nicole Etcheson, A Generation at War: The Civil War Indiana Historical Society, 1965), 219. Era in a Northern Community (Lawrence: University Press 8 For an example of Towne’s ongoing work, see “Killing the of Kansas, 2011), 99-122. Serpent Speedily: Governor Morton, General Hascall, 14 Thornbrough,Indiana in the Civil War Era, 216-17. and the Suppression of the Democratic Press in Indiana, Civil War History 1863,” 52 (Mar. 2006), 41-65. Jennifer 15 For details, see Foulke, Life of Oliver P. Morton, 1:373- Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s L. Weber, 418. Scholars disagree in their interpretation of the Opponents in the North (New York: Oxford University conspiracy and the government’s investigation. For this Press, 2006). scholarly debate and more on the treason trials and the Supreme Court decision in Ex parte Milligan, see Lewis 9 Although secrecy makes it hard to follow Copperheads J. Wertheim, “The Indianapolis Treason Trials,” Indiana with great accuracy, it seems that the same group of Magazine of History 85 (Sept. 1989), 236-60; and men made up the leadership of all the Copperhead Rehnquist, “Civil Liberty and the Civil War,” 932-37. organizations. They changed the name from Knights of the Golden Circle to the Order of American Knights 16 Wertheim, “The Indianapolis Treason Trials”; Rehnquist, to the Sons of Liberty, probably in hopes of confusing “Civil Liberty and the Civil War,” 932-37. the authorities or to make it appear that they had more followers. For more on the Knights of the Golden Circle 17 Wertheim, “The Indianapolis Treason Trials”; and the eccentric Bowles, see Thornbrough, Indiana in Thornbrough, Indiana in the Civil War Era, 220. the Civil War Era, 214; Stampp, Indiana Politics, 149-50; and William Rehnquist, “Civil Liberty and the Civil War: The Indianapolis Treason Trials,” Indiana Law Journal 72 (Fall 1997), 932.

44 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY A. JAMES FULLER

18 For a study of the Republicans’ wartime ideology, see 20 This biographical overview draws on my ongoing research Green, Freedom, Union, and Power. Examples of the for a full biography of Morton. For a more complete extensive literature on the politics and ideology of the examination of his life, see Foulke, Life of Morton. Republican Party in the 1850s include Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican 21 Ibid. For more on Morton’s actions as governor, see Party before the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Stampp, Indiana Politics during the Civil War, esp. 100- Press, 1970); Michael F. Holt, The Political Crisis of the 185; and Thornbrough, Indiana in the Civil War Era, esp. 1850s (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978); Joel H. Silbey, 124-224. The Partisan Imperative: The Dynamics of American Politics Speech of Gov. Oliver P. Morton at before the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 22 Oliver P. Morton, the Union State Convention Held at Indianapolis, Ind., 1985); William E. Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican February 23, 1864 Party, 1852-1856 (New York: Oxford University Press, (Indianapolis: n.p., 1864), 2, 12-15. 1987); and Michael S. Green, Politics and America in 23 Ibid., 14-15. Crisis: The Coming of the Civil War(Santa Barbara, Ca.: Praeger, 2010). 24 Ibid., 15-18.

19 Green, Freedom, Union, and Power. 25 Ibid., 13-18; Morton, “Personal Explanation.”

FALL 2013 45 Repudiating the Administration The Copperheads in Putnam County, Indiana Nicole Etcheson

istorical studies of the Copperheads, or antiwar northern Democrats, take the reader straight into the murky depths of Civil War-era conspiracy. As Jennifer L. Weber notes in her recent study, the Copper- Hheads left few sources, perhaps suggesting that they engaged in nefarious or even treasonous schemes that they preferred not to see the light of day. Certainly, Republicans believed the worst of Copperheads. In fact, much of the evidence for Copperhead activity comes from the files of Republican detectives or provost marshals. Before Weber, Frank Klement, then the leading historian of the Copperheads, dismissed such evidence as too self-interested on the part of the Republicans to credit seriously. In the case of Indiana, Klement noted much too convenient a convergence between the information provided by these detectives and the political needs of Governor Oliver P. Morton.1 The questions historians have asked about the Copperheads have, in fact, largely been framed by their enemies, the Republicans. Chiefly, historians have wanted to know whether the Copperheads sympathized with the Confederacy and even aided it, or whether they merely invoked the right of the opposition to criticize the government in power, a right often equated with treason during wartime. Scholars can gain perspective on the controversies surrounding the Copperheads by placing them in context. Putnam County, Indiana, provides one laboratory for examining the Copperheads. Historians have long recognized Indiana as one of the leading Copperhead states. Weber calls the Hoosier state, along with Illinois, “the center of gravity for antiwar activity.” A military commission tried a high profile conspiracy case against some leading Indiana Copperheads in the fall of 1864, concurrent with critical state and national elections. These trials led to an important United States Supreme Court case, Ex parte Milligan, shortly after the Civil War. Milligan denied the government the power to try civilians before military courts in jurisdictions not under martial law, thereby protecting civil liberties.2 Conflict over wartime loyalty and civil liberties was thus fought over as fiercely in Indiana as anywhere in the Union. Putnam County, in the west-central part of the state, was reasonably representative of Civil War-era Indiana. Rural and agricultural, the county enjoyed com- mercial connections through the National Road that bisected it, and a growing railroad network. It was also Copperhead territory. Copperhead characteristics often included southern birth or heritage, a conservative Democratic background,

46 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY NICOLE ETCHESON

Title page, K.G.C.: An Authentic Exposition of the Origin, Objects, & Secret Work of the Organization Known as the Knights of the Golden Circle (Louisville [?]: U.S. National U.[nion] C.[ommittee], 1862). THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

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and racism, all of which describe Putnam County’s population. Almost one- third of the county’s residents had been born in the Upper South, principally Kentucky. With Indiana solidly Democratic in nineteenth-century elections, state Democrats had grown accustomed to being the dominant party. The county also voted mostly Democratic, although Greencastle, the county seat and a college town, tended toward the Whigs and later the Republicans. As for racism, in 1851, Indiana adopted a new state constitution, largely the work of the Democrats in the convention. A separate vote allowed Hoosiers to adopt a provision forbidding African Americans to enter the state. State voters overwhelmingly ratified both the constitution and the black exclusion provision, Article 13, that they famously adopted by a larger majority than the constitution. Both the majorities in favor of the constitution and Article 13 proved greater in Putnam County than in the state itself, as did the disparity between the votes ratifying the constitution and Article 13, indicating the county’s strong Democratic and anti-black sentiments.3 Putnam County Copperheads reflected the outlook of this society. Staunch Democrats, often of southern heritage, they believed passionately that the Republicans had exploited the war to subvert traditional liberties and advance black rights. Putnam Democrats lost their political supremacy in the realigning election of 1860. In 1856, the old Whig vote had split between the emerging Republican Party (then called the People’s Party in Indiana) and the anti-immigrant American or Know Nothing Party. Democrats won the county with a solid 52 percent of the vote. But in 1858, the Democratic Party in the North split over the Lecompton controversy, an effort by President James Buchanan to strong-arm Congress into accepting a flagrantly fraudulent proslavery constitution for Kansas Territory. Throughout the North, anti-Lecompton Democrats united with Republicans to support congressional candidates. The district that included Putnam followed the same pattern, with the incumbent Democrat, John G. Davis, defeating the regular Democratic Party nominee, Henry Secrest, with help from local Republicans. Davis refused to support Lecompton and the Buchanan wing of the party ostracized him, but he received 52 percent of the vote in Putnam County. Republicans soon learned that Davis would give them little in return for their votes, but two years later they eked out a narrow victory of their own when Abraham Lincoln took the county with 46 percent of the vote. Three percent of county voters, conservative Whigs who believed Lincoln too aggressively antislavery, supported the Constitutional Union Party candidate, John Bell. The Democratic vote split again, this time between Stephen A. Douglas, candidate of the party’s northern wing, and John C. Breckinridge, a proslavery Democrat and Buchanan’s vice president, who received almost 9 percent of the county’s total vote.4 If the county Democrats had not split, they would have won the county with 51 percent of the total vote. Putnam County Democrats thus entered the Civil War deeply divided and, given the surprising size of the Breckinridge vote in this northern community, with a significant population sympathetic to the southern cause.

48 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY NICOLE ETCHESON

President James Buchanan Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge (1791-1868). (1821-1875). THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

After the South fired on Fort Sumter, some Democrats supported the Union war effort. Nationally, Illinois Senator Douglas, Lincoln’s northern Democratic opponent in the presidential election, condemned secession as “anarchy” and an attack on majority rule. Democrats joined the army, and some of the Union’s most prominent generals were members of the Democratic Party, including George B. McClellan and Ulysses S. Grant. In Putnam County, prominent local Democrats also supported the war. Lewis H. Sands, a Douglas Democrat, opened a recruiting office and would himself have volunteered except for his age and frailty. He died just a month after the war began. Former congressional candidate Henry Secrest echoed the Illinois senator when he spoke in Greencastle. Like Douglas, Secrest argued that the country had only two parties: patriots and traitors. According to Secrest, “he who was not for the Government was against it.” There must be “war so long as traitors were in arms,” he continued, and it was “the duty of every loyal citizen to contribute his last dollar, and even his blood to preserve the government.”5 But other northern Democrats remained reluctant to endorse the new Republican administration of Abraham Lincoln and its measures to suppress the rebellion. Lincoln won Indiana in 1860, the first presidential election since 1840—when the Whigs ran Indiana’s former territorial governor, William Henry Harrison—in which Indiana did not support the Democratic candidate. Indiana’s Republican governor, Oliver P. Morton, adopted the attitude that those who did not support the war effort, by definition, supported the government’s enemies.

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Some Democrats began to complain of a climate that stifled free speech. More substan- tively, military authorities arrested antiwar figures, including some Indiana Democrats, and shut down party newspapers. These actions came on top of national policies such as the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus; passage of a draft law; enactment of economic policies that Democrats had long opposed such as higher taxes, a national banking law, and a protective tariff; and movement toward emancipation.6 Daniel Voorhees, congressman from the district that included Putnam County, addressed these policies in speeches in the House of Representatives in February 1863. Protesting a bill that validated Lincoln’s suspension of habeas Northern Democrat Stephen A. Douglas corpus, Voorhees decried the legislation as protect- (1813-1861). ing “those who have violated, and who propose THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY to violate, the great and fundamental principles of constitutional liberty.” Voorhees also listed many violations of free speech, arbi- trary arrests, and the curtailing of legal protections afforded the accused. He repeatedly charged the Lincoln administration with despotism. A week later, he attacked the draft legislation, arguing that Republicans had lied to the American people. The war, Republicans had said, would “give us back the Union and the constitution,” but the Emancipation Proclamation revealed their true motives. In the process, Voorhees argued, the administration had destroyed public support for the war and resorted to “a despotic, a conscriptive, a coercive power over the loyal people of the country to get another army.” Voorhees’s sentiments reflected those back in his district. The same month, a Democratic convention in Putnam County issued resolutions asking for a “cessation of hos- tilities” to restore the Union. These Democrats charged that the Emancipation Proclamation made it clear that Republicans intended to “abolish slavery in the Southern States,” “a most palpable violation of Executive power.” Republicans responded that in a democracy the Peace Democrats had to submit to the laws made by the majority. But the Copperheads believed that Republican measures violated the Constitution and represented a threat—Republican tyranny—that required drastic measures, perhaps even violent resistance.7 National policies provoked antiwar dissent, Indiana Democratic Congressman but at the local level in communities such as Putnam County indi- Daniel W. Voorhees (1827-1897). vidual Democrats decided on the form that dissent would take. THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

50 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY NICOLE ETCHESON

Judge Delana Eckels probably fought the rise of the Republicans the hardest of the Putnam Copperheads. A prominent local Democrat, Eckels had served as territorial chief justice of Utah during the Buchanan administration. After returning to Indiana, he won election as judge of the Sixth Judicial Circuit in 1864. Melvin McKee supported Eckels for the judge- ship because “he is an eminent lawyer, and will decide all cases without fear or favor, and if our liberties have to be preserved by the Courts, I can think of no man who would stand more firmly Putnam County Democrat by his convictions of right than he, regardless Delana R. Eckels (1806-1888). COURTESY UTAH HISTORICAL SOCIETY of the threats of Lincolns minions.” The oldest of the Copperhead leaders in Putnam County, Eckels had a long career in the Democratic Party. Born in Kentucky, he moved to Indiana as a young man in the 1820s, and edited Democratic newspapers in Owen and Putnam Counties in the Jacksonian era. During a term as the Owen County representative in the state legislature, he opposed the Whig Party’s internal improvements legislation, the “Mammoth” bill, although his constituents hoped to benefit from a number of its measures, including a canal and railroad planned for the county. Defeated for re-election, he moved to Putnam County. Eckels later said that he foresaw the economic disaster the Mammoth bill would become. Perhaps so, but he followed party policy in opposing the measure. He also disapproved of temperance legislation. Although he recognized the dangers of excessive drinking, Democrats opposed legal restrictions on alcohol and so did he. A few years later, the dedicated Democrat resigned as prosecuting attorney for his district when Democrats lost control of the national government, saying “he preferred going to the wall with his party friends to holding office among their opponents.” He raised a company of volunteers for the war with Mexico, and served as a captain in the commissary department. For two generations, Eckels participated in state and local Democratic Party politics, serving as a delegate at conventions, making speeches, and writing resolutions for Democratic meetings. His appointment by President Buchanan as chief justice of Utah Territory recognized his distinguished party service.8 During the sectional controversies of the 1850s, Eckels had remained resolutely with his party even as many northern Democrats defected to the Republicans. He played a leading role at the county’s bipartisan Union meeting that acknowledged the need for a new, more stringent federal Fugitive Slave Act and condemned “the negro stealing citizens of the North.” He embraced the controversial Kansas- Nebraska Act—the legislation that gave rise to the Republican Party—that

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insisted that Congress forbid slavery’s expansion into the territories. Eckels preferred the “great political truth…that man is capable of self government,” embodied in Kansas-Nebraska Act’s provisions that settlers decide the future of slavery. Using racist language about “woolly heads,” Eckels condemned the emerging Republicans as “no better than…open abolitionist[s].” But Eckels’s political sympathies also tended toward the slave-wing of the Democratic Party. During the late 1850s, he favored acquiring Cuba, a favorite policy of slavery expansionists, and in the election of 1860 he supported Breckinridge, the pro-southern candidate. The surprisingly large Breckinridge vote in Putnam County probably owed much to Eckels’s campaigning. Former Congressman John G. Davis wrote during the war that he and Eckels concurred in thinking the conflict “unnecessary,” having been needlessly provoked by abolitionist and Republican agitation against the South, and an “unnatural” “fraternal war,” revealing their sense of kinship with the South. A decade and a half after the war, local Republicans recalled Judge Eckels as the “only man in Greencastle whose face was wreathed in smiles” at the news of the Union defeat at First Bull Run.9 Eckels protested the war, as did countless northern Democrats, in the accepted partisan manner of participating in party meetings that issued resolutions con- demning Republican policies. He advocated the maintenance of “the Union as it was, under the Constitution as it is”—a common Copperhead sentiment— in the language of a county Democratic convention over which he presided in 1863. Putnam Democrats feared that Lincoln now waged an unconstitutional war for abolition. They rejected the Emancipation Proclamation, believing “that our Fathers established this Government for the benefit of the white man alone; and in considering the terms of settlement of our national troubles we will look only to the welfare, peace and safety of the white race, without reference to the effect that settlement may have upon the condition of the African.” The Putnam Democrats feared that the Republican policy would undercut Indiana’s prohibi- tion on black emigration, and asserted, “we do now and forever repudiate and condemn the attempt on the part of the Administration to settle in the free States, contrary to the will of the people, a worthless negro population, the tendency of which would be to place the two races upon terms of perfect equality.” The Copperheads correctly predicted an increase in Indiana’s black population, although the rise had less to do with administration policy than with African Americans seizing on the war’s disruption to escape slavery. Indiana’s black population doubled during the 1860s and Putnam’s tripled, although their number remained only a third of a percent of the county’s total population.10 Although partisan criticism remained an accepted political practice during the Civil War, Republicans linked their critics to the traitorous Confederacy. Eckels’s ties to Breckinridge made him particularly vulnerable. In the spring of 1864, Major General James A. Garfield, the future president, accused Eckels of having

