The Lost Gettysburg Address

by David T. Dixon

  Vallandigham reprinted a speech he gave in Congress in February 1861 titled “How Shall the Union Be Preserved?” In it, he proposed that any measure introduced in the U.S. Senate require the concurrence of a majority of the senators from each section: North, South, and West. He further recommended that the president and vice president be elected to six-year terms by a concurrent majority of state electors or by a special election if no popular majority was reached, as had been the case in 1860. In January 1863, Vallandigham predicted that, in the case of permanent disunion, “the whole NorthWest will go with the South,” citing evidence of “political revolution” in the fall 1862 elections. “The day which divides the North from the South,” Vallandigham argued, “the self-same day decrees the eternal divorce between the West and the East.” This was hardly the talk of the conservative Union man whom Val had professed to be. This was the naked ambition of a man who viewed the Ohio governor’s race as just another stepping-stone to a much greater destiny. Someone had to stop him.5

  Charles Anderson found himself in a familiar position. He was seriously ill, with no prospects for the future. He focused on ways that he could once again try to rebuild a career for himself and his family, but all he could think about was the health of his beloved country. Like a man hopelessly in love, Anderson was obsessed with finding ways to lend support to the great cause of his life. His service in the army had been brief. His diplomatic mission had ended in failure. He possessed one set of tools, however, that appeared useful in this titanic struggle—a keen mind, a silver tongue, and a powerful voice. As soon as he was well enough to stand, Anderson hit the road with a message designed to shore up support for the war effort. The threat of Vallandigham’s dangerous ideas moved him to action.

  Anderson began to assemble support for a Union Party effort that would transcend the incessant bickering between Democrats and Republicans and focus on uniting behind the army and the Lincoln administration. He rallied the officers of the Ohio regiments at Murfreesboro to draft a set of resolutions that denounced Peace Democrats in the North as traitors and demanded a mass meeting to be held in Cincinnati on February 23. Current and former governors of both Ohio and Indiana attended, along with General Lew Wallace and other key leaders of both major political parties. Anderson was too ill to attend the meeting at Pike’s Opera House but sent a letter instead that was later published. It spoke for the troops and their feelings of rage against their former friends, who were creating a “fire in the rear,” while they fought and died for their country.6

  Anderson argued strenuously against the so-called Peace Party. Reunion with the present Confederate government was impossible, he stressed, as the regime was “a despotism the most absolute and unmitigated upon the globe.” The North could not place their trust in the same conspirators who had plotted and carried out abject treason and dominated a formerly free people by the power of a slaveholding oligarchy. This is a war between two opposite ideals of government, Anderson declared. The South, by continuing to breed and hold slaves, had committed to a Spartan-like society of rule by brute force. Their thirst for more lands to accommodate their increasing numbers of slave captives promised an inevitable war of conquest against the free states, Anderson predicted. The threat of a hostile, adjacent neighbor state would turn the North into a military republic.

  To Vallandigham’s prediction that an imagined West section might unite with the Southern Confederacy, Anderson did not hide his disgust. In like fashion, he decried, any Christian gentleman could “strangle or poison his beautiful, diligent, virtuous, intelligent, amiable, and lawful wife, and then unite his destinies with the most filthy, diseased, abandoned harlot he can find.” The Southern oligarchy was, to Anderson’s view, the Delilah to his Union Samson. Was secession not horrible enough that Vallandigham wanted it to happen all over again? History had proven that the “let us alone” argument of the South was a canard. After all that had transpired and amid declarations from both sides to such conflicting ideas of social organization, these two sections could not coexist as separate nations. One idea had to prevail. Anderson emphasized that he did not want to prosecute the war and crush the rebellion out of feelings of revenge for the injuries that the South had caused him. On the contrary, it pained him to contemplate the ruin of his native land. He still loved the Southern people. He just hated their treason.7

  A similar meeting took place in Columbus, Ohio, on March 3. Governor Andrew Johnson of Tennessee was the keynote speaker. He was still a Democrat, Johnson explained, but any Democrat who talked of compromise was a traitor to his country. He did not believe in fighting a war to free the slaves, but if their emancipation was necessary to put down the rebellion, he would do what needed to be done in order to save the Union. As Anderson’s health improved, he joined a bandwagon of like-minded speakers that fanned out across the state. Public opinion was turning back toward a more vigorous prosecution of the war, Governor Tod wrote to General William T. Sherman in early March. The new Union Party, formed to bridge the gap between abolition-leaning Republicans and conservative Democrats who also supported the war, was a force to be reckoned with. Anderson could wave the bloody shirt with the best of them.

