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Politics and Treason in the Civil War North

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Politics and Treason in the Civil War North ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: “TO AID THEIR REBEL FRIENDS”: POLITICS AND TREASON IN THE CIVIL WAR NORTH Jonathan W. White, Doctor of Philosophy, 2008 Directed By: Professor Herman Belz Department of History In “To Aid Their Rebel Friends” I argue that Civil War-era politicians relied on meanings of treason from old English law and Revolutionary-era America to broaden the definition of treason beyond the narrow definition found in the Constitution. In doing so, they gave new meaning to words and phrases in the Constitution that had been dormant for many years. Treason is the only crime defined in the U.S. Constitution: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” The next sentence states that treason must be an “overt Act,” thus precluding judges or politicians from declaring that conspiracy or words might be deemed treason. In defining treason narrowly the Framers hoped to depoliticize a crime that for centuries had been political in nature. In early modern England kings could define treason however they chose and force judges to convict the accused, simply to eliminate political opposition. Moreover, since the fourteenth century it was a treasonable offence to imagine or compass the king’s death. The Founders hoped to avoid such occurrences on American soil. Despite the Founders’ precaution of carefully defining treason in the nation’s fundamental law, the Civil War transformed how treason was understood in American legal and political culture. The definition of treason broadened to include more than just overt acts of war. Included in its meaning were also disloyal or treasonous words. Sedition was punished, though not always as a defined crime. Speech codes were enforced in several northern states, and loyalty oaths were required at all levels of government and in nearly every jurisdiction. Violations of these laws, or refusals to take prescribed oaths, opened up northern citizens to charges of treason and disloyalty. In essence, the line between words and deeds blurred so that someone might be considered a traitor for speaking “traitorously” or for harboring “disloyal” sentiments. Beyond looking at the federal level, this dissertation also examines how understandings of treason broadened at the state and local levels, something that no scholar has yet attempted to do. “TO AID THEIR REBEL FRIENDS” POLITICS AND TREASON IN THE CIVIL WAR NORTH By Jonathan W. White Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2008 Advisory Committee: Professor Herman Belz, chair Professor Mark A. Graber Professor James A. Henretta Professor Whitman Ridgway Professor Leslie S. Rowland © Copyright by Jonathan W. White 2008 “If we shall constitutionally elect a President, it will be our duty to see that you submit. Old John Brown has just been executed for treason against a state. We cannot object, even though he agreed with us in thinking slavery wrong. That cannot excuse violence, bloodshed, and treason. It could avail him nothing that he might think himself right. So, if constitutionally we elect a President, and therefore you undertake to destroy the Union, it will be our duty to deal with you as old John Brown has been dealt with. We shall try to do our duty. We hope and believe that in no section will a majority so act as to render such extreme measures necessary.” Abraham Lincoln Speech at Leavenworth, Kansas December 3, 1859 ii “When a people are mad, their representatives are seldom wise. Amid the volcanic throes of revolution the voice of reason is too seldom heeded, and passion too often rules supreme. It is only when the storm has passed and the natural calm succeeded that impartial history records her judgment of the wisdom or folly, the madness or sobriety of our actions. The extravagances of the present will amaze the future; and even we who are actors in our nation’s saddest drama will wonder at our delusions and our follies when time shall have soothed the passions and experience taught us wisdom. Reason, justice, common sense have nothing to do with it; for the reason that reason, justice, and common sense have well nigh fled the land.” Senator Willard Saulsbury Speech in the U.S. Senate January 29, 1862 iii Preface Sir William Blackstone was not only the preeminent legal thinker of his day—he was also a poet. Although his reputation for verse is nearly forgotten, it was still remembered by many Americans of the Civil War generation. In the midst of a heated debate on the floor of the Pennsylvania legislature in 1864, one state representative noted: “It has been said somewhere—I think by Blackstone—that you can judge the character of a people by their poetry.” George Sharswood, a state-level district judge in Philadelphia, remarked in 1860 that Blackstone “devoted a large portion of his time to elegant literature, and had cultivated to a considerable extent the art of poetry.” “To his early predilection for poetry,” noted another nineteenth-century biographer, “we may reasonably attribute the formation of that exquisite style and method with which he afterwards embellished and illustrated the law.”1 Whether or not Blackstone actually said that the character of a people could be judged by their poetry, the sentiment still seems a fitting starting point for this study of the law of treason in the North during the American Civil War. Treason, to be sure, is the only crime defined in the U.S. Constitution. At root, then, what follows is a study in constitutional, legal, and political history. Nevertheless, I take Blackstone’s point to be a valuable lesson—that we can understand the constitutional and legal culture of the Civil 1 George Bergner, The Legislative Record: Containing the Debates and Proceedings of the Pennsylvania Legislature for the Session of 1864 (Harrisburg: The “Telegraph” Steam Book and Job Office, 1864), 224; George Sharswood, ed., Commentaries on the Laws of England, in Four Books, by Sir William Blackstone, Knt., 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Childs & Peterson, 1860), 1:x; W. N. Welsby, Lives of Eminent English Judges of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London: S. Sweet, 1846), 330. iv War era more fully by looking beyond court cases, constitutions, treatises and statutes. To be sure, these traditional sources of constitutional history are both valuable and prevalent in this study. Still, they tell only part of the story. This is especially true considering the paucity of actual treason cases that went to trial during the Civil War. To gain a more complete understanding of how Civil War era Americans defined treason, this study borrows from the sources and methods of social, cultural, intellectual, and military history. It employs sermons, poems and songs, along with letters, diaries, newspapers, and the other more traditional source materials of constitutional and political history. In doing so, my hope is that the reader will gain a more comprehensive appreciation for how definitions of words like treason, loyalty, and nationalism were molded and changed at different times and in different places during the tumultuous Civil War. Treason was a crime against the nation. Civil War Americans believed it not only a destructive political crime, but also a grave moral transgression because it struck at the God-given liberty of all Americans. If a nation that was conceived in liberty could be overthrown, then there would be nothing left to preserve that liberty for the living and their posterity. The nation, therefore, must put down all treason in order to preserve itself and its mission. All citizens, from sea to sea, were bound to bear their portion of the burdens in this endeavor. In a poem entitled “Not Yet,” published in the New York Ledger on August 17, 1861, William Cullen Bryant captured the very essence of this national struggle for republican liberty. Using metaphors that transcended the living generations and v geographical regions of the United States, Bryant argued that it was every American’s duty to join in this fight against treason.2 I quote here the first stanza: Oh country, marvel of the earth! O realm to sudden greatness grown! The age that gloried in thy birth, Shall it behold thee overthrown? Shall traitors lay that greatness low? No! Land of Hope and Blessing, No! 2 Faith Barrett and Cristanne Miller, eds., “Words for the Hour”: A New Anthology of American Civil War Poetry (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005), 61-62. vi Acknowledgements The completion of this dissertation would not have been possible without the help and support of many people and institutions. Fellowships from the H. B. Earhart Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation enabled me to spend the final four years of graduate school focusing on my dissertation and other writing projects. Research travel grants from the Department of History at the University of Maryland, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, the Filson Historical Society, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, the Friends of the Princeton University Library, ABC-Clio, the Society for Military History, as well as the Littleton- Griswold Research Grant in Legal History from the American Historical Association, the C. Allan and Marjorie Braun Fellowship from the Huntington Library in San Marino, Cal., and the General and Mrs. Matthew B. Ridgway Research Grant, U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle, Pa., all made the research for this dissertation possible. Several people generously opened up their homes to me during research trips. Steph Porter allowed me to stay with her in Harrisburg for two weeks.
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