52 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY NICOLE ETCHESON recommended a young man, Oliver Rankin of Greencastle, to Breckinridge, now a Confederate general. Rankin had supposedly resigned from the 10th Indiana Volunteers, and had no sympathy with the Union forces. Eckels promised that the young man would be “faithful” to the South. However, Rankin was not a former soldier disaffected from the Lincoln administration, but a Union spy under Major General William S. Rosecrans. Rankin carried letters of introduction osten- sibly from Indiana Democrats, but prepared without their knowledge. He hoped that the letters would strengthen his cover story Confederate soldier Henry Lane Stone because these Democrats knew Breckinridge. (1842-1922). Given the extensive documentation proving THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY the forgery, Eckels could quickly disprove the story that he had written a letter of introduction to a Confederate general. But the false account of the letter proved credible because of Eckels’s well-known sympathies for the South. Unbeknownst to Republicans, however, Eckels conducted a questionable correspondence with his former law student and Confederate soldier, Henry Lane Stone, who served in the cavalry of John Hunt Morgan that invaded Indiana during the war. After his capture by Union forces, Stone escaped from prison and spent the winter in Canada where he received “a long letter from my dear old friend Judge Eckels.”11 Eckels’s wartime letters to Stone may have resulted from an ill-judged fond- ness for a former student. Emancipation, however, challenged Copperheads’ will- ingness to submit to the law. Mary Vermilion quoted Eckels as saying “there are 2,000 men in Putnam County just awaiting the tap of the drum, to rise up against the Administration” in response to emancipation. At Groveland, locals blamed a crime spree right after the war on Harper Evans, a murderer who had escaped from the penitentiary and was believed still to lurk in the area. But in one burned store, someone left a note that stated, “Abolitionists of Groveland have been cutting a pretty big swell the last 4 years.” The writer warned the recipient, “you had better prepare to meet your God for some of you shall follow old Abe soon or I am a damned liar.”12 Evidently, some political animosity lay behind the arson. Already enflamed by the threat emancipation posed to white supremacy, Eckels and Putnam Copperheads grew further appalled by the draft law passed in early 1863. The draft set off widespread resistance in the North, with anti-draft violence occurring throughout the Midwestern states. In the East, riots erupted in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and New York, where several days of bloody

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rioting in New York City became the war’s most infamous incident of draft resistance. The law set a quota for each congressional district. If recruitment did not meet the quota through volunteers, a draft would take place. Draftees could hire substitutes or pay a commutation fee of three hundred dollars, intended to place a cap on the price of substitutes, but that nonetheless gave credence to the charge that this was “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” All over the North, men resented the draft as a fundamental infringement of their liberties. European monarchs might conscript their subjects but American free men chose whether to fight. Many Indiana counties experienced violence and resistance connected to the draft and recruiting officers sometimes became the targets of attacks. Judge Eckels’s twenty-three-year-old son, Howard, got into a fight with Captain William Skelton of the 21st Indiana, in Putnam on recruiting service. On a Friday afternoon after a Copperhead drill in Greencastle, the drunken younger Eckels remarked that he was a John Morgan and Jeff Davis man, and deliberately repeated this to Skelton, who told him to shut up. Eckels replied with an insult, Skelton slapped him, and Eckels drew a dagger, stabbing Skelton several times in the arm and chest. Eckels fled and Skelton chased him to the judge’s house, where he fainted from loss of blood. Local officials arrested Eckels and his father pledged a thousand dollars in bail. Skelton apparently recovered from his wounds and the case seems not to have come to trial.13 Young Eckels may have picked a fight out of a combination of bravado and alcohol, but the clash erupted during a Copperhead “drill”—organized military training. Union authorities received reports of such drills not only from Indiana but from Illinois, Ohio, and other states. In Putnam County, Unionists said the senior Eckels encouraged the “party drills” and “midnight assemblages” at which Copperheads prepared to resist the draft with force. In addition, Copperheads organized attacks on the enrolling officers at Eckels’s law office, including the assault on James Sill that became the most notorious in the county. Eckels may have masterminded the anti-draft activity in Putnam County, but younger men carried out the intimidation of draft officers. When Harrison M. Randel became a prominent county Democrat in the 1870s, Republicans remembered him as the leader of

Putnam County Democrat Harrison M. the mob that attacked Sill’s house. Randel, only Randel (b. 1839). From Atlas of Putnam Co., twenty-four in 1863, had been born in Monroe Indiana: To which are Added Various Maps, History, Statistics (Chicago: J. H. Beers, 1879). Township where his parents had settled after COURTESY THE AUTHOR migrating from Kentucky, and he had probably

54 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY NICOLE ETCHESON known the Sill family all his life. Until 1862, he worked as a teacher and farm laborer when he began a lifelong political career, gaining election to the office of county surveyor.14 Sill, a local lawyer and member of a home guard company, served as the enrolling officer for Marion Township where his family had a home along Deer Creek. Although a well-respected member of the community who had served as justice of the peace and notary public, his support for the Union caused a breach with old friends and neighbors. After twenty-seven years as a member of the Baptist Church, he stopped attending because the congregation found his Unionism unpopular. Throughout the North, Copperheads targeted enrollment officers, attacking officials like Sill in at least six northern states, from Illinois to New Jersey. To complete the enrollment in June 1863, Sill updated the previous year’s paperwork, entering names and ages, intending to deliver the completed enrollment papers on a Monday. But on Sunday, Sill noticed men watching the house and became concerned for the safety of his work. His seventeen-year-old daughter, Candace, hid the papers in a salt barrel but Sill’s wife, Elizabeth, moved them again. On Sunday evening, suitors called on the Sill daughters, Candace and Harriet. Leaving the house, one of the suitors observed men concealed in the woods near the Sills’ gate. A member of the mob fired on him, giving the alarm. Elizabeth Sill urged her husband to take the papers and flee, but he refused. She then took the papers from where she had hidden them and slipped out the back while the mob approached the front door. Candace remembered that three hundred men had surrounded the house, but later newspaper reports put the number at between forty and sixty.15 James Sill urged his children to flee. Harriet did, making a dash that Candace later compared to that of “a hunted gazelle.” The mob let her go and she ran to a neighbor’s house. But Candace, unable to persuade her father to leave, refused to follow. She recalled declaring, rather melodramatically, “Father, I will not leave you; I will die by your side.” The mob surrounded the house, beating on the walls and doors. Finally, the leader gave Sill three minutes to turn over the papers or be shot. Sill and Candace went out to the porch, with Candace carrying a lan- tern. Candace berated the crowd, calling them “cowards and copperheads,” and held up the lamp to see who was among them. Finally, her father brought out the enrollment book and papers from the previous year. One of the crowd called out to Sill, “Throw them down or I’ll shoot.” Sill obeyed. A man, disguising himself by pulling his coat over his head, took the papers, saying, “We’ve got them; let’s go.” Several men fired their guns, but the crowd left not realizing it had the wrong set of papers. Elizabeth Sill had carried the actual enrollment with her when she fled into the backyard. About fifty yards from the house, her foot hit the board of a walkway the Sills had laid down between the house and the outbuildings, and she stuffed the papers under it. Two men caught her, demanding to know if she

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had the enrollment forms. She stood on the board while they searched her. Not finding the papers, they returned to the crowd, which at that point was still bang- ing on the front door with their guns.16 The Sills had recognized several of their attackers. However, Candace’s account did not identify members of the mob by name, so it remains unknown whether Harrison Randel demanded the papers, tried to hide his face in his coat as he picked them up from where James Sill had tossed them, fired a gun, or uttered any of the curses Candace said filled the air that night. But when soldiers helped officials make arrests in Marion Township, Randel was among those taken up. In September, the U.S. District Court at Indianapolis heard thirty-seven draft resistance cases from both Putnam and Monroe Counties. In one of those cases, Joseph Ellis of Putnam received a five hundred dollar fine after his conviction for conspiracy and obstructing the enrollment. After Ellis’s sentencing, the defense attorney asked U.S. District Attorney John Hanna to drop the charge of conspiracy and instead permit his clients to accept a guilty verdict for obstructing the enrollment. In addition to Ellis, fifteen men, including Randel, paid fines of twenty-five dollars, and Hanna dismissed three cases. Randel definitely played a leading role in the intimidation of H. T. Craig, the enrolling officer in Monroe Township. Craig first received a threatening note in his door yard: “Your for you[r] own good and if you dont lay aside the enrolling your life will be taken before tomorrow night and you had better take our advise as friends. we dont expect interrupt you but we have heard men a vengeous against you they say you had better stay at home and you had better take our advise and stay at home.” When he continued enrolling, a committee, led by Randel, paid a visit and “told him to drop the business for they would shoot him if he persisted in trying to make the enrollment.”17 Draft resistance sometimes targeted individuals other than enrolling officials. The note found in the burned store in Groveland in spring 1865 not only condemned abolitionists but also warned the storeowner: “And the gentleman that dont lend democrats money to pay out the draft isent a going to make much by the operation.” In strongly Copperhead areas of the North, local men contributed to funds to help draftees pay the commutation fee. Apparently, the storeowner had failed to make a contribution. Copperheads also participated in election rowdyism that often turned violent. As David Grimsted has shown, election violence occurred frequently in nineteenth-century American politics. In 1864, Putnam County Democrats may have felt particularly desperate to recover the ascendancy after their defeat four years earlier. Democrats had regained ground in Indiana and throughout the North in the 1862 congressional elections that followed the victorious but blood-soaked Battle of Antietam and the controversial preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. But passions ran high in 1864 as the conflict in Virginia ground into a bloody war of attrition. Putnam’s

56 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY NICOLE ETCHESON representative in Congress, Daniel Voorhees, informed former congressman John G. Davis at the beginning of the spring fighting that Ulysses S. Grant’s army received a steady flow of reinforcements from Washington. “There has been no result thus far except slaughter,” Voorhees gloomily noted.18 Until late summer, Union forces under William T. Sherman also seemed stalemated in the Atlanta campaign. Eager to regain political power and end the sanguinary war and its racial policies, Putnam Democrats resorted to election violence. And Putnam County Democrats possessed the bullying rowdy capable of leading a mob. Solomon Akers, a feisty Copperhead in Cloverdale, situated in the southern part of the county, was more established than Randel but not as distinguished as Eckels. An Akers had lived in Putnam County since the earliest settlement in the 1820s. A long-time Democrat, Akers regularly served during the pre-war decade as delegate from Cloverdale to county meetings and state party conventions, as well as on resolution committees at party meetings. Although he never became as prominent as Eckels, Akers nevertheless held many local offices, including township trustee, township treasurer, and notary public. He also held a plum patronage position, postmaster at Cloverdale, from 1855 until the advent of the new Lincoln administration. Akers felt deserving of such patronage, having “worked all my life thus far for the Democracy.” In addition, Akers probably derived some income from “retailing” alcohol. Unlike Eckels, who might deplore the evils of excessive drink, Akers had a long history of prosecutions for selling alcohol illegally and getting into drunken brawls, a tradition his two sons carried on after his death. Like Eckels, Akers had “always loved” the Democratic Party and stayed loyal to it during the tumultuous realignment of the 1850s, when many northern Democrats left for the more antislavery Republican Party. Akers also embraced the principles of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which he defined as those of “self Government,” and he played an important role during the local party infighting over the Lecompton Constitution. Akers had supported Putnam County’s congressman, John Davis, as long as he backed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. When Davis broke with the Buchanan administration over Lecompton and accepted the political support of Republicans, Akers abandoned Davis. He warned the congressman as an “old friend and…one who loves the Democratic party and Democratic doctrine” that a fusion with the Republicans would hurt both the Democratic Party and Davis.19 With Akers safely dead in the postwar years, the Republican newspaper eulo- gized him as “a bold, daring, outspoken Democrat…[who] for years has been justly regarded as a tower of strength in his party.” “No man in this County rendered more effective service to his party organization than he,” though he could be “rash and overbearing toward his political opponents” and “an enemy to be feared.” When alive, however, Republicans had forthrightly denounced Akers’s “unenviable notoriety” for “duplicity, trickery and bargain.” From the

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first, Akers’s antiwar stance took a belligerent tone. In February 1861, he took the lead at a Cloverdale Union Meeting that hinted border states such as Indiana and Kentucky might secede if they believed, as did the South, that the Constitution was being subverted. Like Randel, Akers may have also become involved in draft resistance. The provost marshal for the Seventh Congressional District, Richard Thompson, employed five enrolling officers in Putnam County, each paid three dollars per day for about a week’s work. Despite the generous pay, some did not want the job. H. M. Rockwell declined, finding it not “convenient” to attend to this business, and recommended another man. In a note appended to the bottom of Rockwell’s letter, someone, possibly Thompson, wrote, “I have just understood vengeance is declared against the man that enrolls the militia of this township.”20 Who threatened Rockwell remains unknown, but Sol Akers was likely involved in any intimidation of draft officials in his home township of Cloverdale. Certainly, Akers never backed away from a fight. During the July 1864 Democratic convention that met in Greencastle, he helped lead a mob that tried to kill some Union soldiers. At home on furlough, Lieutenant John Cooper and Privates John Lyons and Andrew R. Allison, soldiers in the Indiana 43rd Regiment, watched the Democratic rally on the Greencastle courthouse square. When Allison hurrahed for “Abraham Lincoln, the best man in the United States,” one of the Democrats cautioned Allison, “You had better not cheer for him here; this is the wrong crowd.” The soldiers and the Democrat had a heated exchange until Lyons knocked the young Democrat down. Sol Akers, described by the Republican papers as “a Copperhead bully, and a large man,” approached, perhaps intending to help the young Democrat, who was out-numbered three to one. Lieutenant Cooper stopped Akers, telling him to stay out of the fight. Akers apparently tried to placate Cooper, saying, “I have known you a long time, my boy.” “Yes,” said Cooper, “and I have known you too, and I never knew any good of you either.” If Akers had originally intended to stop the affray, Cooper’s insult changed his mind and he drew a revolver and cocked it. Cooper drew his gun in return. Another man came up and cried out, “Hurrah for Jeff. Davis and the southern Con—” but Cooper cut him short by hitting him with a billiard cue, bloodying him. At this, the Democrats attacked the soldiers. The crowd in the courthouse yard, including women, yelled, “Kill him, kill him, kill the soldiers.” Cooper ran, throwing stones and exchanging fire with the pursuing mob, led by Akers. Cooper “retreated” up the street, and ducked into a boarding house owned by the widow of a Mexican War soldier. The mob, estimated by a soldier at six hundred people, was breaking the windows with stones when the landlady’s daughter, sixteen-year-old Mary Louise Walls, came out with her father’s cavalry sword and began a counterattack, cutting one man and slashing the sheriff’s clothing before the mob restrained her. (Republicans maintained that members of the mob held a gun to her head.) Although Walls saved Cooper and defused

