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Lambdin P. Milligan's Appeal for State's Rights

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Lambdin P. Milligan's Appeal for State's Rights Lambdin P. Milligan’s Appeal for State’s Rights and Constitutional Liberty during the Civil War Edited by Darwin Kelley* On the night of October 5-6,1864, during the Civil War, Lambdin P. Milligan was arrested at his home in Huntington, Indiana, by United States military authorities. Approximately two weeks later Milligan and four other Indiana citizens were brought to trial in Indianapolis before a military commission composed of twelve army officers. Charges against the five men included conspiracy against the United States government, affording aid and comfort to rebels against the authority of the United States, and inciting insurrection. In December, 1864, the commission found all five defendants guilty and sentenced three of them-including Milligan-to hang, another to imprisonment at hard labor for the duration of the war. The fifth man was released after he turned states evidence.’ Throughout the trial Major Henry L. Burnett, judge advocate and prosecutor, attempted to prove that Milligan, as a member of a secret, subversive society, had plotted to overthrow the government of the United States and establish a Northwestern Confederacy. Burnett asserted that the Huntington lawyer was a major general in the military branch of the allegedly traitorous Sons of Liberty, had openly sympathized with the southern rebellion and condemned the Union, and had advocated armed resistance to the draft. As partial proof of his accusations the judge advocate introduced a copy of a speech-as printed in the Cincinnati Gazette-which Milligan, a Peace Democrat, had made on August 13, 1864, at a Democratic mass meet- ing held in Fort Wayne.2 Since the Gazette had published verbatim only parts of Milligan’s speech and had condensed and summarized the rest, counsel for the accused attempted to block use of the abbreviated version on the grounds that it was incompetent evidence. Attorney James L. Cof- *Dr. Darwin Kelley teaches history at Elmhurst High School in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and is visiting lecturer in political science, Huntington College, Hunting ton, Indiana. Thanks are extended to Professors Bert Anson and Donald F. Car- mony for their suggestions during the preparation of this article. Especial thanks are given to Lorna Lutes Sylvester for her help in the editing process. 1 Kenneth M. Stampp, Indiana Politics during the Civil War (Indiana Histori- cal Collections, Vol. XXXI; Indianapolis, 1949), 249, 253, 262; Gilbert R. Tredway, “Indiana against the Administration, 1861-1865” (Ph.D. dissertation, Department of History, Indiana University, 1962), 292, 301-303. Tredway bases his account of the treason trials on the original longhand copies of the shorthand transcript of the trials located in the National Archives. The only published version of the trials is the highly selective and biased Benn Pitman (ed.), The Trials for Treason at Indhnapolis, Disclosing the Plans for Establishing a North-Western Confederacy . (Cincinnati, 1865), 73-77. Tried with Milligan were Stephen Horsey, William Bowles, Andrew Humphreys, and Horace Heffren. 2 Pitman, Trials for Treason, 88-89,120-22, 150-57, and passim. 264 Indiana Magazine of History froth argued that “the omissions might give a different construction to what was said . .”:; The military commission, however, dis- allowed Coffroth’s reasoning and permitted Burnett to question the Gazette reporter concerning his remembrance of the speech and the article. According to the newspaperman, Milligan had denied that the war was right or that the President had the power to coerce a state, had asserted “that the war itself was disunion, and that the Union could not be restored by war,” had declared that the war had made the government a despotism, and had called President Abraham Lin- coln a tyrant and an usurper. The reporter admitted, however, that Milligan had stated: “if the war was right, the draft was right, and if they considered the war right, and were good citizens, they would not grumble about the draft.”’ The somewhat questionable legality of introducing the Gazette’s version of Milligan’s speech and the rather flimsy evidence against the lawyer contained therein were but samples of the antics performed by the military commission and the judge advocate during the trials. As one historian has aptly described the proceedings: “The scene which . ensued resembled ope’ra bouffe far more than a trial for trea~on.”~ Another scholar has suggested that the treason trials were “intended to grind grist for the political campaign preceding the presidential election of November 7.”fi Undeniably Milligan’s arrest and trial re- sulted from the political situation in Indiana during the Civil War. Both Democrats and Republicans practiced bitterly partisan politics throughout the war period. The Democracy raged against a Repub- lican administration which allowed arbitrary arrests, suspended the writ of habeas corpus, imposed military rule, and passed economic measures which Democrats considered heretical and designed to in- jure the Northwest. The party inveighed furiously against the Presi- dent’s Emancipation Proclamation and called for a peace convention to end a war which many thought could not be won anyway. Repub- licans countered by claiming that all Democrats were members of se- cret treasonable societies, the purpose of which was to overthrow the national and state governments or secede from the Union.’ In Re- publican terminology Copperhead, butternut, traitor, and Democrat were all synonymous. One writer accurately summarized the situa- 3 Ibid., 150-51. rlbid., 152. j Stampp, Indiana Politics during the Civil War, 248. 6 Frank L. Klement, The Copperheads in the Middle West (Chicago, 1960), 198. 7 For discussions of the political situation in Indiana during the Civil War see Emma Lou Thornbrough, Indiana in the Civil War Era, 1850-1880 (Indianapolis, 1965); Stampp, Indiana Politics during the Civil War; Lorna Lutes Sylvester, “Oliver P. Morton and Hoosier Politics during the Civil War” (Ph.D. dissertation, Department of History, Indiana University, 1968). Milligan’s Appeal for State’s Rights 265 tion when he wrote: “Intellectual tolerance was not the order of the day.”8 Of Milligan himself, another author has commented: “It seems clear that when the time came for a squaring of accounts between Milligan and the administration, his open and brazen espousal of a political philosophy regarded as dangerously subversive counted more heavily against him than his real or imaginary participation in con- spiracies against the g~vernment.”~The Huntington lawyer was a strict agrarian, a western sectionalist, and a Jeffersonian Democrat who wanted to stay the course of the Industrial Revolution in Amer- ica. He was a caustic antagonist of eastern manufacturing interests and constantly referred to the “pecuniary vassalage” to which the cotton nabobs of New England and the iron mongers of Pennsylvania were subjecting the Northwest.lU Milligan combined his antipathy for commerce and business with his disapproval of the war. He had been a “strong advocate of compromise and an opponent of coercion” before the conflict began, and unlike many of his fellow Democrats he did not become a supporter of a war for the Union when fighting became in- evitable.” In August, 1861, at a Huntington County Democratic con- vention he had described the war as “illegally brought on by an usurper, for the furtherance of the ends of a foul, fanatical abolition party.”12 Milligan frequently maintained that the South had been driven to secession and insisted that the war had been started only to further the interests of the New England manufacturers.13 In regard to the Constitution the Huntington lawyer was the “strictest of strict constructionists”“ and was bitterly critical of what he considered the Lincoln administration’s attempts to subvert the law of the land. Mil- ligan’s speeches indicate that he thought the Republican party was at- tempting to retain power by illegal means, and he constantly com- plained of “Federal misrule, usurpation, lawlessness, and crime.”15 Several months after the Civil War began, the Democratic Indianapolis *Kenneth M. Stampp, “The Impact of the Civil War upon Hoosier Society,” Indiana Magazine of History, XXXVIII (March, 1942), 13. 9 Tredway, “Indiana against the Administration,” 232. There are few com- plete accounts of Milligan’s life and career. Tredway bases his conclusions about the Huntington lawyer on numerous speeches which the Peace Democrat made, obituaries, newspaper accounts, letters, and such published works as John A. Marshall, An American Bastile (Philadelphia, 1879), and Florence L. Grayston, “Lambdin P. Milligan-A Knight of the Golden Circle,” Indiana Magazine of His- tory, XLIII (December, 1947), 379-91. 10 Tredway, “Indiana against the Administration,” 226-30 ; Klement, Copper- heads in the Middle West, 108, 116; Thornbrough, Indiana in the Civil War Era, 216. 11 Tredway, “Indiana against the Administration,” 227. 15 Huntington Democrat, August 15, 1861, quoted ibid. la Tredway, “Indiana against the Administration,” 228 ; Klement, Copperheads in the Middle West, 108; Indianapolis Daily State Sentinel, July 8, 1864. l4 Tredway, “Indiana against the Administration,” 232. 1.7 Indianapolis Daily State Sentinel, July 8, 1864, quoted ibid., 227. 266 Indiana Magazine of History Daily State Sentinel reported that, in one speech, “Milligan thoroughly dissected and exposed the corruptions, incompetency and utter imbe- cility of King Lincoln’s Administration, concluding with an eloquent appeal in favor of maintaining the Union by peaceable and amicable adj ustment.”16 The Huntington Democrat’s vociferous expression of such views and his participation in Democratic party politics brought him to the attention of Indiana Republicans early in the war. Milligan served as chairman of the Huntington County Democratic Central Committee during 1861 and 1862 and was apparently one of the most popular speakers in his area.17 In August, 1861, William R. Holloway, Governor Oliver P. Morton’s secretary, wrote to District Attorney John Hanna : “Enclosed please find some extracts from the Huntington Herald.
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