  Vallandigham was every bit Anderson’s equal as a speaker and drew huge crowds of Copperheads in his bid to claim the governor’s chair. His rhetoric became more and more incendiary, as he tested the limits of free speech in wartime. When General Ambrose E. Burnside, commander of the Department of the Ohio, issued Order Number 38, which made it illegal to criticize the Union war effort, he took aim at Peace Democrats like Vallandigham, who were actively undermining support for the army. Anyone convicted of aiding the enemy, Burnside declared, was a spy and a traitor and would suffer death. The mere act of “declaring sympathies for the enemy,” Burnside decreed in his order, “will no longer be tolerated in this department.” Vallandigham’s supporters relished the thought of their champion being painted as David, clad in a garment of civil liberties, and doing battle with one of King Lincoln’s Goliaths. A campaign song was born:

  O brothers don’t forget the time when Burnside was our fate,

  And the laws were superseded by order 38.

  Then, like a free-born western man,

  Our Val spoke brave and true,

  O when he’s chosen governor,

  What will poor Burnside do?

  Won’t he skedaddle,

  As he’s well used to do?8

  Burnside did not skedaddle or even wait for the election. He took action. The general cited quotations from Vallandigham’s speeches in which the Democrat accused Lincoln of prosecuting the war not for the preservation of the Union but for “the purpose of crushing out liberty and erecting a despotism.” Vallandigham further suggested that the president should have accepted the mediation efforts of France, restored the Constitution as it was, and ended the war honorably. By suggesting that Lincoln and his military authorities had acted with “a base usurpation of arbitrary authority,” Vallandigham encouraged resistance, discouraged enlistment, and therefore aided the enemy. Burnside arrested Vallandigham at home in his nightclothes on May 5. In his zeal to silence a traitor, the general created a martyr.

  A military tribunal took just two days to convict Vallandigham and sentence him to prison at Fort Warren in Boston Harbor. Four days later, former Ohio senator George E. Pugh applied for a writ of habeas corpus on Vallandigham’s behalf. The U.S. District Court judge denied it. Congress, after all, had conferred the right to suspend habeas corpus, among other war powers, to President Lincoln two months earlier. Reaction to Vallandigham’s conviction was immediate. The governors of New York and New Jersey howled in protest, suggesting that the arrest was not only illegal but amounted to “military despotism.” Lincoln was angry too, as he felt that Burnside should have consulted him before he overreached. In an effort to save face and mollify some of his sharpest critics, the president altered Vallandigham’s sentence and ordered him to be deported to the Confederate States.

/>   Vallandigham’s supporters in Dayton were incensed. They took out their hostility on the city’s Republican newspaper, burning the offices of the Dayton Journal to the ground, along with half a city block. Martial law was declared. Vallandigham was the former editor of the rival Dayton Empire, whose editor had been shot and killed by local Republican Henry M. Brown the previous November. In that event a melee had followed in which the prison guards holding Brown fired on a crowd of angry Democrats who had assaulted them with stones. Vallandigham’s sudden martyrdom created a public relations nightmare for Lincoln. Burnside’s rash action had spurred a Democratic Party revival, not just in Ohio but throughout the North and the West. National unity was threatened and the war effort potentially compromised.