58 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY NICOLE ETCHESON the riot, attacks on soldiers continued throughout the day, despite the efforts of some Democrats to quiet the rioters. Judge Eckels, for example, searched for Cooper around the Walls’s house, intending to save him from the mob.21 Mary Louise Walls, as well as Candace and Elizabeth Sill, demonstrated that women could become political actors as well as men. As historians Elizabeth R. Varon and Michael D. Pierson demonstrate, Whigs and then Republicans proved more comfortable with woman’s political activism than the more conservative Democrats—although Democratic women joined the mob calling for the soldiers’ deaths and participated in harassing enrollment officials throughout the North. Likewise, antiwar Democrats frisked Elizabeth Sill, not only departing from the gentlemanly treatment of a lady but implicitly recognizing her as capable of thwart- ing their political will by concealing the enrollment papers. Walls and the Sill women obviously reacted under extreme pressure, but they did not leave the resolution of these crises to men. Candace Sill ignored her father’s instructions and stayed by his side, Elizabeth Sill rescued the crucial papers, and Mary Louise Walls protected a cowering soldier with a sword. The public did not condemn their actions as unwomanly, but instead praised them. Cooper’s regiment later presented Walls with a pistol inscribed on the handle, “Presented to Miss Mary Louise Walls by the officers of the 43rd Regiment, Indiana Volunteers, for her heroic defense, July 20, 1864, against a furious mob.” Governor Morton had a medal made for Elizabeth Sill, and neighbors wanted to give Candace a prize, but both women refused any reward for doing their duty. These commendations confirm historian Nina Silber’s argument that the wartime Union appreciated women’s public service, so long as they channeled their actions into support for the war.22 Akers not only led violent mobs, but Republicans credited him with “the Cloverdale fraud,” which in the 1864 election secured the narrow Democratic success in Putnam. As the returns came in on election day, the expected Democratic sweep of the county failed to materialize. By midnight, it appeared that even if the remaining township to report—Cloverdale—should go entirely Democratic, the Republicans would win the county. However, two Democrats, including James A. Scott, set out for that township and visited Arabian Davis, the inspector with the ballot box, and Davis, Scott, and the ballot box spent election night at Sol Akers’s house. A few days after the election, Scott told Greencastle Democrats that he had “arranged” the ballot- box that night at Akers’s house, and he then went back to Greencastle where he told his friends to double their bets on the election’s results. (With money riding on the election, some accounts attributed financial gain rather than partisanship as the more powerful motivator for fraud.) The next day, when Cloverdale presented its ballot box, it contained only sixty-one Union ballots. When the county commissioners held a trial over the Cloverdale fraud, about ninety men “of reputation and veracity” swore that they had voted for the Union ticket at Cloverdale. The Democratic commissioners concluded nonetheless that no fraud took place.23

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A few weeks later, at the presidential election, turmoil again erupted in Cloverdale. Bad weather kept the voters away and the total number of votes cast fell from the October state election. In Cloverdale, however, Democrats insulted Union men who tried to vote, and a fight broke out near the polls, seriously wounding one man. The “notorious” Sol Akers and William Eckels, the judge’s oldest son, both took part in the fray. Akers claimed he tried to stop a gun fight between a Democrat and a Republican that left the Democrat wounded. The Republican voter and his brother then fled through a hail of Democratic gunfire. Such intimidation evidently proved effective, for the Democrats won the county for George B. McClellan by a comfortable margin of 4 percent without having to resort to the ballot box manipulations that marked the county elections.24 Despite Akers’s claim to peacekeeping, Republicans identified him as the leader of “a company of desperadoes” that included deserters terrorizing Cloverdale. Such bands had become a growing problem in parts of the North. The Sons of Liberty had organized the “guerrilla band” as a military company, and it had been “drilling for a long time.” Republicans accused Akers and his gang of burning Union men’s houses, stealing their property, and assassination. They also alleged that as stationmaster for the New Albany and Salem Railroad at Cloverdale, Akers had taunted Unionist passengers by leading his sons in cheers for Jefferson Davis. Republicans added that on a Sunday in early December 1864, Akers’s gang attacked Samuel Ring, a miller at Cataract in Owen County, while he walked along the road. The gang, led by Akers’s brother and his son, William, fired on Ring, who ran off the road, took cover behind a fence and fired back. Ring hit Billy Akers, who later died of his wounds. Sol Akers allegedly told his men “that the village and mills of Cataract must be burnt, as part of the Democrat programme.” The promised destruction of Cataract never took place, but after the war Unionists complained that gangs of deserters and Copperheads burned their houses and killed their livestock in the area around Cloverdale and Cataract. A company from the Indiana 43rd sent to clear out the bandits captured six men. In April 1865, Solomon Akers became the lead defendant in a civil action filed by the county auditor, and William S. Eckels was among the forty co-defendants. The court ordered all but two of the forty-one defendants to pay $743.77 in damages. In October, complainants filed another civil action against Akers and others, but the court dismissed it with plaintiffs paying the cost. Nonetheless, Akers’s Copperhead activities proved costly to him.25 Like Akers, Judge Eckels also participated in the Sons of Liberty, a Copperhead organization in several Midwestern states. From these states came reports that Copperheads intended to liberate Confederate prisoners of war and attack northern cities. In Indiana, Governor Morton’s agents had infiltrated the organization, and in September 1864, he had Harrison Dodd, an Indianapolis printer and the state Grand Commander of the Sons, arrested. Accused of plotting to

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Title page, The Chicago Copperhead Convention: The Treasonable and Revolutionary Utter- ances of the Men Who Composed It…(Washington: Congressional Union Committee, 1864). CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER free the Confederate prisoners held at Camp Morton in Indianapolis, Dodd escaped to Canada, but a military commission tried and convicted some of his associates, including Lambdin P. Milligan, a Huntington, Indiana, Copperhead. At the Indianapolis trial of the conspirators, testimony by William M. Harrison, secretary of the Grand Council of the Sons of Liberty, implicated Delana Eckels. According to Harrison, Eckels attended an August 1863 meeting in Terre Haute arranged by Dodd. The meeting appointed Eckels Temporary Grand Commander and Dodd Temporary Deputy Grand Commander, thus making Dodd subordinate to Eckels. At a second meeting two weeks later, Dodd became Grand Commander and Eckels was elected delegate to the Supreme Council

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planned to meet in Chicago. Harrison described several meetings that involved the organization of military companies: “It was the general idea that it was necessary to arm to resist the encroachments of the Administration.” Although he did not mention Eckels specifically at these meetings, the judge probably had a good idea that the Sons intended to resist the draft. Eckels attended a February 1864 meeting, as did Dodd, Milligan, and most of the conspirators who would later be tried at Indianapolis.26 How much Eckels knew—and condoned—of a plot to free the Confederate prisoners is unknown, though it seems unlikely he was closely involved. He was not among those tried in Indianapolis, and Putnam Republicans, who had a long memory for any disloyalty, did not intimate a con- nection between Eckels and the conspiracy in the postwar years. Eckels, Randel, and Akers fit the profile of northern Copperheads with their adherence to the pro-southern wing of the Democratic Party, their southern heritage, and their indifference to black rights. Men like these Putnam Copperheads conducted the partisan protests, anti-draft resistance, and election violence through which northern Democrats resisted Republican rule. Although ultimately unsuccessful in their efforts to thwart the Republicans, they also remained unrepentant. Local Republicans never forgot—or let anyone else forget—the wartime Copperhead activities of Eckels, Randel, and Akers, but all three pursued postwar political careers with impunity. Judge Eckels remained on the bench and active in local Democratic politics until his death in 1888. Randel became one of the county’s most prominent Democratic officeholders of the post-Civil War period. A year after the raid on the Sill house, he won reelection as surveyor. To the Republicans’ cha- grin, Randel’s well-known antiwar activities did not prevent his election to the most important county offices—surveyor, treasurer, and auditor—for the next twenty years. Less well-loved by his fellow Democrats, Akers died after being knifed during an election rally in 1868, probably by a fellow Democrat because of an intra-party dispute. That these Copperheads suffered no consequences for their wartime resistance to the Republican administration indicates widespread local support for their beliefs. The war did not alter the conviction of many lifelong Democrats that the South’s grievances had been just, and that the Republicans had exploited the war to force an offensive political program, including emancipation, on a reluctant North.27 As Jennifer Weber points out, the Copperheads did not represent a fringe movement in the North. Eckels, Akers, and Randel were all leading men and remained leading men in the county. As Klement and Weber argue for the antiwar movement in the North, Putnam County’s Copperheads responded to the radical, and to the Copperheads, unconstitutional policies of the Lincoln administration, especially emancipation and the draft. If the Copperheads engaged in illegal or treasonous activities, it reflected their belief that Republican attacks on civil

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liberties, promotion of black equality, and prosecution of the war delegitimized the administration’s rule. Putnam’s Copperheads opposed a wartime administration that menaced the constitutional principles to which they, as Democrats, had adhered for their entire political careers. They opposed the draft because it violated their liberty and emancipation because it overturned white supremacy. In this, they embodied the northern antiwar movement that saw violence not as treason, but as free men’s last resort against Republican tyranny.

1 Jennifer L. Weber, Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of 8 Order Book, 6, 1964 [sic]-1867, p. 22, Clerk’s Office, Lincoln’s Opponents in the North (New York: Oxford Putnam County Courthouse, Greencastle, Indiana University Press, 2006); Frank L. Klement, The (hereafter PCC); Mel McKee to John G. Davis, May Copperheads in the Middle West (1960; Gloucester, Ma.: 19, 1864, Jno. Wilcox to [John G. Davis], June 7, Peter Smith, 1972). 1864, W. C. Larrabee, “Biographical Sketch of the Hon. D. R. Eckels,” Feb. 1852, and Delana R. Eckels 2 Weber, Copperheads, 17; Kenneth M. Stampp, Indiana to John G. Davis, Apr. 23, 1854, m.f., all in John Givan Politics during the Civil War (1949; Bloomington: Indiana Davis Papers, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis University Press, 1978), 264. (hereafter IHS); Putnam County Sentinel, Jan. 16, 1851; Indianapolis Daily Sentinel, July 11, 1855. 3 Weber, Copperheads, 17-23; Nicole Etcheson, A Generation at War: The Civil War Era in a Northern 9 Indiana State Sentinel, Nov. 12, 1850; D. R. Eckels to Community (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011), John G. Davis, May 16, 1854, Davis Papers, IHS; Parke 14-15, 86. In the state vote, 80 percent favored the con- County Republican, June 3, 1863; Greencastle Banner, stitution and 84 percent supported Article 13. In Putnam Sept. 2, 1880. County, 90 percent of voters favored the constitution and 96 percent supported Article 13. 10 Parke County Republican, Mar. 11, 1863; Putnam Republican Banner, July 20, 1865; Emma Lou 4 “Voting for America: United States Politics, 1840-2008,” Thornbrough, Indiana in the Civil War Era, 1850-1880 http://americanpast.richmond.edu/voting (accessed Jan. (1965; Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1995), 13, 2009); (Greencastle) Indiana Press, Oct. 23, 1858. 541-43; Etcheson, Generation at War, 232.

5 James L. Huston, Stephen A. Douglas and the Dilemmas 11 Wabash Weekly Express, Apr. 20, 1864; Indiana State of Democratic Equality (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Sentinel, Apr. 25, 1864; D. Voorhees to Jno. G. Davis, Littlefield, 2007), 196; T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and Apr. 22, 1864, m.f., Davis Papers, IHS; Henry Lane His Generals (New York: Vintage, 1952), 46; Ulysses Stone to Mother, Jan. 4, 1864, Henry Smith Lane S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, 2 vols. (New Papers, IHS. York: Charles L. Webster, 1885-1886), 1:215; Putnam Republican Banner, May 16, 23, Sept. 5, 1861. 12 Dollie to [William], Jan. 27, 1863, in Love Amid the Turmoil: The Civil War Letters of William and Mary 6 William B. Hesseltine, Lincoln and the War Governors Vermilion, Donald C. Elder III, ed. (Iowa City: University (New York: Knopf, 1948), 205-206; Klement, of Iowa Press, 2003), 47-48; Putnam Republican Banner, Copperheads, 19; Stephen E. Towne, “Killing the Serpent Apr. 27, May 4, 1865. Speedily: Governor Morton, General Hascall, and the Suppression of the Democratic Press in Indiana, 1863,” 13 Eugene C. Murdock, One Million Men: The Civil War Civil War History 52 (Mar. 2006), 41-65. For an overview Draft in the North (Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Press, of the Peace Democrats’ objections to Republican policy, 1971), 84-90; Allen C. Guelzo, Fateful Lightning: A see Weber, Copperheads, 13-42. New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 458-60; Weber, 7 “The Liberty of the Citizen,” and “The Conscript Act,” in Copperheads, 91-92, 104-105, 195; Klement, Copperheads Speeches of Daniel W. Voorhees, of Indiana, Embracing His in the Middle West, 78-79; Thornbrough, Indiana in the Most Prominent Forensic, Political, Occasional and Literary Civil War Era, 200-201; Parke County Republican, Nov. 4, Addresses, Charles S. Voorhees, comp. (Cincinnati: Robert 1863; Putnam Republican Banner, Nov. 5, 19, 1863. Clarke & Co., 1875), 62-102 (esp. 63), 103-26 (esp. 110); Parke County Republican, Mar. 11, 1863; Putnam 14 Murdock, One Million Men, 84-90; Putnam Republican Republican Banner, Aug. 20, Sept. 3, 1863. Banner, July 2, Aug. 13, 1863; Biographical and Historical

