If there is a politician with the talent, decency, and courage of Clement Vallandigham today, I don’t know who it is. He was born in Ohio in 1820 and his father, a Presbyterian minister, educated him. Vallandigham trained as a lawyer and was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1842. He was elected to the Ohio State legislature in 1845 and served one term. After several failed attempts, he was elected to the US House of Representatives in 1856 where he served for three terms as a staunch Democrat.
He lost reelection in 1862 and continued to advocate for peace. He ran afoul of General Burnside’s General Order No. 38 which most Ohio Democrats believed was a violation of their civil liberties. Vallandigham was arrested on May 5, 1863, for expressing opinions that were interpreted as supporting the Southern cause and was tried by a military tribunal. He was found guilty and sentenced to prison which was commuted by Lincoln who exiled him to the Confederacy.
Like most Democrats from the South, Vallandigham believed in the anti-Federalist interpretation of the Constitution and never wavered. He was outspoken both in and out of Congress and believed that President Lincoln should have let the South go. Vallandigham was against violence to keep the Union together.
Brion McClanahan’s course on the Copperheads begins with Vallandigham and his July 10, 1861, Executive Usurpation speech on the floor of the House of Representatives. There is no way this essay can do it justice other than to say it proves the war was not about slavery. Vallandigham knew his speech would not make a difference in 1861 and even said he was speaking for “posterity”. He succeeded.
“Sir, he (Lincoln) chooses to pass over the fact that the party to which he thus owes his place and his present power of mischief, is wholly and totally a sectional organization; and as such condemned by Washington, by Jefferson, by Jackson , Webster, and Clay, and by all the founders and preservers of the Republic, and utterly inconsistent with the principles, or with the peace, the stability or the existence even, of our Federal system.”