Recent allegations of sedition against members of Congress are not new. During the Civil War, a Democrat member of Congress was convicted of sedition by a military tribunal for urging Union soldiers to disobey “illegal orders” and desert.
Forty-four-year-old Ohio Congressman Clement Laird Vallandigham was a dynamic lawyer with mesmerizing oratorical skills who drew huge crowds. Vallandigham believed the war to be unconstitutional, and “waged only to free negros and enslave white men.” Therefore, the orders issued by the troops’ officers were illegal – he urged Union troops to disobey them: “Refuse to obey the orders of your officers.” He believed the Southern states would never return “back into the fellowship and love at the point of a bayonet.” The Ohioan called for an armistice and an “honorable peace,” which struck a chord in a seemingly forever war that took the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans. “‘Peace’ is on a million lips,” trumpeted one newspaper. He railed against Lincoln, calling him a King. Vallandigham argued that the First Amendment protected his activities. With his charisma and influence, the Ohio Congressman would rise to become the most powerful member of the Democratic Party, and with his rise, a mighty peace movement that the Confederate Secret Service planned to harness along with Vallandigham.
In Congress on January 14, 1863, Vallandigham delivered his famous “Against the War” speech that struck both parties like a tsunami. He criticized Lincoln’s unconstitutional actions and the hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded, along with the treasure spent on what he called a failed war. On May 1, 1863, the Copperhead leader addressed a crowd of 10,000 jammed into the tiny town square of Mount Vernon, Ohio. He condemned the war, urged the throng not to support it, and expressed sympathy for the Confederacy. The Ohioan and the movement he led publicly encouraged Union soldiers to desert.
Vallandigham’s speeches expressed outrage over the loss of civil rights caused by the war, resonating with many Midwesterners. His speeches contained vile racist diatribes similar to those he had previously delivered in Congress before the war, including the statement: “[The Constitution] means white—pure white!—and not any shade. The term ‘white’ is a word of exclusion against the whole negro race, In every degree. Whoever has a distinct and visible admixture of the blood of that race is not white; and it is an utter confusion of language to call him white.” Vallandigham argued that the war was not about preserving the Union but about freeing enslaved people and undermining white liberties.
Lincoln feared that anarchy and a reign of terror could break out in the North, similar to the internecine fighting in Missouri. Dubbed the “fire in the rear,” and using the authority from his controversial 1861 suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, Lincoln ordered the Ohioan’s arrest, and a military tribunal sentenced him to prison. Vallandigham’s incarceration hit a nerve; thousands of his supporters firebombed several buildings in Dayton and killed a young infantry officer who tried to quell the mob.
Responding to calls from Democrats and even some Republicans outraged by the arrest of a former member of Congress, Lincoln commuted the sentence and settled on exiling the firebrand to the South. Vallandigham left the South, evaded Federal forces and escaped to Canada during the summer of 1863. From there, he won the Democratic nomination and campaigned in absentia for the governorship of Ohio in the fall of 1863. He also led a secret organization with shadowy ties to the Confederacy known as the Sons of Liberty.
In the parlor of a house in Ontario, Vallandigham took tens of thousands in Confederate gold to fund his peace movement. The Secret Service asset told his handlers in the summer of 1864 that the Sons of Liberty numbered over a quarter of a million and were growing. The organization drew men mainly from Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. Semi-military in structure (organized into companies, regiments, brigades, and divisions) and for states’ rights and personal liberties, the organization, above all, hated the war, and its members were willing to offer “their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor” to end it. The Secret Service, through Vallandigham, would furnish weapons to the group. Planning for one of the first Color Revolutions was born.
The full, remarkable story of the Confederate Secret Service is told in my new bestselling book, The Unvanquished: The Untold Story of Lincoln’s Special Forces, the Manhunt for Mosby’s Rangers, and the Shadow War That Forged America’s Special Operations. The book reveals the drama of irregular guerrilla warfare that altered the course of the Civil War, including the story of Lincoln’s special forces who donned Confederate gray to hunt Mosby and his Confederate Rangers from 1863 to the war’s end at Appomattox—a previously untold story that inspired the creation of U.S. modern special operations in World War II.