FALL 2013 63 REPUDIATING THE ADMINISTRATION

Record of Putnam County, Indiana…(1887; Knightstown, 21 Carl A. Zenor, “Putnam County in the Civil War: In.: Bookmark, 1975), 467-68; Atlas of Putnam Co., Local History of a Critical Period” (M.A. thesis, Indiana to which Are Added Various General Maps, History, DePauw University, 1956), 142; Civil War Service Statistics, Illustrations (Chicago: J. H. Beers & Co., 1879), Records, and American Civil War Soldiers, at www. 18. AncestryLibrary.com (accessed Feb. 2, 2004); Indianapolis Daily Journal, July 21, 23, 1864; Jesse 15 “A Tragedy on Deer Creek,” Candace Sill Hopkins William Weik, Weik’s History of Putnam County, Indiana Papers, IHS; Putnam Republican Banner, June 18, Nov. (Indianapolis: B. F. Bowen, 1910), 212-13; Putnam 26, 1863; Parke County Republican, June 17, 1863; Roll Republican Banner, Aug. 11, 1864. of Home Guards, Indiana Legion, Form of Articles of Association, Richard M. Hazelett, “Little Black Book”: 22 Elizabeth R. Varon, We Mean to Be Counted: White Memoirs of Richard M. Hazelett, IHS; Record of Official Women and Politics in Antebellum Virginia (Chapel Hill: Bonds, 1844-1911, pp. 5, 23, 26, PCC; Greencastle University of North Carolina Press, 1998); Michael Banner, Feb. 3, 1876; Murdock, One Million Men, 42-43. D. Pierson, Free Hearts and Free Homes: Gender and American Antislavery Politics (Chapel Hill: University 16 “A Tragedy on Deer Creek,” Hopkins Papers, IHS; of North Carolina Press, 2003); Murdock, One Million Putnam Republican Banner, Aug. 20, 1863. Men, 42; Zenor, “Putnam County in the Civil War,” 142; “A Tragedy on Deer Creek,” Hopkins Papers, IHS; 17 “A Tragedy on Deer Creek,” Hopkins Papers, IHS; Putnam Republican Banner, Aug. 20, 1863; Nina Silber, Putnam Republican Banner, June 18, Aug. 20, Oct. 1, Daughters of the Union: Northern Women Fight the Civil 1863, Feb. 11, 1864, Mar. 8, 1866; Milton A. Crane to War (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 2005). Colonel R. W. Thompson, July 2, 1863, Letters Received, Seventh District of Indiana, RG 110, National Archives, 23 Putnam Republican Banner, Oct. 25, 27, 1864, Jan. 12, Washington D.C. (hereafter NA); W. F. Vermilion to Feb. 9, 16, 1865. Colonel H. D. Washburn, the Republi- [Dollie], June 26, 1863, in Love Amid the Turmoil, 144-45. can congressional candidate, found ninety-one men who swore to have voted for him, but he received only fifty- Putnam Republican Banner 18 , Apr. 27, May 4, 1865; David eight votes in the Cloverdale returns. Grimsted, American Mobbing, 1828-1861: Toward Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 181-265; 24 Putnam Republican Banner, Nov. 10, 17, 1864; Thornbrough,Indiana in the Civil War Era, 118-22; D. Indianapolis Journal, Nov. 19, 1864; “Voting for America: W. Voorhees to Friend, May 14, 1864, Davis Papers, IHS. United States Politics, 1840-2008,” http://americanpast. richmond.edu/voting (accessed Jan. 13, 2009). 19 (Greencastle) The Press, July 12, 1876; Putnam County Sentinel, Aug. 5, 1852; Weekly Indiana State Sentinel, 25 Murdock, One Million Men, 84-90; Indianapolis Daily Dec. 20, 1855, Mar. 31, 1858; Putnam Republican Journal, Dec. 8, 1864, May 10, 1865; ___ to Cownover, Banner, Apr. 13, 1859; Putnam County Sesquicentennial May 4, 1865, Letters Received, Seventh District of Committee, A Journey through Putnam County History Indiana, RG 110, NA; Putnam Republican Banner, May (n.p., 1966), 83; Solomon Akers to John G. Davis, Nov. 11, 1865; Elijah T. Keightley v. Solomon Akers et al., 18, 1857, Jan. 25, Apr. 12, July 8, 1858, Davis Papers, Order Book 6, May 1964 [sic]-Oct. 1867, pp. 46-47, IHS; Record of Official Bonds, 1844-1911, p. 24, Record 106, PCC. of Official Bonds, No. 1, p. 299, Circuit Court, Order Book, 4 Civil, 1857-1862, pp. 442-45, 482, 493, 500, 26 Robert Churchill, “Liberty, Conscription, and a Party 511, Circuit Court, Order Book, 7, Dec. 1867-Oct. Divided: The Sons of Liberty Conspiracy, 1863- 1871, pp. 259, 373, 281, 287, 306, 321-24, 469, 473, 1864,” Prologue 30 (Winter 1998), 295-313; Weber, 477-78, 480-81, Circuit Court, Order Book, Civil 9, Copperheads, 147-49, 243n36; Klement, Copperheads in Sept. 1873-Nov. 1874, pp. 41-42, 75, 91, 159, 377, 537, the Middle West, 187-99; Samuel Klaus, ed., The Milligan Order Book, Civil 10, Sept. 1874-June 1875, pp. 175, Case (New York: Da Capo Press, 1970), 258-61; Putnam 310, Order Book, Civil 15, Sept. 1878-May 1879, pp. Republican Banner, Oct. 27, 1864. 139, 339, 459, 497, all in PCC. 27 Cemetery Lots, Book 1, p. 271, Forest Hill Cemetery, 20 Putnam Republican Banner, Aug. 17, 1859, Feb. 7. Greencastle, Indiana; Greencastle Banner, Apr. 8, 1880; 1861, Sept. 9, 1868; Indiana Daily State Sentinel, Weekly Indiana Press, Sept. 9, 1868. June 29, 1858; Report of Persons and Articles Hired, Provost Marshal Records, and H. M. Rockwell to Capt. Thompson, June 9, 1863, Letters Received, Seventh District of Indiana, both RG 110, NA. The Putnam Republican Banner, June 18, 1863, listed fourteen enrolling officers, one for each township in the county.

64 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Collection Essay Peter G. Thomson and the Bibliography of the State of Ohio at the CMC

incinnatian Peter G. Thomson (1851-1931) is better known today as the founder of Champion Papers and for his palatial estate, Laurel Court, than for his contribution to the field of history. However at his death his obitu- Cary in the Cincinnati Enquirer noted, “Proud as Mr. Thomson was of a magnifi- cent and successful business career, he was much more proud of his ‘Bibliography’ and of his collection of books published in the days when Ohio was in the making.”1 Thomson’s collection of books concerning Ohio and the Northwest Territory became part of the collections of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, one of the predecessor organizations of Cincinnati Museum Center, in 1891. Born in 1851 in Cincinnati, Thomson worked first as a shipping clerk in the bookstore of the Robert Clarke Company. He opened his own bookstore in 1877 on Vine Street. A voracious reader and student of history, his interest in books led him to publish the Bibliography of the State of Ohio in 1880, the fourth of such state bibliographies. Thomson visited all the major libraries of the time over an eight-year span to compile the work. His bibliography encompasses works from the early exploration of the region before statehood up through 1880, and includes bibliographical and critical notes, along with prices paid for many of the books at private and public sales since 1860. An avid collector, he used his extensive knowledge to assemble a sizable personal collection of books and pamphlets relating to the state of Ohio and the Northwest Territory. In 1887, Thomson approached the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, to which he belonged, about purchasing his collection. Not coincidently, this was also the last year a listing for his store appeared in the Cincinnati city direc- tory. In the 1880s, Thomson expanded his entrepreneurial pursuits to include toys, and children’s books and games, using the recently developed process of color printing. His new endeavors put him in competition with McLaughlin Brothers, a Brooklyn, New York, firm that eventually purchased Thomson’s enterprise in 1887. Thomson wanted to sell his collection in part to raise addi- tional capital for his new business enterprise, the manufacture of coated paper. The development of the half-tone printing process in the 1880s had created a demand for higher quality papers. Thomson saw an opportunity to supply that demand and decided to establish a paper manufacturing facility in Hamilton that was later incorporated as the Champion Coated Paper Company.

FALL 2013 65 PETER G. THOMSON AND THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE STATE OF OHIO

Peter G. Thomson (1851-1931). CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER

The Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio had an interest in acquiring the collection, and members created a subscription fund to raise the five thousand dollars Thomson requested. The fund initially raised twenty-two hundred dollars but then efforts faltered. Thomson grew impatient and in 1890 published a catalogue of his collection. He noted in its preface, “An idea of its completeness will be seen from the fact that the Ohio Historical and Philosophical Society, after upward of thirty years’ collecting, has only three hundred and forty-three of the seven hundred and eighty-three numbers described.”2 The society renewed fun- draising efforts when Rufus King contributed five hundred dollars. In its 1891 annual report, the society noted that it had raised $4,650 by March 1891, enough to buy the collection. In September of that year, Thomson presented the collection

66 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY BARBARA J. DAWSON

Bird’s nest, in Howard E. Jones, Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of Birds of Ohio, with text, 2 vols. (Circleville, Oh., 1886). Listed in Catalogue of Books Relating to the State of Ohio, the West and North-west. CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER

of 768 bound and 1,163 unbound volumes to the society. Since many of the titles in Thomson’s collection were originally published in paper covers, he had them beautifully bound by well-known bookbinders of the time such as Pawson & Nicholson of Philadelphia and William Matthews of London, England. The society decided to keep the collection of bound volumes in the same order as his 1890 catalogue: arranged alphabetically and numbered sequen- tially. Bookplates reading, “Library of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio. The gift of the subscribers to the Thomson Books Fund, September 5, 1891,” were placed in bound volumes. Thomson’s bookplate, “Bibliotheca Ohioensis. Peter G. Thomson Cincinnati, O.,” remains on the item as well. Either Thomson or members of the society included a clipped entry from Thomson’s Bibliography of the State of Ohio for each of the volumes listed in the bibliography. While some of the unbound pamphlets appear in his catalogue under a unique number, most of them are grouped together in numbers 551- 575, with the entry reading “Pamphlets” followed by the subject to which they relate and the number of pamphlets given in parentheses. Without a unique number associated with each pamphlet in these groupings, it seems the society incorporated them into their existing pamphlet collection from the subject

FALL 2013 67 PETER G. THOMSON AND THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE STATE OF OHIO

Title page of The Journal of Major George Washington…(Williamsburgh, 1754). Listed in Bibliography of the State of Ohio. CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER

68 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY BARBARA J. DAWSON matters mentioned in his descriptions: geology of the state, Ohio colleges, biographical sketches of Ohioans, and speeches given by Ohioans. In 1893, the society republished his 1890 catalogue of the collection with a new preface and title page that reads, “A Partial list of the books in its library relating to the state of Ohio.” The society added two copies of this work to his collection as no. 784 and 785, and his 1890 catalogue as no. 786. The collection consists mainly of early travel accounts concerning Ohio and the states that made up the Northwest Territory, addresses delivered at educational institutions, church dedications, and anniversaries of institutions and communities. However, a significant number of titles concern the natural history of the area, several regimental histories of Ohio units during the Civil War, and even some works of poetry. Most of the titles in the collection were published between 1830 and 1880. While English is the predominant language, three titles are in French and five in German, the latter published between 1842 and 1882 when most German immigrants came to Ohio. The French titles, published much earlier, include a 1756 work about the French and Indian War, an 1803 work of the climate and soil of the area, and an 1827 work on Ohio mounds. The earliest work in the collection is no. 734, entitled The Journal of Major George Washington, Sent by the Hon. Robert Dinwiddie, Esq., His Majesty’s Lieutenant-Governor, and Commander in Chief of Virginia, to the Commandant of the French Forces on Ohio…(Williamsburgh, 1754). Thomson continued to collect even after the publication of his bibliography of the state. The latest works in the bibliography were published in 1886: no. 92, “History of College Hill and vicinity” by Samuel F. Cary, and no. 360, the beautifully illustrated natural history work, Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of Birds of Ohio, With Text, by the Jones family of Circleville, Ohio. This extensive collection of published materials concerning Ohio and the Northwest Territory, part of Peter G. Thomson’s historical legacy, is preserved and available to researchers at the Cincinnati History Library and Archives. Barbara J. Dawson Curator of Printed Works

1 Cincinnati Enquirer, July 11, 1931.

2 Peter Gibson Thomson, Catalogue of Books Relating to the State of Ohio, the West and North-west (Cincinnati: s.n., 1890).

FALL 2013 69 Collection Essay Documenting Women’s Civil War Experiences in the Ohio Valley at The Filson

he last issue of Ohio Valley History (summer 2013) offered a survey of a few of The Filson collections that highlight the lives of women and reveal their influence in the history of the region. This issue turns Tto collections that document women in the narrower scope of the Civil War. That bloody conflict continues to fascinate Americans, and the war dramatically affected the lives of women, who offered their insights and documented their experiences in the war for themselves and others. Women suffered through trag- edies and exulted in triumphs along with men, often leaving a record from which future generations can learn about this momentous historical era. Some of these records, such as the Cora Owens Hume diaries, are quite personal and provide unusual insight into the thoughts of a woman loyal to the Confederacy. Unmarried during the war, Owens discussed school, social events, and major gossip or rumors about wartime events and various governmental decisions. Describing life in Louisville during the war, Owens wrote about passing a long line of soldiers: “We met three companies of cavalry and 30 army wagons on our way to school, and three regiments passed after we got there, and all of their wagons.” Owens feared these Union soldiers, adding,

Cora Owens Hume (b. 1848). THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

70 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY ERIC WILLEY

Woman (Mary Belle Tucker) and her servant, likely a slave. THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

FALL 2013 71 DOCUMENTING WOMEN’S CIVIL WAR EXPERIENCES IN THE OHIO VALLEY AT THE FILSON

“I was so afraid that they would stop here [at home] and give them trouble.” Owens’s anxiety about the presence of Union soldiers was so great she would not ride out alone for fear of meeting up with a soldier. In contrast, Owens wrote in glowing terms of her joy in Confederate victories throughout the war, and refused to accept as true newspaper reports of southern defeats. In the spring of 1863 she believed the Confederacy would take Louisville, writing, “Glorious, glorious, glorious, if we can whip the Yankees right good this time, I believe that our men will be here by the middle of June.” She became excited at the news that John Hunt Morgan had escaped from an Ohio jail, exclaim- Martha Buford Jones (1829-1866). THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY ing, “Hurrah Hurrah Hurrah! I feel like I want to be somewhere that I can scream as loud as I can. I think I will get into the cellar and then no Yankee can hear me. John Morgan and 6 of his men have escaped from prison. It would seem that my prayers have been answered!” Although she later attended school in Maryland and eventually traveled to Canada, Owens remained faithful to the Confederate cause.1 Owens’s journal also offers a rare glimpse into the lives of the enslaved African American women in her household, and she noted several significant changes in her relationship with them as the war progressed. In much of her diary, Owens com- mented on the family’s slaves only when they were sick because it resulted in more work for her. Near the end of the war, two slaves, Ann and Fannie Owens, ran away, and the two oldest and most trusted slaves, Lettie and Minor Hawkins, attended Unionist meetings and began to talk of “emancipation” and “rights.” Cora Owens wrote in 1865 that “Many of the slaves think that they are going to heaven on the 4th of July, as that is the day the Lincolnites say they must demand wages for future labor.” Lettie and Minor Hawkins left the Owens’s service after Cora’s mother ordered them out. Cora’s journal indicates that her mother could not cope with the fact that former slaves had become her legal equals, and she would not pay them wages.2 While she did not share Owens’s enthusiasm for military matters, Amelia Bourne also kept a diary while attending Woodford Female Academy in Versailles, Kentucky, from 1862 to 1867. Bourne wrote about school matters, events, her thoughts, ill- nesses, the Civil War, and the weather. Later entries include recipes, addresses of correspondents, numerous poems and verses, and the occupants of bedrooms at her school. Overall, Bourne’s diary offers a rich account of the life of a young woman away at school, and somewhat on the fringe of the Civil War. Regardless of their affiliation or level of enthusiasm, women often had to tread carefully in the highly

72 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY ERIC WILLEY

Martha Buford Jones and child, possibly her daughter Lizzie. THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

charged political climate of the Civil War. While attending a class on how to make bandages for Union soldiers held by the local “loyal ladies” group, Lucy Ann Tucker received an anonymous letter accusing her of spying for the Confederacy. In a subsequent letter to the instructor of the course, Dr. Flint, Tucker stated that she could no longer attend class meetings. Tucker noted that though she remained “loyal to her state,” she had been advised “to refrain from giving even the slightest cause of offence.”3 Women played many roles in the Civil War, but they often wisely chose to avoid political conflict. In contrast, Martha Buford Jones, wife of Confederate Major Willis Field Jones, supported the Confederate cause much more actively. Jones provided bandages and clothing to Confederate prisoners of war, and even housed a soldier delirious with typhoid fever. The Jones Family Papers discuss activities on their Edgewood Farm near Versailles, Kentucky, family news, friends, the southern cause in the Civil War, Major Jones’s life in the Confederate Army, and the