  Unless Lincoln acted quickly to control popular opinion, his party and his presidency would be in big trouble. In a stroke of public relations genius, the president employed logic to help him out of this predicament. Vallandigham had not been arrested because he was a threat to the administration or the commanding general, Lincoln emphasized. He was prosecuted “because he was damaging the army, upon the existence of which, the life of the nation depends,” Lincoln asked, “Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of the wily agitator who induces him to desert?” The Democrats could hardly reply.

  Another problem was that Vallandigham did not want to join the rebels, and the Confederate government did not want him either. “I am a citizen of Ohio and of the United States,” he declared when he crossed rebel lines. “I am here within your lines by force and against my will,” he continued. “I therefore surrender myself to you as a prisoner of war.” Jefferson Davis did not know quite what to do with this odd character, so he invoked the same law as he had used with Anderson two years earlier. Vallandigham was declared an “alien enemy” and transported under guard to Wilmington, North Carolina. As soon as he could arrange his own exodus from the South, Vallandigham hopped aboard a blockade-runner to Bermuda and made his way to Canada. Having become the most famous American exile, he relished the attention. Visitors frequented his new campaign headquarters at a hotel in Windsor, Ontario, where he formally declared his intention to run for Ohio’s governorship in absentia. As Republicans vilified Vallandigham, Ohio Democrats rose to defend his honor.9

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Severing the Head of the Snake

  THE OHIO DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION opened on June 11, 1863, to a buzz like few meetings in the history of the Buckeye State. Everyone was talking about Clement Vallandigham. Party leaders like Samuel S. Cox and George W. Maypenny were convinced that Vallandigham’s nomination would be the death knell for the Democrats. The rank and file, however, worshipped him. When it came time to decide the nomination, the result was never in doubt. Vallandigham carried the convention by a vote of 411 to 11. One of his disciples published a long poem in the Hamilton True Telegraph a few days after the convention. Titled “Vallandigham: The Bastiled Hero,” the rhyme began and ended with verses that, although not models of literary achievement, were heartfelt expressions of affection for their newly beatified champion:

  They bore him to a gloomy cell,

  And barred him from the light,

  Because he dared to tell

  The people what was right.

  Lift up thy head, O martyred brave,

  Thy chains shall broken be,

  The people come their friend to save—

  Look up, thou shall be free.1

  Anderson and his Union Party allies were concerned. They had recently witnessed public opinion turn on a dime, producing catastrophic results. Key Southern states such as Georgia were split evenly on the eve of secession just two years earlier. Voters there experienced a tide of emotion that led to overwhelming majorities for disunion. What Union supporters needed was a solid coalition of Republicans and “War Democrats” to keep Ohio voters focused on defeating the Confederacy and reuniting the country. They found their new leader in a most unexpected place.

  John Brough was a lifelong Democrat who had opposed Lincoln’s election in 1860 and had indicated that he would likely do so again in 1864. Brough was the president of the Bellefontaine and Indianapolis Railroad. He spent most of his time in Indiana but maintained his former home in Cleveland. On June 10, he gave an address in Ohio urging his fellow Democrats to support the administration’s war for the good of the country. Lincoln was the commander in chief. Brough reasoned, “Like a soldier in the ranks I hold it to be my duty to obey him . . . without questioning his policy in this great contest.” It was just the kind of simple and sincere profession of faith for which the Ohio press had been waiting for. Two Cincinnati dailies, the Commercial and the Enquirer, printed the speech and took up the call for Brough’s nomination. Even radicals in the Union Leagues jumped on the Brough bandwagon, as they did not stand a chance of having one of their true believers win in the fractious environment. Brough secured the nomination over incumbent governor David Tod on the first ballot.2

  Although Brough was an accomplished orator and respected businessman, prosperity had greatly enlarged his waistline. He cut a rather portly figure when compared to the tall, handsome Vallandigham. The new Union Party candidate needed a running mate who could compete on the stump with Vallandigham and the Democrat’s candidate for lieutenant governor, George E. Pugh. The attractive forty-one-year-old Pugh was a decorated veteran of the Mexican war, a former U.S. senator, and a well-respected attorney. With the very future of national unity seeming to rest on the fall elections, Union Party leaders desired a candidate whose own record of support for the Union cause was exemplary. They selected Charles Anderson.3