In Canada over the summer of 1864, Vallandigham and the Confederate Secret Service met the other leaders of the Copperhead movement, a catchall term for the radical, rising, dominant wing of the Democratic Party that included secret groups such as the Knights of the Golden Circle and the Sons of Liberty. In St. Catharines, Ontario, near Niagara Falls, they bought into the Secret Service’s Northwest Conspiracy. The radical and violent groups had surreptitious signs, symbols, and handshakes, and armed guards at their meetings. Over the past two years, mobs and individuals within the groups had unleashed violence, murder, sabotage, and arson: burning government warehouses and Unionists’ homes and snipping telegraph wires. The Confederate Secret Service hoped to harness this violence and bring it to another level to create an insurrection.
In the coming weeks, the Confederates would focus on their influence operations. They continued to meet various Democratic leaders and Copperheads on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, often at the Clifton House hotel, including the fifth governor of California, former US senator John B. Weller, who advocated that California become a separate republic and an ally of the Confederacy. In these meetings, the Secret Service would help craft with Vallandigham the Secret Service’s masterstroke: the bones of the Democratic platform. At the convention in Chicago, they would call for an armistice to end the war and the continuation of the existing law: slavery.
The Confederate Secret Service understood information warfare and the power of the media. One operative bragged to Jefferson Davis that his goal was “the Democracy [the Democratic Party] having possession of the press,” making it his next target. Accordingly, the Confederate Secret Service plied Northern newspapers with cash to shape the Confederacy’s narrative of how hopeless and fruitless the war had become. Among other initiatives, the Secret Service sent tens of thousands of dollars to the owners of multiple northern papers.
The Democratic convention in Chicago in late August appeared to be a golden opportunity to use Vallandigham’s Sons of Liberty to incite an uprising and free Confederate prisoners at nearby Camp Douglas. Disguised heavily, Vallandigham secretly crossed the border and showed up at the convention. As the armed branch of the Copperheads, Vallandigham offered two regiments that were “practically armed” to protect the Democratic National Convention. Arms and money continued to flow to the Sons of Liberty from the Confederate Secret Service, along with operatives. The insurrection, or Northwest Conspiracy, progressed, as did the Confederates’ efforts to support and expand the peace movement.
During the Democratic convention in Chicago, the war appeared to be failing, and a Democratic victory in November seemed likely. Even though Lincoln believed he might lose the election, the Sons of Liberty felt confident they could win and grew hesitant about the Secret Service’s plans for insurrection. In perhaps their greatest act of election interference, the Confederate Secret Service, along with Vallandigham, drafted the 1864 Democratic campaign platform, which called for an armistice, a halt to the war, and the preservation of existing laws—slavery. However, Union victories on the battlefield, including one orchestrated by Lincoln’s Special Forces, the subject of The Unvanquished, would alter the election’s outcome and lead to Lincoln’s victory.
As the war drew to a close, Vallandigham was indicted by a military tribunal for his seditious activities. When the war ended, the Supreme Court ruled that military tribunals involving American citizens were unconstitutional during peacetime, and Vallandigham was never held accountable for his actions. He ran unsuccessfully for the Senate and Congress and returned to practicing law. While demonstrating the defense he planned for a client in a murder case, he pulled a pistol from his pocket, which he thought was unloaded — it snagged on his clothing and discharged, causing a fatal wound.
Patrick K. O’Donnell is a bestselling, critically acclaimed military historian and an expert on elite units and special operations units. He is the author of fourteen books, including The Indispensables, Washington’s Immortals, and his latest bestselling book on Mosby’s Rangers and Lincoln’s special forces: The Unvanquished, published in trade paperback this month and featured on tables at Barnes & Noble nationwide for Christmas. He is a highly sought-after professional speaker on the American Revolution and numerous other historical topics. O’Donnell served as a combat historian in a Marine rifle platoon during the Battle of Fallujah. He has provided historical consulting for DreamWorks’ award-winning miniseries, Band of Brothers, as well as scores of documentaries and films produced by the BBC, the History Channel, and Discovery. PatrickODonnell.com @combathistorian
The Unvanquished