FALL 2013 73 DOCUMENTING WOMEN’S CIVIL WAR EXPERIENCES IN THE OHIO VALLEY AT THE FILSON

distressing home situation caused by his absence. In her diaries dating from 1860 to 1864, Martha Jones recorded the weather, the health of family and friends, family and social life, farm operations, the treatment of slaves, horse racing, the Civil War, and her separation from her husband.4 Sometimes women found themselves in the middle of battles. Rebecca Ewing and her fiancé, Henry Watterson, corresponded throughout the war, and in one letter Ewing offered a harrowing description of what was likely the Battle of Chattanooga:

After passing the morning in the cellar, from which position we could hear distinctly the explosions of the shells around us, and the crackling, hissing noise of the burning houses in the neighborhood, we left our place of retreat and went up into the cross-hall where we lay with fifty women + children on the floor until the firing of the pickets ceased. The balls came so thick and fast against the house that it sounded like hail striking against glass. Shall I ever in this world forget my feelings, when night came on. Could I only have been in your arms and breathed out my life before the morn, which we fully believed would be heralded by a renewal of the agonizing boom of cannon.5

Ewing and Watterson continued to correspond through the war, although most of Ewing’s letters did not describe situations so fraught with peril. Women who did not become directly involved in battle often suffered the heartbreak of losing loved ones. In response, women offered consolation to one another, as did Susan Preston Grigsby’s aunt after Grigsby lost two of her children:

God in his mysterious providence has seen fit to afflict you most severely in robbing you of your two sweet little children, or rather, in taking them to Heaven and to himself, which he had a right to do, as he had only lent them to you. I hope by this time dear Alfred and little Ashley are out of danger. It is a hard trial for you to bear my dear Susan, but in your bereavement don’t “charge God foolishly” but remember that the “Judge of all the Earth must do right” whatever we may think, and I know how hard it would be to bear such a bereavement even with the support and acquaintance of your husband, but O how hard to bear it all alone.6

This tragic letter forms part of the Grigsby Family Papers, which contain numerous pre-Civil War letters between the women of the family detailing plantation life, and often mentioning slaves and their activities. The collection also contains considerable correspondence between Susan Grigsby (the bereaved mother above) and her husband, John Warren Grigsby, as well as other friends and relatives.

74 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY ERIC WILLEY

Women and children fleeing the city of Louisville, Kentucky, in expectation of a bombardment by Confederate General Braxton Bragg, 1862. THE FILSON HISTORICAL SOCIETY

All of these collections tell the story of the great changes brought to women’s lives by the Civil War. For researchers who wish to examine the lives of women over a longer time period to understand how the Civil War might have changed their lives, The Filson holds the Johnston Family Papers, which contain correspondence between Rosa Duncan Johnston and her husband, William Preston Johnston, a Confederate soldier and educator. In their letters, the couple discussed wartime conditions and William’s imprisonment and exile. The Bullitt-Chenoweth Family Papers also offer a picture of women’s wartime experiences and of life at the family estate of Oxmoor during the occupancy of William C. Bullitt, his wife Mildred Ann Fry Bullitt, and their children. The Clark-Strater-Watson Family Papers include correspondence between the Kentucky and Canadian branches of the Clark family that discuss Canadian life, the Fenian movement, a Canadian opinion of abolition and slavery, possible union with the United States, the Civil War, and political and economic conditions in both countries. The bulk of the collection consists of correspondence between Jessie Clark Strater Watson, her husbands, William Strater and Alexander M. Watson, and her son, Edward Strater. These letters chronicle the activities, lives, and personal relationships of an affluent, socially active Louisville family. Finally, the Winston-Jones

FALL 2013 75 DOCUMENTING WOMEN’S CIVIL WAR EXPERIENCES IN THE OHIO VALLEY AT THE FILSON

Family Papers document the Winston family, who came to Kentucky between 1820 and 1840, and the Jones family, who came to Union County, Kentucky, between 1830 and 1840. These papers include correspondence from members of both families between 1822 and 1889, and concern family matters, family relationships and problems, business and professional ventures of various family members, and the families’ involvement in the Gold Rush and Civil War. While these collections do not focus solely on the Civil War, they offer researchers the opportunity to compare the activities of these women during the conflict and peacetime. The Civil War was a pivotal event in the history of the United States, dramatically altering the lives of many individuals. This essay offers a brief glimpse of some of the collections The Filson holds that document how women’s lives changed, and how they altered the world around them. From Cora Owens’s fiery passion for the Confederacy to Susan Grigsby’s sorrow over the loss of her children, these collections reveal the wide range of women’s Civil War experiences. The Filson works to collect and preserve these stories, and makes these records available to researchers. Eric Willey Associate Curator

1 Cora Owens Hume Journal, vol. 1:8, 12, 42, 134, The Filson Historical Society, Louisville (hereafter FHS).

2 Owens Hume Journal, vol. 2:36, 42, 135-36, 140, FHS.

3 Amelia Bourne Diary; Anonymous to Lucy Ann Tucker, and Lucy Ann Tucker to Dr. Flint, both Sept. 20, 1862, Tucker Family Papers, all in FHS.

4 Jones Family Papers, FHS.

5 Rebecca Ewing to Henry Watterson, Oct. 30, 1863, Henry Watterson Papers, FHS.

6 Susan Hart Fishback to Susan Grigsby, Oct. 2, 1862, Grigsby Family Papers, FHS.

76 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Review Essay Cause and Consequence The Meaning of the Civil War Today Aaron Sheehan-Dean

s the Civil War a story about defeat—of the broken and humbled South? Or is it a story of victory—not just by the Union but for freedom? The distinct perspectives implied by these questions lead the two historians whose books Iare reviewed here to trace different casts of characters and offer different conclusions about the experiences and meaning of the Civil War. Bruce Levine, in Fall of the House of Dixie, proposes that the common people of the South—both black and white—contributed to the collapse of the Confederacy’s mighty edi- fice. James Oakes, inFreedom National, explains how black and white abolitionists destroyed slavery by promoting an interpretation of the Constitution that protects freedom for all people. These books also provide different models for engaging the public: one synthesizes the historical literature to challenge popular attitudes and the other offers an original argument that challenges both scholars and lay readers. They both illustrate the vitally important role that academic scholarship can still play in our times. Levine’s study, clearly aimed at a popular audience, will challenge readers still under the sway of older interpretations that deny the centrality of slavery to the Civil War. Levine centers slavery in his picture of the antebellum South and shows how what was once the region’s leading asset became its greatest liability in war. In describing the nature of slavery, for instance, he uses well known and admired figures such as Robert E. Lee to represent the typical slaveholder who brutally punished runaways. Levine captures the optimism of white southerners in the 1850s as their region’s products generated fabulous wealth and power. Like Stephanie McCurry in her recent Confederate Reckoning, Levine highlights the arrogance that propelled slaveholders to imagine they could command millions of people to fight and die on their behalf. But unlike McCurry, whose book transcended the old debate about why the war ended the way it did, Levine seeks to explain “how this great and terrible war undermined the economic, social, and political foundations of the Old South, destroying human bondage and the sto- ried world of the slaveholding elite.”1 Befitting a book that opens with the story’s conclusion, Levine explains that the dilemma of holding the allegiance of white nonslaveholders and control- ling the fifth column of enslaved southerners proved the Confederacy’s undoing.

FALL 2013 77 CAUSE AND CONSEQUENCE: THE MEANING OF THE CIVIL WAR TODAY

Bruce Levine. The Fall of the House of James Oakes. Freedom National: The Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolu- Destruction of Slavery in the United States, tion that Transformed the South. New 1861-1865. New York: W. W. Norton, 2012. York: Random House, 2013. 464 pp. ISBN: 596 pp. ISBN: 9780393065312 (cloth), 9781400067039 (cloth), $30.00. $29.95.

His analysis sweeps past the traditional political events that litter the pages of most secession histories; instead, Levine suggests that “the long-term pattern of economic, social, cultural, and intellectual developments in the North” made it impossible for elites to rely on nonslaveholders’ support. This argument highlights the long-term vision of secessionists—who were wise to secede in 1861 before they lost all political influence—and suggests the difficulties of sustain- ing a war from a minority position. Still, previous historians have offered much fuller accounts of internal resistance and class conflict in the Confederacy, a tack that Levine does not follow.2 Levine does show the ways that slavery became a liability for the Confederacy: slaveholders refused to sanction the impressment of their slaves to work on military projects; enslaved people rebelled as oversight slackened when white men enlisted in the armies; and, most dangerously, black southerners proved stalwart allies of Union troops, offering intelligence to northern soldiers and enlisting in Union Armies. Levine uses the war’s military narrative as context for his deeper interest—the collapse of slavery within the South—but the book does not supply a detailed enough analysis of that process to generate new insights. A host of scholars have studied the wartime breakdown of slavery at the state level. From these careful social histories Levine sketches his portrait. At the risk of critiquing the book that Levine did not write, it is hard not to escape the feeling that readers would have been better served if he turned his analytical eye and elegant pen toward a

78 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY AARON SHEEHAN-DEAN detailed study of how black people sought freedom in the Civil War. They were the people who undermined the House of Dixie. Parts of this story are visible and more studies are on the way, but historians need a comprehensive picture of emancipation and black resistance all across the South. By way of context for his focus on the Confederacy, Levine offers the now standard explanation of President Abraham Lincoln’s slow evolution toward ending slavery, the very perspective that Oakes challenges. According to Levine, Republicans “did not view the war was an instrument of progress, much less of radical revolution.”3 This is precisely the view Oakes rejects and the contrast illuminates what a direct challenge Oakes’s story poses to our existing conceptions of the coming and nature of the Civil War. In short, Oakes’s book is brilliant and bold, much bolder than most of what Civil War historians write. He fundamentally reinter- prets how historians understand the coming of the war, the nature of antislavery policy in the US, and the attitude and position of Lincoln toward slavery. He argues that abolitionists developed an interpretation of the Constitution that highlighted its protections of non-human property even as they proclaimed that slaves were not chattel. Rather, slaves performed “service owed to another,” there- fore releasing the federal government from an obligation to protect slavery as it did other property rights. The reinterpretation emphasizes, in opposition to what Donald Fehrenbacher and others have called the proslavery constitution, what might be called the pro-freedom constitution.4 William Lloyd Garrison may have labeled it a covenant with death, but Oakes shows that a variety of abolitionists recognized the importance of having the federal government and the Constitution on their side. In most respects, Oakes narrates well known territory, but he does so from such a new perspective that even established stories (such as Union General Benjamin Butler’s contraband edict or John C. Fremont and David Hunter’s emancipation orders) look quite different. In other places, he highlights moments that previous scholars have overlooked—for example, Congress’s decision to prohibit the U.S. military from enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act—that add weight to his interpretation. The real turning point is his reading of the Second Confiscation Act, which scholars usually interpret as one of the gradual steps taken by Congress as it slowly shifted toward emancipation. In Oakes’s telling, it emerges as the essen- tial point at which Republicans in Congress empowered the president to move against slavery within the United States, not just in the seceded states. “For more than a generation,” Oakes writes, “antislavery lawyers had carefully worked out the distinction between slaves and other forms of property, arguing that ‘property in man’ was not constitutionally protected. Here, in the careful construction of the Second Confiscation Act—more than anywhere else during the long process of slavery’s destruction—the seeds sown by the antislavery movement were bearing fruit.” He carries the story through the Emancipation Proclamation,

FALL 2013 79 CAUSE AND CONSEQUENCE: THE MEANING OF THE CIVIL WAR TODAY

Confederate resistance, and the Thirteenth Amendment. At each juncture, Oakes weaves insightful analysis into a stirring narrative. For instance, in discussing the proclamation, he admits radicals recognized the president could not abolish slavery (a power only the states possessed) but he could for military purposes eman- cipate slaves.5 What sounds like a semantic distinction of little import reveals the essence of how slavery ended in the United States: Lincoln used the power Congress and the Constitution gave him to attack the institution at its weakest points in legal ways. Rather than viewing emancipation as an extralegal process foisted on a reluctant country in the heat of war, Oakes identifies the measured and deliberate strategy that undergirded Lincoln’s efforts. Oakes’s argument has two weak points. First, his dichotomous parsing of the historiography in the introduction suggests that a wave of revisionist scholars think slavery was not part of the war. This problem—one that Levine’s book addresses—may exist among popular audiences, but not among historians. In Oakes’s case, the problem arises as a consequence of conflating the ana- lytically related but distinct problems of causation and motivation. “The real moral dilemma of the Civil War,” Oakes writes, “arises from the fact that it was about slavery.” This is a truism for American historians today. No one argues that the Civil War was not “about slavery,” but the passive voice elides the main issue. Even the scholars Oakes identifies as “neo-revisionists” agree that disputes over slavery drove southerners to leave the Union. One of Oakes’s main targets, Gary Gallagher, argues that “issues related to the institution of slavery precipi- tated secession and the outbreak of fighting.”6 The real tension between Oakes and scholars like Gallagher revolves around the question of motivation. Oakes believes that because Republicans recognized slavery as the main cause, they committed to destroying it from the start. Gallagher, in contrast, identifies a much stronger faith in preserving the Union and a military embrace of emancipation to accomplish that goal. Part of the difference in their interpretations emerges from their choice of historical subjects and sources. Oakes focuses on elite attitudes and the intellectual justifications offered by abolitionists and in the policy machinations between Congress, the White House, and the army. Gallagher focuses on the common soldiers who fought for the North. Second, Oakes’s eagerness to prove that Republicans committed to emancipation from the war’s opening moments leads him to overstate his argument. “By the time Lincoln was inaugurated,” he writes, “virtually all Republicans believed that secession meant war and war meant immediate emancipation.” This may have been true among the leading radical Republicans, but Oakes’s evidence does not dig deep enough into the Republican rank-and-file or the popular electorate to sustain this argument. Scholars who have studied northern public opinion during the crucial five months between Lincoln’s election and Fort Sumter have uncovered a turbulent sea of attitudes, with region, partisan affiliation, ideology,

80 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY AARON SHEEHAN-DEAN and age subdividing the northern electorate. Many, probably most, northerners did not believe that Lincoln’s election or even the war would result in the ulti- mate extinction of slavery. For instance, less than a month after the war’s start, Ulysses S. Grant explained to his father that “a Northern army may be required in the next ninety days to go south to suppress a negro insurrection. As much as the South have vilified the North they would go on such a mission and with the purest motives.” This would not have surprised Frederick Douglass, who at just the same time worried that white northerners “have been on the mountain with the wily tempter, and have been liable at any moment of weakness to grant a new lease of life to slavery.”7 Later in the book, Oakes softens the argument about motivation, writing that “all Republicans, radical and moderate alike, argued that the official ‘purpose’ of the war was the restoration of the Union, but all agreed that slavery had caused the war and all were prepared to free slaves as a means of ending it.”8 The use of quotation marks around “purpose” suggests that we should distance our- selves from this seeming failure of moral vision, but accepting that most white northerners believed the northern purpose in war was to reunify the country does nothing to undermine Oakes’s argument about how easily, even enthusias- tically, they came to sanction the destruction of slavery. A war for the Union, as Oakes phrases it, could only end with Union or disunion; a war over slavery could have ended with some half-measure, as it surely would have if Union General George B. McClellan had defeated Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston at Richmond in 1862 or Lincoln at the polls in 1864. But it did not. The war ended with both Union and emancipation and usually historians emphasize the contingency of military events to account for this conclusion. Oakes’s narrative shows us how much this outcome resulted from hard work and planning not just chance. These criticisms do not weaken my admiration for Oakes’s argument that historians have misinterpreted political abolitionism. In our zeal to understand the religious and social dimensions of abolitionism, scholars have overlooked the careful legal reasoning that evolved in tandem with sentimental appeals to the humanity of enslaved people.9 Part of this involves shifting our lens; Theodore Weld and Salmon Chase appear far more often in Oakes’s story than William Lloyd Garrison and Henry Ward Beecher. Oakes’s signature contribution is to demonstrate how abolitionists interpreted the Constitution as pro-freedom not proslavery. While other scholars have shown that avoiding the word “slave” in the Constitution required awkward circumlocution, Oakes demonstrates that cru- cially the Constitution did not link slavery and property. Thus, the Constitution’s iron-clad defense of property did not extend to the property in people that white southerners claimed. Oakes’s narrative shows the evolution of this idea as it passed through several hands and the ways abolitionists applied it to policies that grew