  Anderson did not attend the convention in Columbus. The day after the meeting closed on June 17, 1863, party leader John Caldwell wrote to the candidate to inform him of his nomination to run for lieutenant governor. The following day, Anderson received another letter from an old friend, newly elected U.S. congressman William Johnston. The congressman congratulated Anderson on his achievement and proposed a tongue-in-cheek campaign slogan: “Charlie is lean and Jack’s not that. A steak of lean and a steak of fat.” There would be few such humorous moments in this campaign, which has been remembered by many historians as one of the nastiest gubernatorial races in U.S. history.4

  One man who was not pleased about Anderson’s nomination was his brother and mentor, Larz. On June 26, Larz expressed displeasure at the thought of his youngest brother reentering politics. Politics was for the wealthy, Larz insisted. His brother appeared consistently on the verge of financial ruin. After Charles explained his rationale, however, his older brother gave him his blessing. Charles accepted the nomination on July 1. In his acceptance letter, he claimed that the election of Vallandigham to the governor’s chair would be “a greater calamity than the defeat and capture of any army we have in the field.” On July 4, Larz wrote a letter pledging his support. “I am glad that you have accepted the nomination,” Larz admitted, “not on your own account, but for the sake of the country.” His younger brother was making “a great sacrifice,” Larz realized, “against all personal predilections and objections, to duty and patriotism.” He advised Charles not to focus on the legality of Vallandigham’s arrest. Concentrate instead on the war as the way to save the Union, Larz pleaded. Knowing that his brother could not afford to make the run, Larz sent him five hundred dollars to use toward campaign expenses.5

  The Ohio gubernatorial election became a referendum on Lincoln’s war policies. The same day that Larz gave his blessing to Anderson’s candidacy, Lincoln’s generals were concluding two key battles that turned the tide of the war. Confederate defeats at Vicksburg and Gettysburg meant that a Union triumph was inevitable. Confederate general John H. Morgan’s alarming but ill-advised raid through Indiana and Ohio during July 8–26 also helped rally voters behind the Union cause. The biggest question was whether the public had the stomach for the additional young lives and treasure it would take to finish the job. Brough and
Anderson entered the race as the favorites when only weeks before the Democrats had held sway with public opinion.6

  The campaign was fierce, ugly, and violent. The pace was relentless. The candidates themselves retained an air of civility, but their minions were crass and even vulgar. One of Salmon P. Chase’s flunkies contacted Anderson, advising him to tone down his refined image on the stump. “Smoke and throw away your cigarettes,” Joseph Geiger wrote to the candidate on July 10. “Use a horse cock,” Geiger bleated, and “look like a man, not a female baby.” Anderson did not reply. The Dayton Empire, reborn after being temporarily censored by Burnside, lashed out at Anderson, branding him an “abolitionist” in the same vein as Joshua Giddings and Salmon Chase. “We cannot conceive how any man can long remain in such company,” the Empire sneered, “without becoming black.” In fact, Anderson despised the abolitionists nearly as much as he reviled the Copperheads.7

  Ohio senator John Sherman and his brother, General William T. Sherman, were personal friends of Anderson and lent their support. Senator Sherman hit the road delivering countless speeches in support of the Brough-Anderson ticket. He ridiculed Copperhead complaints about Vallandigham’s arrest and exile. If Democrats really must vote for someone they felt was wronged, then vote for Anderson, Sherman reasoned, “who suffered ten thousand times more at the hands of traitors” than had Vallandigham in his civilized banishment. General Sherman was typically blunt. Vallandigham’s supporters were cowards, the general insisted in an August letter to Anderson. “They try to cover up their cowardice with a plan of peace.” “I have seen such men in battle,” Sherman continued. “When bursting shells and hissing bullets made things uncomfortable, they would suddenly discover that they were sick or had left something back in camp. I am no voter but I have some 20 lb. rifles that have more sense than 4,100 of the voters of Ohio,” the general exclaimed. “If you want them say so.”