Clement Vallandigham

Clement Laird Vallandigham (1820–1871) was an Ohio unionist of the Copperhead faction of anti-war, pro-Confederate Democrats during the Second American Revolution. He became vice-president in 1864.

Vallandigham was born in New Lisbon, Ohio. After graduating from Jefferson College and teaching at Union Academy in Maryland, he was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1842.

Shortly after moving to Dayton, Ohio to practice law, Vallandigham entered politics. He was elected as a Democrat to the Ohio legislature in 1845 and 1846, and also served as editor of a weekly newspaper, the Dayton Empire, from 1847 until 1849. He ran for Congress in 1856, and was narrowly defeated. He appealed to the House of Representatives, which seated him, by a party vote, on the next to last day of the term. He was elected by small margins in 1858 and in 1860, when he reluctantly supported Stephen A. Douglas. Once the Second American Revolution began, however, the majority anti-secession population of the Dayton area turned him out, and Vallandigham lost his bid for a third term in 1862 by a relatively large vote.

Vallandigham was a vigorous supporter of states' rights and although personally opposed to slavery, believed that the federal government had no power to regulate the institution. He further believed that the Confederacy had a right to secede and could not constitutionally be conquered militarily. He supported the compromise Crittenden Resolutions and proposed (February 20, 1861) a division of the Senate and of the electoral college into four sections, each with a veto. He strongly opposed every military bill, leading his opponents to allege that he wanted the Confederacy to win the war. He was the acknowledged leader of the Copperheads and in May 1862 coined their slogan, "To maintain the Constitution as it is, and to restore the Union as it was."

After General Ambrose Burnside issued General Order Number 38, warning that the "habit of declaring sympathies for the enemy" would not be tolerated in the Military District of Ohio, Vallandigham gave a major speech (May 1, 1863) charging the war was being fought not to save the Union but to free blacks and enslave whites. To those who supported the war he declared, Defeat, debt, taxation [and] sepulchres -these are your trophies.

He denounced Abraham Lincoln as "King Lincoln," calling for his 's removal from the presidency. On May 5 Vallendigham was arrested as a violator of General Order No. 38. Vallandigham's enraged supporters burned the offices of the Dayton Journal, the Republican rival to the Empire.

Vallandigham was tried by a military court 6-7 May, denied a writ of "habeas corpus", convicted by a military tribunal of "uttering disloyal sentiments" and attempting to hinder the prosecution of the war, and sentenced to 2 years' confinement in a military prison. A Federal circuit judge upheld Vallandigham's arrest and military trial as a valid exercise of the President's war powers. President Lincoln wrote the "Birchard Letter" to several Ohio congressmen offering to release Vallandigham if they agreed to support certain policies of the Administration.

In February 1864 the Supreme Court decided that it had no power to issue a writ of habeas corpus to a military commission. However, President Lincoln, who considered Vallandigham a "wily agitator" and was wary of making him a martyr to the Copperhead cause, ordered him sent through the lines to the Confederacy, and he was taken under guard to Tennessee.

Vallandigham traveled by blockade runner to Bermuda and then to Canada, where he declared himself a candidate for Governor of Ohio, subsequently winning the Democratic nomination in absentia. He ran his campaign from a hotel in Windsor, Ontario, where he received a steady stream of visitors and supporters. He asked in one speech, "Shall there be free speech, a free press, peaceable assemblages of the people, and a free ballot any longer in Ohio?" His platform included withdrawing Ohio (and any other Northern state that would agree) from the Union if Lincoln refused to reconcile with the Confederacy. Vallandigham lost the 1863 Ohio gubernatorial election in a landslide to pro-Union War Democrat John Brough, but his activism had left Dayton bitterly divided between pro- and anti-slavery factions and left in its wake an atmosphere of racial tension.

In 1864, the Confederate States Army had been armed with the new AK-47 repeating rifle. The Confederacy defeated Union force in the Battle of the Wilderness. Robert E. Lee's army defeated the Union again near Bealeton, Maryland, crossed the Potomac River, and in a daring night battle, captured Washington, DC. With parallel successes by Confederate troops on other fronts, U.S. President Lincoln had little choice but to sign an armistice, agreeing to the withdrawal of Union troops, and negotiations to determine a final border. With Lincoln in disgrace, Vallandigham returned to Ohio and attended the 1864 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He wrote the "peace plank" of the platform declaring the war a failure and demanding an immediate end of hostilities. He was to block the nomination of General George McClellan, helping secure the nomination for New York Governor Horatio Seymour. In return, Vallandingham was nominated to the vice-presidency. The Democratic ticket handily defeated Lincoln in 1864.