FALL 2013 81 CAUSE AND CONSEQUENCE: THE MEANING OF THE CIVIL WAR TODAY

ever more precise and consistent. Part of the brilliance of Oakes’s argument is that he shows exactly how this once-marginalized idea drew supporters and came to meet the demands of the time. In particular, Oakes restores civilian actors to central places in a story that for too long has been the sole province of Union generals. Oakes’s book also offers insights into the history of governance. He writes that “my concern with antislavery constitutionalism is frankly utilitarian: I need to explain the ideas in order to explain the policies,” but this comment undersells one of the book’s most important accomplishments: demonstrating the importance of ideas, of staying consistent to core values, and finding opportunities to implement them. The men and women he chronicles were clearly driven by their ideas. Although Oakes does not engage with the subfield of policy history or the few authors who study the nineteenth century with an eye to explaining how American government has worked over time his study offers object lessons for activists and reformers today.10 His narrative demonstrates the importance of long-term vision, consistency, and choosing the right moment to push for truly historic change. Abolitionists spent decades making little progress—other than refining their intellectual arguments— then in four quick years they accomplished everything they wanted. Oakes’s book offers the most comprehensive, most carefully constructed, and most insightful history of emancipation available. It does not answer the call for a comprehensive history of emancipation on the ground but it should serve as the standard account of the intellectual and legal dimensions of emancipation as formulated in Washington. It also represents an important historiographical moment because too many Civil War and emancipation studies occupy separate territory. As Oakes proves conclusively, emancipation was intimately connected with the war—as cause, process, and consequence—and vice versa. The release of Levine and Oakes’s books by prominent trade presses also offers an opportunity to gauge how these institutions think about the relationship between popular audiences and academic history. Both authors are prominent and experienced professors at leading universities. Their publishers have released both books in the middle of the sesquicentennial years and aimed them at the broad public interested in the war. Both are well written and engaging narratives of dramatic events. Both contain important messages for readers today who consider the relationship between war and society. Levine’s book emphasizes the inherent inse- curity of societies built on forced or unfree labor. War made all the vulnerabilities of the South manifest. Many of the world’s working people still labor under such conditions; their political leaders would be wise to consult Levine’s book before going to war. Oakes demands even more of his audience, popular and academic. His book challenges and pushes the reader. It engages deeply not just with the historiography but with the moral issues at stake in considering the coming and fighting of the Civil War. His narrative explains the end of one system, but clearly regards this as the beginning of a new, better one. Oakes shows how an event as

82 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY AARON SHEEHAN-DEAN

awful as the Civil War, against all odds, improved the world. Because human beings keep waging war in the hopes of transforming societies, society would do well to appreciate the essence and the nuances of his argument. Oakes’s writing conveys an urgency that characterizes the best books. That urgency seems entirely appropriate because our country and world face serious problems that historical analysis can help illuminate. All historical writing should be so impassioned.

1 Stephanie McCurry, Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics Campaign,” Journal of American History 96 (Sept. 2009), in the Civil War South (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University 357-78. Ulysses S. Grant to Jesse Root Grant, May 6, 1861, Press, 2010); Levine, Fall of the House of Dixie, xviii. in Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, John Y. Simon, ed., 32 vols. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967- 2 Levine, Fall of the House of Dixie, 29. This is a large litera- 2012), 2:20; Frederick Douglass, “The Fall of Sumter,” in ture that starts with Charles Ramsdell, Behind the Lines in Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings, Philip S. the Southern Confederacy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Foner, ed. (Chicago, Il.: Lawrence Hill, 1999), 443. University Press, 1944), and moves through Paul D. Escott, After Secession: Jefferson Davis and the Failure of Confederate 8 Oakes, Freedom National, 110. See also Oakes’s discussion Nationalism (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, of the Emancipation Proclamation, where he notes that 1978); William Freehling, The South vs. The South: How for Lincoln, “it was always a war for the Union and always Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil a war over slavery. It was the nature, not the purpose, of War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); and most the Civil War that changed after January 1, 1863” (392), recently David Williams, Bitterly Divided: The South’s Inner or his analysis of the Thirteenth Amendment, where he Civil War (New York: The New Press, 2008). argues that “Republicans, on the other hand, insisted that that ‘purpose’ of the war was no different in 1864 than it 3 See, for example, Barbara Jeanne Fields, Slavery and Freedom had been in 1861. They would suppress the rebellion and on the Middle Ground: Maryland During the Nineteenth restore the Union, and they would do so by undermining Century (New Haven, Ct.: Yale University Press, 1985); slavery, the cause of the rebellion” (453). John V. Cimprich, Slavery’s End in Tennessee, 1861-1865 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1985); Clarence 9 Oakes’s story of emancipation avoids the social and L. Mohr, On the Threshold of Freedom: Masters and Slaves cultural analysis that typifies many recent studies. See, in Civil War Georgia (Athens: University of Georgia Press, for instance, Robert H. Abzug, Cosmos Crumbling: 1986); and Lynda J. Morgan, Emancipation in Virginia’s American Reform and the Religious Imagination (New Tobacco Belt, 1850-1870 (Athens: University of Georgia York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Julie Roy Jeffrey, Press, 1992). Levine, Fall of the House of Dixie, 108. The Great Silent Army of Abolition: Ordinary Women in the Antislavery Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North 4 Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic: An Carolina Press, 1998); John Stauffer, The Black Hearts of Account of the United States Government’s Relation to Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race Slavery, Ward M. McAfee, ed. (New York: Oxford (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 2002); and University Press, 2002). Richard S. Newman, The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic Freedom National 5 Oakes, , 233, 349. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002). Freedom National 6 Oakes, , xvi (emphasis in original). Gary 10 Oakes, Freedom National, xxiii. The foundational texts for The Union War W. Gallagher, (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard this field are Richard Franklin Bensel, Yankee Leviathan: University Press, 2012), 2. The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859- 1877 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990); and 7 Oakes, Freedom National, 50. David Potter, Lincoln and His Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State: The Party in the Secession Crisis (1942; New Haven, Ct.: Yale Expansion of National Administrative Capabilities, 1877- University Press, 1967); Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848- 1970 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982). 1861, Donald E. Fehrenbacher, ed. (New York: Harper, More recent work includes William J. Novak, “The 1976); Russell McClintock, Lincoln and the Decision for War Myth of the ‘Weak’ American State,” American Historical (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008); Review 113 (June 2008), 752-72; and Greg Downs, Elizabeth Varon, Disunion! The Coming of the American Declarations of Dependence: The Long Reconstruction of Civil War, 1789-1859 (Chapel Hill: University of North Popular Politics in the South, 1861-1908 (Chapel Hill: Carolina Press, 2008); and Jon Grinspan, “‘Young Men for University of North Carolina Press, 2011). War’: The Wide Awakes and Lincoln’s 1860 Presidential

FALL 2013 83 Book Reviews

Church-State Relations in the Early American Republic, 1787-1846 James S. Kabala

growing chorus of scholars has been chal- 1840s rejected both a confessional Christian A lenging the binary—widely accepted state and a secularist republic permeated public among present-day Americans—that the life. Examining legislative records, newspapers story of church and state in the nation’s early and magazines, occasional sermons, and private decades represented either a straightforward tri- correspondence, Kabala shows the workings of umph of church-state separation on one hand this consensus in five chapters, each developed or the solidification of a “Christian nation” through representative episodes that illuminate on the other. In his informative new book, major themes in church-state relations. Kabala James Kabala finds instead that early national begins with a chapter on the contested place of Americans forged a third way, wherein a “non- religion in the federal government—most nota- sectarian Protestant consensus” that by the bly in controversies over military chaplains and the great petition drives against Sunday mails in the 1810s and 1820s. He rightly concludes that the First Amendment, which looms so large in today’s consciousness, figured relatively little in early national church-state relations. Indeed, Kabala finds the most significant trends of an unfolding non-sectarian Protestant consensus in the states. He devotes chapters in turn to controversies over the public roles and political activism of Protestant clergy, religious tests, and the right of non-believers and non-traditional Christians (especially Universalists who rejected orthodox notions of heaven and hell) to testify in court. In the final chapter, on battles over legislative prayer, Kabala presents the clearest evidence of a third way in action. Even in states like New York, where a move to abolish legislative prayer briefly succeeded in the early 1830s, legislators generally saw no harm in opening ses- James S. Kabala, Church-State Relations in the Early sions with prayers led by Protestant clergy (and American Republic, 1787-1846. London, Eng.: Picker- ing & Chatto, 2013. 288 pp. ISBN: 9781848933149 occasionally Jews). In each point of controversy, (cloth), $99.00. clergy, judges, and legislators publicly advocated

84 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY BOOK REVIEWS a privileged position for Protestant Christianity in 1800 and opposition to Unitarian Jared but allowed for interdenominational differences Sparks’s appointment as chaplain to the U.S. and embraced religious freedom in expres- House of Representatives in 1821. In contrast, sion (within decent limits). By the end of the he views War of 1812-era Baptist disparagement 1830s, even formerly recalcitrant members of of Britain as “the bulwark of the religion we pro- New England’s state-supported Standing Order fess” (as Massachusetts Governor Caleb Strong abandoned traditional religious establishments put it) as a sign that the consensus had not fully and welcomed the Protestant consensus as a taken hold. Perhaps, but a more exact map of the bulwark against deism and atheism. chronological and thematic inflection points of The consensus reflected nineteenth-century inter-Protestant controversy would make Kabala’s America’s increasingly tolerant public pluralism. argument more compelling. The clearest such Indeed, formerly dissenting or once-marginal point appears to have been Presbyterian minis- Protestant groups like Baptists and Methodists ter Ezra Stiles Ely’s ill-considered 1827 call for assumed seats at the table, giving such groups a “Christian party in politics.” Kabala cogently “a new frame of reference” (76) in which erst- argues that the overwhelming backlash against while adversaries became allies. The Protestant Ely’s sermon cemented a tactical shift among consensus worked, Kabala maintains, because moral reformers, who now recoiled from hold- “the basic dogmas of Christianity were regarded ing public officials to doctrinal tests and focused as non-sectarian beliefs” (184), and its promoters instead on the promotion of Christian morality. determined that “the role of Christians in public Kabala rightly calls attention to the limits offices was to enforce Christian morality, but not of the non-sectarian consensus; he emphati- to promote specific doctrines” (85). That said, cally does not claim a monolithic American the consensus comes across in many ways as part Protestantism, nor that “all sectarian rivalry of a project of evangelical self-definition. Indeed, and competition had ended” (62). The “tri- as Kabala explains, the boundaries of the consen- umph” of the non-sectarian Protestant consensus remained contentious, shaped in debates over sus, Kabala notes, “was never final or complete” the status of non-Protestants (Catholics, Jews, (82). Indeed, the consensus paradoxically began deists, and non-believers especially) and liminal to falter at the moment of its apparent triumph Protestants such as Unitarians and Universalists. in the 1840s. Large-scale Catholic immigra- Still, Kabala’s sense of the processes by which tion called into question the non-sectarian American Protestants concluded among them- claims of the consensus, and the slavery contro- selves to set finer points of doctrine aside in versy undermined the notion that Protestants favor of a cooperative Protestantism still primar- could find common doctrinal or moral ground. ily bounded by evangelical orthodoxy remains American Christianity thus continued to strug- unclear. The consensus became most visible in gle between inclusion and notions that God’s courts and legislatures. The strident theological will could only be expressed in the body politic controversies that played out over pulpits and in in certain ways. In the end, Kabala does great the press appear but mainly in the background. work highlighting the enduring tensions in At times, the non-sectarian Protestant consen- American ideas of church-state relations. sus just “is.” Kabala argues that it informed, for Nathan S. Rives example, criticisms of Thomas Jefferson’s deism Weber State University

FALL 2013 85 BOOK REVIEWS Black Slaves, Indian Masters Slavery, Emancipation, and Citizenship in the Native American South Barbara Krauthamer

ecent years have seen a significant increase As slaves, African Americans in the two Rin scholarship about African slavery within nations often served as mediators between the Five Tribes of the Southeast—the Choctaw, their owners and whites, such as missionaries, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole— with whom the Native Americans interacted. formerly known as the “Five Civilized Tribes.” Through the process of Christianization Whites who saw Indian acculturation to slaves subverted their servile positions and European societal norms as necessary to their acted as teachers to their owners and other development and survival gave them the title Indians. Missionaries also provided slaves “civilized.” One prominent aspect of this accul- with the opportunity for freedom through turation included some tribal members’ adop- immediate or delayed purchase and churches tion of slavery, which began in the eighteenth became instrumental communal meeting century and continued to 1866. Of the Five places for slaves. Enslaved people resisted Tribes, the Chickasaw and Choctaw have authority by running away or flouting laws received the least scholarly attention, particu- designed to limit their mobility. During the larly regarding relationships with their black Civil War some slaves committed violent acts slaves. Black Slaves, Indian Masters is Barbara against their owners or actively petitioned the Krauthamer’s skillful effort to rectify the state of Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations as well as scholarship. Krauthamer uses archival records, the United States government to grant them newspapers, and governmental documents to emancipation. After the Treaty of 1866 offi- tell the complicated story of the Africans and cially freed slaves within the Five Tribes, African Americans who lived as both slaves and Chickasaw freedmen lobbied for citizen- free people within the Choctaw and Chickasaw ship and Choctaw freedmen pushed for the Nations. She argues that more than simply sig- enforcement of their newly awarded rights. naling Natives Americans’ entrance into a mar- Though Krauthamer focuses on the lives of ket economy or showing retention of indige- African and African American inhabitants of nous ways, chattel slavery “marked a dramatic the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations, she also shift in Choctaw and Chickasaw ideas and expertly navigates the evolution of Choctaw practices of property, race, and gender” (4-5). and Chickasaw policy and culture in response Krauthamer’s narrative shows not only the to slavery. Her first chapter details the ways in changes slavery brought to the Choctaw and which imported black field labor changed gen- Chickasaw, but also the differences and simi- der roles among the Choctaw and Chickasaw larities between African American life in Indian by displacing wealthy Native American and United States territory. women who otherwise would have engaged Three main themes run throughout the in agricultural work. She also addresses the book: Choctaw and Chickasaw slave and issue of “mixed blood” (white and Choctaw/ freedmen agency, resistance, and community. Chickasaw) tribal members who owned slaves,

