Murray Ledger &
Times
Murray, KY
Guest Voice
May 4,
2007
Lincoln’s
Greatness
Still Prevails
"The Fire in the Rear"
By
Winfield H. Rose
Department of Government, Law & International
Affairs
Murray State University
(The views expressed here are those of the author and no one else.)
Abraham Lincoln was criticized and
ridiculed
without mercy during his presidency, but he has been vindicated by
history. Virtually every survey reserves
the honor of our greatest president to Lincoln and Lincoln alone. He held our country together during its
greatest trial and purged it of its greatest sin at the same time.
Perhaps
the greatest problem Lincoln had to deal with while
President was
what he called “the fire in the rear.”
This fire in the rear was the intense and unrelenting opposition
to him
and to the war by a large group of anti-war northern Democrats led by
Congressman Clement Vallandigham of Ohio.
Known by history as Copperheads, they wanted the war to end, the North
to lose, Southern secession to succeed, and slavery to continue.
An
excellent new book titled Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of
Lincoln’s
Opponents in the North by
Jennifer
L. Weber was published
by the Oxford University Press in 2006.
In this book Weber makes several points.
First, opposition to the war “was not the peripheral issue that
many
Civil War histories have made it out to be” but it was widespread, deep
and
significant, and likely to cost Lincoln reelection in 1864. The Copperheads dominated the platform
committee at the 1864 Democratic presidential nominating convention and
demanded an immediate cessation of hostilities in that document.
A
second point Weber makes is that the Copperheads’ opposition made it
more
difficult to fight the war by resisting army recruitment and
conscription and
by encouraging draft dodging and desertion.
At times the Army had to divert troops from the field to
maintain order
in civilian areas. Thus we see that the
Copperheads undoubtedly prolonged the war.
Weber
also says that the antiwar efforts of the Copperheads politicized many
Union
soldiers and made lifelong Republicans out of them.
History bears her out. Only two
Democrats (Cleveland and Wilson)
were elected president between Lincoln in 1864 and Franklin Roosevelt
in 1932
by which time the Civil War generation had passed away.
The
Copperheads hated Lincoln, they hated what he stood
for, and
they hated what he did to save the union and win the war.
Lincoln had been the object of unkind words
for many years due to his physical appearance, rural upbringing and
lack of
formal education, but the Copperheads raised the calumniation to a new
height
with such terms as “widow maker,” “orphan maker,” despot, liar, thief,
buffoon,
fiend, and butcher. I will leave to your
imagination the language they used after Lincoln issued the Emancipation
Proclamation.
The
Copperheads would have preserved the union if that could have been
easily done,
but it could not be easily done and therefore preserving the union, to
them,
was not worth the cost. Not only was the
war not worth winning, the success of the Confederate armies in the
first years
of the war led the Copperheads to conclude that the war could not be
won. When Lincoln introduced the draft to
help win the
war, the Copperheads opposed him. When Lincoln suspended habeas corpus
in order to
imprison Southern saboteurs and terrorists, he was denounced by the
Copperheads
as a dictator and opposed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. When Lincoln persuaded Congress to
adopt an
income tax and paper money to finance the war, he was again opposed and
condemned. As Weber says, “Peace
Democrats never recognized the magnitude of the emergency facing the
nation.” Thank God Lincoln did.
While
the Copperheads opposed Lincoln on many grounds, they
reserved their
strongest opposition to the Emancipation Proclamation.
In Weber’s words,
“Even
in a time when a racist view of the world was the norm, the attitude of
these
Democrats toward African Americans was startlingly virulent. Peace Democrats universally supported
slavery, believing it to be the best situation for a degraded race. . .
.
. They thought the president was acting
beyond his constitutional purview in issuing the proclamation, and they
raved
about what freemen would do to Northern workers, not to mention their
wives and
daughters.
When
Lincoln issued his Emancipation
Proclamation
he unleashed the Copperheads’ greatest fury.
Lincoln knew what he was doing;
he knew he would be opposed, but he
also knew he was doing what was right.
Another
right thing Lincoln did was to dismiss
General
McClellan, a legend only in his own mind.
More importantly, Lincoln recognized Grant’s
ability as a
military commander and brought him east to deal with Lee.
Nothing succeeds like success, the old saying
goes, and Lincoln’s political courage and
skill plus Grant’s military courage
and skill, coupled with Sherman’s, brought victory of both kinds in 1864 and in
1865.
The
Confederacy was defeated. The Union was saved.
Slavery was abolished. Antiwar
Democrats known as Copperheads were
defeated and discarded to the ignominious dustbin of discredited
history. The fire in the rear was put out. That fire, however, was put out at very high
cost, a cost that was, no doubt, made greater by the Copperheads
themselves.
Was the victory worth the
cost? What if the Copperheads had
prevailed? What if McClellan had defeated Lincoln in 1864?
What if the peace Democrats had won the
Congressional elections of 1864 and implemented their platform? There likely would have been an immediate
armistice in place and recognition of Southern independence soon
thereafter. Slavery would likely have
continued in the
Confederacy for an indefinite period, perhaps until the end of the 19th
century when it might have collapsed from its inherent immorality and
economic
decrepitude. But what if it had not
collapsed? How long would
human slavery have been tolerated and even defended
by the Confederate states?
Relations
between the United States and the Confederacy would
not have
been good. Much bitterness would have
remained on both sides for a long time.
The fugitive slave problem would have persisted and grown much
worse, and
I can imagine the construction of a “Berlin wall” along the Mason-Dixon line to keep blacks in the
South. In addition, there no doubt would
have been
competition and conflict between the United States and the Confederacy over
the
admission of western territories as new states.
I see the United States capital being moved from Washington, D.C. to a more central and
less exposed
location. But far worse than this, I see
the principle of secession affirmed and fragmentation and
“balkanization”
following.
After
winning independence, the South would have made a vain attempt to
return to its
by-gone “glory” days.
The United States, on the other hand, would
have moved
steadily forward with industrialization and expansion across the
continent and
prospered as a nation, but as a nation eventually of 39 states? Probably not.
But
something would have been very wrong. America would not have been whole. America would not have been
complete. That city shining on a hill
would not have
shone as brightly. America would have said that if
the price of
freedom and justice is high, it is not worth paying.
An easy victory is o.k. but a hard one is
not. The
20th century with its great
wars makes me very uncomfortable with the prospect of a divided and
morally
weakened America.
Even
though I was born and raised in Virginia, I am glad Lincoln and the North won the
Civil War, and
I am glad the antiwar Copperhead Democrats were defeated.
The United States and the world have been
much better
for it. The real question here is “Are
freedom and justice worth the cost?” Our
postwar history says
the Civil War was worth the cost. As President Kennedy
said in
his address to the nation at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, “The
price
of freedom is high but Americans have always paid it.”
Kennedy could not have said that if the
Copperheads had prevailed. And, I am
glad Jennifer Weber has written this most excellent book that proclaims
Lincoln’s greatness once again
and details
the Copperheads’ treachery and treason.
They were despicable and truly deserve the condemnation of
history.
Winfield
H. Rose
May 4, 2007
Murray, KY