86 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY BOOK REVIEWS engaging in a scholarly discussion that dates back to historian Richard White’s The Roots of Dependency (1983). Krauthamer demonstrates that influential Choctaw and Chickasaw slaveholders enjoyed power because of their Indian kinship connections, not their white ancestry. Perhaps Krauthamer’s largest contribution to Afro-Native scholarship is her emphasis on the ways the Five Tribes influenced United States politics and slavery. Krauthamer argues that Indian removal helped spark the rapid growth of southern plantation slavery and the sectional conflict over the expansion of slavery, including “Bleeding Kansas.” These crises also impacted Indian Territory socially and politically (89-93). Krauthamer insists, however, that there were few “differences between Choctaw and Chickasaws’ views on slaves,” despite a number of contemporary white travelers and WPA Indian-Pioneer Paper Barbara Krauthamer. Black Slaves, Indian Masters: informants who insisted that the Chickasaw Slavery, Emancipation, and Citizenship in the Native American South. Chapel Hill: University of North punished their slaves more harshly than the Carolina Press, 2013. 232 pp. ISBN: 978149607108 Choctaw. Such differential treatment might (cloth), $34.95. explain the Chickasaws’ post-Civil War brutal- ity toward African Americans and their refusal novices a rich introduction to Afro-Native his- to adopt freedmen as tribal citizens (9, 110). tory, while Native American Studies scholars Black Slaves, Indian Masters provides an will find it a necessary supplementary text. important overview of the lives of African Krauthamer paves the way for a closer exami- and African American peoples who played nation of the lives of individual slaves, freed- relevant, active roles in United States affairs, men, and freedwomen by bringing the varied adeptly navigated tribal and United States scholarly inquiries about slave life on south- federal bureaucracy, and effectively articulated ern white-owned plantations—on gender, their views on race and identity. While African resistance, and religion—to those owned by Americans’ efforts to gain citizenship at times Choctaw and Chickasaw Indians. collided with the Choctaw and Chickasaw Alaina E. Roberts struggle for sovereignty, Krauthamer shows Indiana University the complexity of racial and cultural identity that led slaves to campaign for freedom and enfranchisement while still seeing the Choctaw or Chickasaw Nation as their home- land. This intricate tapestry of a book offers

FALL 2013 87 BOOK REVIEWS Mary Lincoln’s Insanity Case A Documentary History Jason Emerson

n 1875, Mary Lincoln’s only surviving son IRobert had her tried for insanity and placed in an asylum. Soon afterwards, Mary began a campaign to free herself, insisting that she was the sane victim of a heartless son who had her institutionalized for selfish motives. Thus began the controversy surrounding Mary’s insanity case. The various publications on the subject generally fall into one of two categories: those that accept Robert’s side of the story, and those that accept Mary’s side of the story. Robert’s defenders argue that Mary was, indeed, insane and that Robert had her institutionalized in order to safeguard her own wellbeing. Mary’s defenders portray Robert as a conniving villain who schemed to put his mother behind bars so that he could assume control of her finances and climb the political ladder without the scandalous figure of his mother blocking his ascent. These two polarized views of Mary’s insanity case have Jason Emerson. Mary Lincoln’s Insanity Case: A hitherto made it difficult for readers to come to Documentary History. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2012. 264 pp. ISBN: 9780252037078 (cloth), any firm conclusions on the matter. However, $35.00. Jason Emerson provides readers with the tools to make a more informed, unbiased opinion with 1865—most scholars identify Abraham Lincoln’s his new publication Mary Lincoln’s Insanity Case. assassination as the trigger for his wife’s insanity— Emerson has traveled to archives around the and ending in 1959 with the personal reminis- country collecting primary sources relating to cence of a family member. Emerson’s avowed pur- Mary’s insanity case. This book is the culmination pose in publishing these materials is to allow read- of his efforts—a compilation of letters, newspa- ers to reach their own conclusions about Mary’s per articles, editorials, interviews, diary entries, insanity based on all available evidence. legal documents, and patient progress reports In order to let readers judge for themselves, from the asylum that treated Mary. Some of Emerson vows not to take sides in the debate these documents have been published previously. over Mary’s insanity. The book consists mostly of Nevertheless, it helps to have all of these sources a compilation of primary sources, but Emerson gathered in one publication. Emerson arranges still manages to proffer his own opinion along the documents chronologically, starting in April with the evidence. He explains that nearly the

88 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY BOOK REVIEWS entire country agreed that Mary was insane, but Emerson’s own biases influence both his that only her son knew the true extent to her introduction and the explanatory notes scattered derangement. He blames the modern misun- throughout the book. For example, Emerson derstanding of her case on “the use of a revi- claims Robert consulted seven medical “experts” sionist (specifically feminist) historical philoso- about his mother’s sanity, but this implies that phy” by Mary’s modern biographers Jean Baker all these doctors possessed expertise in men- and Catherine Clinton, who he suggests either tal health when they did not. Furthermore, have not examined the primary sources or have Emerson neglects to mention that the doctors only studied them with the intent of advancing declared Mary insane without examining her their own agendas. Emerson claims both these but based on Robert’s description of her behav- biographers portray Mary as a sane woman per- ior. Emerson also fails to mention that Robert secuted by the patriarchy. While this charac- sprung the trial on Mary at the last minute and terization correctly describes Baker’s stance on that she received no defense from the lawyer the issue, it does not accurately assess Clinton’s that Robert and his legal team engaged for her. position. Clinton is one of the few writers to These circumstances indicate that Mary did not address Mary’s sanity who does not take a firm have a fair chance to defend herself, but they do stance in the debate. While she argues that Mary not imply that she was sane. Indeed, an exami- did not have a fair chance to defend herself at nation of the documents provided in Emerson’s the 1875 trial and suggests that Robert’s politi- book suggests that she was insane in the spring cal ambitions could have influenced his deci- of 1875. Although Mary Lincoln’s Insanity Case is sion to have his mother committed, Clinton not as unbiased as Emerson asserts, it still allows also repeatedly implies that the sorrows Mary readers to see the primary sources for themselves experienced caused her to become unhinged. and form their own opinions about the matter. She even goes so far as to describe Mary as in For this reason, it stands as the most important “full-blown delusional mode” when Robert had text published on Mary Lincoln’s insanity. her committed. Emerson’s accusations against Leslie Ann Harper Clinton seem unfair. University of Louisville

Demon of the Lost Cause Sherman and Civil War History Wesley Moody

istorians have often blurred the distinc- dominated by two distorted images. The first Htion between history and myth, and as views Sherman as a brilliant practitioner of Wesley Moody observes in Demon of the Lost a new type of total warfare that made Union Cause much of what they have written about victory possible and provided the template for the Civil War is “filled with myth” (2). Moody how armies would fight in future wars. The sec- seeks to deconstruct the mythology surround- ond sees him as a fiendish monster, the epit- ing William T. Sherman, arguing that the pub- ome of northern barbarism who led an undis- lic’s perception of the general has come to be ciplined mob of vandals across Georgia and the

FALL 2013 89 BOOK REVIEWS

concentrated on eradicating John Bell Hood’s Confederate army. Moody also believes historians have exaggerated the destructiveness of Sherman’s bummers, and that their orders to destroy railroad tracks were routine. Indeed, they bypassed key cities and left standing numerous antebellum homes that remain tourist attractions today. Moody’s study contributes to recent explora- tions of the construction of Civil War historical memory. If Sherman proved neither an innova- tor nor a beast, how did he become what Moody describes somewhat hyperbolically as “by far the most controversial figure of the American Civil War” (1)? In 1865, northerners viewed Sherman as a controversial general, but for reasons that made him unlikely to become the most reviled Union general among white southerners. Some northerners believed Sherman a crypto-Confed- erate because of the generous surrender terms

Wesley Moody. Demon of the Lost Cause: Sherman he initially offered Confederate General Joseph and Civil War History. Columbia: University of Missouri Johnston. President Andrew Johnson repudi- Press, 2011. 190 pp. ISBN: 9780826219459 (cloth), $30.00. ated the agreement and sent Grant to oversee a new set of terms while Secretary of War Edwin Carolinas. Though they share some similarities, Stanton publicly criticized Sherman. Stanton and these mythological Shermans were fabricated to Sherman had crossed paths a few months earlier serve a variety of constituencies often at odds when they met in Savannah. The conference took with one another. Moody details the creation place in part because of accusations that Sherman of these myths and when they became widely had cruelly treated African American refugees accepted by the public and many scholars. during his March to the Sea and prompted his Moody asserts that Sherman was “as much Special Field Orders No. 15, offering land to black a traditionalist as any general of the American families. Moody argues, however, that Sherman Civil War” and downplays the significance of was no friend to African Americans. Before 1861, his March to the Sea (1). Rather than unleash- Sherman had few qualms about slavery and during total war upon Georgia, Sherman sought a ing the war he opposed the use of black soldiers. quick route to the sea in order to assist Union In the postwar era, he opposed African American General Ulysses S. Grant defeat Robert E. Lee’s suffrage and endorsed Johnson’s lenient recon- Confederate Army. For some, including Moody, struction policies, including what amounted to a the light resistance Sherman faced revealed that repeal of Special Field Orders No. 15. morale in Georgia had already seriously eroded. Sherman’s views on race and reconstruc- If Sherman sought primarily to crush the reb- tion more closely resembled those of his former els’ will to fight, Moody believes he should have adversaries than they did Grant’s. Moody asserts

90 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY BOOK REVIEWS that in the immediate postwar years southerners prompts Moody to observe that the South had generally regarded Sherman favorably because “completely forgotten” that Sherman had sided “more important than wartime accomplish- with them during Reconstruction and was once a ments to most Southerners was a general’s post- welcomed guest (124). war politics, as most Southerners would fight the For Moody, the two dominant Sherman peace much more aggressively than they fought myths reflected the combined influence of the the war” (65). Southerners welcomed Sherman Lost Cause and notable twentieth century histo- when he visited the region and he was a guest rians. In his concluding chapter, Moody argues at the 1881 International Cotton Exposition that British military historians such as J. F. C. in Atlanta. He maintained good relations with Fuller and especially Basil H. Liddell Hart helped Hood and Johnston, though his desire for rec- shape the “modern view” of Sherman, though onciliation had limits, as evidenced by his spir- he cites only one of Liddell Hart’s books to sup- ited defenses of Grant’s generalship, criticism of port his assertion (140). Moody also criticizes the Jefferson Davis’s unapologeticThe Rise and Fall work of historians John B. Walters, James Reston, of the Confederate Government, and belief that Michael Fellman, and Victor Davis Hanson for Confederate veterans should not be celebrated either accepting the Lost Cause image of Sherman as the equals of Union veterans. Sherman also or subscribing to the notion that the general prac- attempted to burnish his reputation by publish- ticed total war. But Moody fails to consider two ing his memoirs, in which he claimed the March important Sherman biographies, Lloyd Lewis’s to the Sea as his idea and described his successes Sherman: Fighting Prophet (1932) and John Mars- in Georgia and the Carolinas as decisive in end- zalek’s Sherman: A Soldier’s Passion for Order ing the war. Moody notes that when Sherman (1993), though both appear in his bibliography. died, southern newspapers were “mixed in their Demons of the Lost Cause offers valuable insights sympathies” but “respectful” (95). into how and when the mythological Sherman Such attitudes soon changed, however, and appeared, but Moody needs to consider more Moody details how Sherman became the “major fully why these myths developed and became target” of proponents of the Lost Cause who sought widely accepted. How can historians gauge and to fashion a new and more usable history of the explain the enduring appeal of these myths? Aside war (99). Spearheaded by the United Daughters from a short chapter on films, Moody focuses of the Confederacy, Sons of Confederate Veterans, primarily on books and periodicals, but Edward and Confederate Veteran, the image of Sherman Caudill and Paul Ashdown’s Sherman’s March in and his men as brutal savages joined virtuous, Myth and Memory (2009) demonstrates the pos- white southern women and happy, loyal slaves as sibilities of casting a wider net. Television, works standard tropes in the Lost Cause canon. Moody of fiction, and public commemorations may shed suggests that the Lost Cause depiction of Sherman more light on the important issues that Moody both destroyed his reputation and enhanced it by raises. Demon of the Lost Cause is highly recom- giving a primacy to his campaigns in Georgia and mended for readers interested in Sherman, the the Carolinas that some former Union generals Civil War, the construction of historical memory, did not believe they merited. The outrage caused and the relationship between myth and history. by the participation of Sherman’s son, Thomas, Matthew Norman in a 1906 U.S. Army staff ride across Georgia University of Cincinnati Blue Ash College

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The Kentucky DerbyHow the Run for the Roses Became America’s Premier Sporting Event Never Say Die A Kentucky Colt, the Epsom Derby, and the Rise of the Modern Thoroughbred Industry James C. Nicholson

riters—including historians—often draw distinguished by a careful analysis of the social and Winspiration from personal experience. cultural factors responsible for the event’s rise to Author James C. Nicholson grew up immersed in prominence in the world of sports. Bluegrass horse culture on a thoroughbred farm Colonel Meriwether Lewis Clark, grandchild near Lexington owned by his grandfather, John A. of the famous transcontinental explorer, created Bell III. Just as his grandfather made his mark in Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby. On the industry as a prominent owner and breeder, a trip abroad, Clark attended Epsom Downs Nicholson has made a mark in the world of schol- and the English Derby, and was so impressed by arship as chronicler and interpreter of thorough- the spectacle that upon his return to the United bred history. Having earned a Ph.D. from the States in 1875, he established Churchill Downs University of Kentucky in 2010, Nicholson has and its own signature event, the Kentucky Derby. in short order produced two outstanding con- Another colonel, Matt Winn (the title in both tributions to equine literature, the first derived cases was honorary rather than indicative of mili- from his dissertation on the Kentucky Derby. As tary rank), guided Churchill Downs to national the Ashland Daily Independent, published in the prominence during the first half of the twen- mountain region of eastern Kentucky half a state tieth century. The iconic role of the “Kentucky away from the horse country of the Bluegrass, colonel” embodied by these men represented recently observed, for Kentuckians the Derby one aspect of a Derby promotion strategy that “is as important as Christmas” (April 11, 2013). involved the deliberate cultivation of the more The paper exaggerated perhaps, but only a little. appealing stereotypes associated with the “Old Kentucky seems to have its own “national” holi- South” before the Civil War. Kentucky had never day, one for which a great many residents of the been part of the “Old South,” and in fact sup- Commonwealth will take time to turn on the tele- plied more volunteers to the Union cause, but vision or tune in the radio to partake of what the after the war white Kentuckians began to iden- media promotes as “the most exciting two minutes tify themselves with the Confederacy and the in sports.” Yet the Derby is also a national holi- South. A widespread misperception that slavery day in a very real sense, as millions across America in Kentucky had existed in a milder, more benev- also pause to share in the experience. So argues olent form enhanced associations with idyllic Nicholson in his examination of the Derby. This plantation life. Derby visitors who sipped mint annual horse race has become not just a national, juleps and sang the Derby anthem, “My Old but an international event in terms of recogni- Kentucky Home,” could indulge in nostalgia tion and appeal, and represents an enduring slice for the “good old days” of a place and time that of American popular culture. Nicholson’s work is never really existed. By associating these sanitized

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James C. Nicholson. The Kentucky Derby: How the James C. Nicholson. Never Say Die: A Kentucky Colt, Run for the Roses Became America’s Premier Sport- the Epsom Derby, and the Rise of the Modern Thorough- ing Event. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, bred Industry. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2012. 296 pp. ISBN: 9780813135762 (cloth), $29.95. 2013. 232 pp. ISBN: 9780813141671 (cloth), $29.95. images with the semi-mythical legends of Daniel of the running of the Derby also featured cov- Boone and Kentucky’s pioneer heritage, the allure erage of the host state, increasing popularity of of the Bluegrass, and the mountaineer culture as the sporting event and of Kentucky as an attrac- romantically portrayed by writers such as John tive destination. The Derby experience became Fox, visitors from outside the state could come to increasingly commodified through commemo- the Derby and become Kentuckian—and “south- rative glasses and other souvenirs, and tied to the ern”—for a day in what Nicholson has termed a marketing of Kentucky-made bourbon that used “quasi-theme park” atmosphere (67). Churchill images of Kentucky colonels, “happy darkies,” Downs on Derby Day became a place attractive and racing scenes. Allusions to racial and south- not only to the middle-class masses who crowded ern stereotypes disappeared with the onset of the infield but for society elites in the clubhouse. World War II in reaction to Nazi racism and in The Derby began to attract national interest an effort to reduce sectionalism, only to reappear early in the twentieth century when, prior to the briefly at war’s end. With the debut of televised Depression, Kentucky was one of the few states coverage in the 1950s, the effort to appeal to a in which thoroughbred racing still persisted, national audience all but eliminated the focus on despite the efforts of moral reformers to elimi- the Old South as promoters reshaped the Derby nate gambling and other perceived vices through as an American event, the oldest continuously the nation. Beginning in 1925, radio broadcasts contested sporting event in the country.

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In the closing decades of the twentieth 1954, they entered him as a long shot in the century, the thoroughbred industry experi- Epsom Derby, long considered the most pres- enced rapid growth and became increasingly tigious horse race in the world. To the aston- global, helping to promote greater national ishment of English observers and to the joy and international prominence for Kentucky of American horsemen, Never Say Die bested and the Derby. The weak dollar attracted more the field of twenty-one rivals to win easily by international buyers at Kentucky horse auc- two lengths. To say that the American victory tions and an increased foreign participation in surprised the English is an understatement; the Derby as horse owners around the world shocked better describes their reaction. The began to acknowledge the significance of the English developed the thoroughbred horse dur- event. Although the modern Derby still pro- ing the late seventeenth and early eighteenth vides a nod to nostalgia, changing American centuries by breeding British mares to stallions values are reflected in press coverage that imported from the Middle East, and their belief focuses on heroic horses, such as Secretariat, in the superiority of English bloodlines was and stories of redemption, perseverance, and deeply ingrained. They considered American dreams come true. The Derby has achieved horses vastly inferior, even “half-breeds.” The the status of a national institution capable of 1913 Jersey Act passed by the English Jockey evolving to suit changing cultural needs and Club refused for a time to recognize the pedi- tastes. As a result, it has continued to hold grees of American thoroughbreds and effectively a significant place in the American popular discouraged Americans from importing or rac- consciousness regardless of era, an evolution- ing their horses in England. The decimation of ary process likely to continue into the future. European bloodstock by World War II pushed Nicholson’s examination of the Derby empha- the Jockey Club to amend the act to allow rec- sizes context and as such offers a valuable con- ognition of American pedigrees, but even so tribution both to the equine literature and the the English presumed their horses’ bloodline historiography of Kentucky. supremacy and dominance of the racing world In his second work, Nicholson naturally a virtual “divine right.” focuses on the celebrity horse Never Say Die, Never Say Die’s victory at Epsom proved no who drew its first breath in 1951 in the foal- fluke. At St. Leger’s in September of the same year ing barn of his grandfather’s farm. Never Say the upstart American challenger galloped to the Die, in Nicholson’s opinion, was an outstand- finish line a full twelve lengths ahead of his near- ing running horse, but fell short of becoming est competitor, claiming victory in the final leg of one of the great thoroughbred heroes of mod- the English Triple Crown. With two command- ern times. Nevertheless, the Kentucky-bred ing wins of classic English races by an American and American-owned chestnut colt did some horse, even the most diehard English observer great things, all the more remarkable following found it difficult to assert the unquestioned a difficult birth during which he nearly slipped superiority of English stock, especially when away, revived only by a judicious slug of bour- American horses again won the Epsom Derby bon whiskey. After completing basic training on four out of five occasions between 1968 and in Kentucky, Never Say Die’s owners sent him 1972. These victories signaled a great transforma- to England where, as a three year-old in June tion taking place in the world of thoroughbred

94 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY BOOK REVIEWS breeding and racing, one that ultimately shifted and the colt’s first few weeks of training. The the balance of power from England to the United stallion Nasrullah proved the culmination States. The American upsets at Epsom and St. of years of effort and some astute breeding Leger’s served as heralds of this impending evo- choices made by the Sultan Mohammed Shah, lution, while their success hastened unfolding the third Aga Khan and leader of the Nizari developments. American bloodstock, long con- Ismaili Muslims, the second largest branch of sidered inferior by Europeans, became the most Shia Islam. In the years prior to World War sought after and valuable horses in the world. II, the Aga Khan became fascinated by British Nicholson traces the roots of this shift in power culture and with the sport of thoroughbred to the misfortunes of two world wars, which not racing, and developed one of the most suc- only decimated European bloodstock but the cessful thoroughbred operations in the world. wealth of the owners and breeders who had built Nicholson tells these stories adeptly, and intro- the thoroughbred industry in the Old World. duces readers to other major players along the In the twentieth century United States, in con- way to his conclusion that the world of thor- trast, banking and manufacturing fortunes lit- oughbred racing has more recently under- tle affected by the wars produced a class of men gone a shift away from the nouveau American able to invest heavily in acquiring the best thor- dominance to become an international indus- oughbred stock from Europe and developing try. The progression of owners, equine pedi- lavish breeding operations, many located in the grees, and races run, although necessary to tell Bluegrass region of Kentucky. Their efforts pro- the story, can fatigue the reader at times. Still, duced outstanding bloodstock lines, capable of Nicholson once again delivers a solid work competing abroad, in America. that, like The Kentucky Derby, is both enter- Nicholson tells the story of this transforma- taining and a significant contribution to the tion through an unlikely assemblage of char- equine literature. acters, including the heir to the Singer Sewing Oh, and the rock band? In 1954, a middle- Machine fortune, the author’s own maternal class Liverpool housewife named Mona Best grandfather, the spiritual leader of a major pawned her jewelry and placed a substantial bet Islamic sect, and the most commercially suc- on the longshot, Never Say Die, because she liked cessful and critically acclaimed rock band of his name. With the proceeds of her thirty-three all time. Robert S. Clark, the Singer heir, sent to one payoff, she purchased a large Victorian his American mare, Singing Grass, to Ireland mansion and opened a coffeehouse in the base- to be bred to the top stallion Nasrullah. Later ment that became known as the Casbah Coffee sent back to the United States to Jonabell Club. An obscure group of teenagers who called Farm near Lexington, Singing Grass gave themselves the Quarrymen played on opening birth to a foal, Never Say Die, whose mater- night, and found a steady gig at the club for nal bloodlines included three winners of the nearly two months. Led by John Lennon, the American Triple Crown. Nicholson’s grandfa- group soon became an international sensation, ther, John A. Bell III, into whose care the mare and Mona’s son, Pete Best, became their first reg- was entrusted, helped deliver Never Say Die ular drummer: the Beatles, of course. and gave him the resuscitating shot of bour- Gary A. O’Dell bon, the name that commemorated the event, Morehead State University

FALL 2013 95 BOOK REVIEWS Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters The Struggle over Segregated Recreation in America Victoria W. Wolcott

or many children who grew up in southern FIndiana during the 1950s, a trek to Fontaine Ferry Amusement Park in western Louisville was a summer highlight. One summer, my uncle obtained tickets and took the entire family to Fontaine Ferry. I thoroughly enjoyed the visit, but remained oblivious to the fact that every- one in the park was white. But that and more had begun to change. The neighborhood around Fontaine Ferry was undergoing a racial transi- tion, but the park remained segregated until 1964 when the owners yielded after four sum- mers of agitation by members of the NAACP Youth Council and the Congress of Racial Equality, including many high school students. Demonstrators endured taunts, jeers, and violence from white teens trying to protect “their” park from invasion by blacks. Desegregation came only after long negotiations, but even then the owners maintained segregation at the swim- Victoria W. Wolcott. Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters: ming pool by converting it to a private club. The Struggle over Segregated Recreation in America. Fontaine Ferry operated on this basis for another Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. 328 pp. ISBN: 9780812244342 (cloth), $34.95. five years, during which time patronage declined and the facilities deteriorated. Meanwhile, racial skating rinks, golf courses, dance halls, bowling tensions triggered a major riot in the West End alleys, amusement parks, and other recreational in the summer of 1968, and when the park facilities. Wolcott draws heavily upon newspa- reopened in 1969 some black teenagers began pers, trade journals, official reports, and archi- destroying equipment and robbing ride cashiers. val sources, and from appropriate secondary lit- The owners closed early and announced the next erature, especially the work of Mark Gottdeiner, day that Fontaine Ferry would not reopen. David Harvey, Mike Davis, Sharon Zukin, and Many local residents remember the campaign others who have explored issues of urban devel- to integrate Fontaine Ferry and the events that led opment as a struggle for control of public space. to its closure, but Victoria Wolcott’s Race, Riots, The result is a gracefully written volume that and Roller Coasters reveals the extent to which underscores the roles of liberal integrationists and the Fontaine Ferry story mirrored a nationwide nonviolent radicals, along with mothers, teenag- pattern in the desegregation of swimming pools, ers, and children, in opening access to white-only

96 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY BOOK REVIEWS centers of leisure, relaxation, and social interac- As whites fled the surrounding neighborhoods, tion. Walcott also demonstrates persuasively that park owners allowed facilities to deteriorate; young access to recreation ranked in importance with blacks responded with violence; and the owners open housing, economic opportunity, equal edu- closed the parks, often selling the land to develop- cation, and other public accommodations on the ers. Meanwhile, facilities that struggled to remain civil rights movement’s agenda. open faced increasing competition from huge Walcott recounts campaigns to desegregate suburban theme parks such as Disneyland and Euclid Park and Skateland in Cleveland, Coney Disneyworld, Kings Island, and Six Flags, which Island in Cincinnati, Idora Park in Youngstown, employed a combination of driving distance, Ohio, Belle Isle in Detroit, Crystal Beach in high entrance fees, and careful design to control Ontario outside Buffalo, Swope Park in Kansas access and visitor behavior. In the final analysis, City, Glen Echo Park in Montgomery County, when it came to desegregating amusement parks Maryland, and other such facilities, both north and many similar recreational facilities, African and south. In the process, she paints a series of Americans mostly won the battle but lost the war. scenarios remarkably similar to that of Fontaine By the early twenty-first century, many amuse- Ferry. Owners prohibited blacks, believing they ment parks became the subject of nostalgic histo- must do so to provide a clean and safe environ- ries that memorialized their “golden age.” With lit- ment for middle-class white families; black fami- tle sense of irony, these books inevitably recounted lies who challenged segregation met with violence the violence associated with the closing of the from park guards, police, and white teenagers; lib- parks while ignoring the threat of white violence eral integrationists filed lawsuits against violations that protected them during those glory years. In of state and local discrimination ordinances; radi- the introduction, Walcott argues that “one way cals conducted nonviolent demonstrations; federal to broaden our understanding of desegregation is courts ultimately struck down legal barriers; and by conceiving of it as part of a broader struggle owners complied but privatized swimming pools for control of and access to urban space” (3). The and dance halls to prevent intimate interracial same could be said of the struggle to control public mixing. But compliance did not mean acceptance, memory of these urban spaces. even after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Carl E. Kramer which left unclear whether amusement parks fell Indiana University Southeast / Kramer within its definition of “public accommodations.” Associates Inc.

Editorial Correction Due to an editing error, an incorrect image appeared on page 14 of the summer 2013 issue (volume 13). Below is the correct image and caption:

John C. Wright (1784-1861). CINCINNATI MUSEUM CENTER

FALL 2013 97 Announcements

Medicine, Marbles and Mayhem Collaborative effort examines the private lives of nineteenth century Cincinnatians

ver wonder what someone could learn by going through the items in your bathroom? Bob Genheimer, Cincinnati Museum Center’s George Rieveschl Curator of Archaeology, along with Master’s students from ENorthern Kentucky University, has excavated and studied local privy sites dating from the late 1800s. Starting February 1, Medicine, Marbles and Mayhem: Unearthed Stores from 19th Century Privies will showcase the unique items found during their excavations.

These privies, essentially nineteenth century outhouses, have yielded a fascinating collection that offer insight into the private and everyday lives of ordinary individuals. Looking through the artifacts, you will get a snapshot of what life was like for locals in the late 1800s—from items like dishware and medicine bottles to children’s toys, you will be surprised to uncover a world strangely similar to yet very different from life today.

Medicine, Marbles and Mayhem runs February 1 through May 26, 2014 and is a collaborative effort between Northern Kentucky University Masters of Public History and Anthropology students and Cincinnati Museum Center. For more information, visit cincymuseum.org or call (513) 287-7000.

98 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY ANNOUNCEMENTS

The People’s Princess Comes to the Queen City Don’t miss the FINAL stop of this world-renowned exhibition

ore than fifteen years after her death, Princess Diana’s memory still stirs interest and emotion. The award-winning exhibition Diana: A Celebration, which chronicles the life of the late Diana, Princess of MWales, will open at Cincinnati Museum Center on February 14, 2014. This will be the final showing of the renowned exhibition before the items return to her sons in England to be preserved for future generations.

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The exhibition presents the life and humanitarian work of Princess Diana through nine galleries containing one hundred fifty objects ranging from her royal wed- ding gown and twenty eight of her designer dresses to family heirlooms, personal mementos, paintings, and rare home videos and photos. The items help to showcase the legacy of one of the most remarkable women of her time. Her charm, beauty, and grace touched people worldwide and will do so once again when the exhibition visits Cincinnati.

The exhibition will also feature historic gowns and dresses from Cincinnati Museum Center’s collections that belonged to Cincinnati’s women philanthropists including Olivia Procter, Louise Nippert, Mrs. Russell Pogue Ziegler, Josephine Lytle, and Carole Ann Haile.

The final stop of the world-renowned exhibition, Diana: A Celebration, runs from February 14 to August 17, 2014 at Cincinnati Museum Center. Tickets are on sale now. For more information visit cincymuseum.org or call (513) 287-7000.

Treasures in Black and White Historic Photographs of Cincinnati opens April 25 Exhibit documents a century in the life of the Queen City

century’s worth of black and white photos from Cincinnati Museum Center’s collections will provide a window into the Queen City between 1860 and 1960. Through still images of Cincinnati’s people, com- merce,A transportation, infrastructure, and religious, cultural, and educational institutions, Treasures in Black and White documents the remarkable story of Cincinnati over a century of change and progress.

Treasures in Black and White is an opportunity to revisit the neighborhoods, architec- ture and people of Cincinnati from the outbreak of the Civil War to the 1960s. This visual history of a city provides a snapshot of the nation as it grew through five wars, economic depression, and great prosperity. The images will inspire, provide perspective, and evoke insight into former generations of Cincinnatians.

This fascinating and nostalgic exhibit utilizing historical artifacts and video in addition to more than sixty photographs runs April 25 through October 12, 2014 at Cincinnati Museum Center. For more information visit cincymuseum.org or call (513) 287-7000.

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