Introduce our next speaker, jennifer weber. Jennifer is an associate professor of history at the university of kansas. Where her specialty, no surprise, is the civil war. Her first book was copperheads for those of you who may not have a copy at home or have read it. And this, of course, is about the Antiwar Movement in the north. This was published by Oxford University press in 2006, and actually has a forward by jennifers mentor, james m. Macpherson. So you can tell she comes from a quality line. Her second book is actually geared for children, and this fact has won her a special place in the hearts of many of us in the Lincoln Group who really view the importance of sharing the story of lincoln and his heir, and our nations history with our youngest americans. That story tells the battle of gettysburg and is called summers bloodiest day. Jennifer actually right now is working on a book about conscription in the civil war area and the impact of conscription on the civil war north. She has also coedited an anthology that honors her mentor, professor macpherson. She has talked quite a bit, lectured throughout the country. Lincolns era and the politics of the era, and im sure this morning youre going to enjoy her talk. We heard copperheads referenced a lot this morning and this is the expert. Having heard her talk on the subject several years ago, i know youre going to find this a very interesting and useful subject. So ill turn this over to jennifer. [ applause ] good morning. Thank you very much for coming out, and id like to thank the Lincoln Group, and karen needles for inviting me today. Its always a pleasure to be in d. C. So, today im going to be talking about the summer of 1864. The summer that lincoln lost the election. 1864 did not start out as a particularly bad year for abraham lincoln. It actually started out reasonably well. The union armies were doing fairly well in the field, which was a key predictor of how the public was going to feel in the north. He did have some movement, politically, from freemont, and freemont supporters but he appeared to be in pretty good shape politically at the outset of the year. He helped himself considerably in march by appointing this man, ulysses s grant, to take command of all the union armies. Grant had become a hero in the west. He had performed extremely well out there and lincoln had decided to promote him to be the commander of all the armies and grant came back east to carry out that job. He would travel with the army of the potomac, although he was not officially the commander of the army of the potomac. But he would certainly leave his mark on that army, and its doings for the rest of the war. In june, as weve discussed, lincoln was nominated by what was now called the union party. The Republican Party had changed its name for this one year. The union party, to be its nominee for reelection as president of the United States. So this all looked good. But at the same time that lincoln was nominated by the union party, grant was engaged in the Overland Campaign in central virginia. Now this is really important. Grant is a tenacious general by any description. And here we see this play out in spades. Because where previous commanders of the army of the potomac would either lose to lee or would come to a draw with lee and retreat. Grant continues to pursue lee. And they do this dance, as you can see on this map, down virginia. They meet. Often grant does not do particularly well but it doesnt matter. Lee moves farther south, grant chases him. They meet again. They clash over and over again. This is an extremely bloody five or six weeks that takes place between may and june of 1864 and over the course of this relatively short period of time , grant takes about 60,000 casualties. Casualties are killed, wounded and captured. Im not talking about 60,000 deaths. But 60,000 casualties is a lot. And this does not go over well with the northern public. This is really ugly. This is some of the ugliest fighting of the civil war. And thats saying something. For instance the battle of the wilderness where a number of , injured men are burned to death in a fire that is started by hot lead ammunition in the underbrush. Its really gruesome. The battle at spotsylvania, by this time were talking about trenches. Theres handtohand warfare for 13 hours in one phase of the battle at spotsylvania and the trenches fill with blood and men. Blood and bodies. The northern public reads about this and is absolutely horrified at what is going on in their name in the field. Heres a list of the casualties here, both union and confederate. Going to have to get my glasses to read this. So the union is about 35,000, and the confederate is about 33,000. This is its just huge. Grant had come in to this position in march. With the nickname of Unconditional Surrender grant. U. S. Grant. Unconditional surrender grant. After this campaign, his nickname changes to grant the butcher. Lincoln is also held responsible for this. Theres an editor in wisconsin who wont call Lincoln Lincoln anymore. He wont call lincoln the president anymore. He only refers to lincoln as the widowmaker or the orphanmaker. And thats the only way that he refers to lincoln. And what do we have to show for this horrendous blood letting . Precious little. Grant winds up in a siege in petersburg just south of richmond. Hell be in that siege for roughly the next nine months. Things dont look that good for the other armies of the union forces, either. In georgia, sherman is stuck outside of atlanta in another siege. In louisiana, the army there is sitting on its hands in new orleans after trying to make a move the red river. Theyre turned around, Nathaniel Banks and his men go back to new orleans. Theyre just there. Theyre not doing anything. You can imagine that how this looks to the northern public, which is war weary. It is sick of this. It doesnt many, many people in the north, even republicans, dont want to continue this war anymore. They just want it to end. And they blame lincoln for keeping it going. Because of his belief in emancipation. Theres a widespread belief in the north not founded on any sort of evidence, but a widespread belief that if the north would just give up emancipation as a term of surrender, that the confederates would give up the fight and come back in the fold. Thats not true. Because Jefferson Davis has one war aim. And that is independence. Lincoln has two. One is emancipation, and the other is reunion. Reunion and independence are directly at odds. And neither man is going to give up his position. As long as these two men are in office, these two armies, broadly speaking, are going to be at loggerheads. And the only way that this war is going to be decided is at the business end of a gun. There will be no negotiated peace with these two men in office. Nevertheless, this is a widespread opinion in the north that if you just gave up emancipation the confederates would return. Ok. Horace greeley, the most prominent publisher arguably in the country, certainly the most prominent republican publisher at the time, he writes lincoln in july of 1864 with this plea. That is emblematic of this larger experience. Our bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country, also longs for peace, shudders at the prospect of fresh conscriptions, of further wholesale devastations, and of new rivers of human blood. Thats pretty dramatic. But his opinion represents many in the north. As i said, including republicans which is quite interesting. Greeley actually tries to get lincoln in on a scheme of his. Hes been in discussions with a couple of men in canada. Theyre confederate agents, and they have told greeley that they are authorized to negotiate for peace. Lincoln doesnt believe this. But he sent his personal secretary up to niagara on the canada side with greeley to talk to these men about brokering some sort of a peace deal. It very quickly becomes apparent that they actually have no authority whatsoever to be having this conversation. Greeley comes back to new york with his tail between his legs. But lincoln takes this opportunity to explain to the public that he has vees two war aims. And that unless these two aims are met, that he will continue to prosecute the war on the battlefield. Hes hoping, in making this announcement, making this very clear again, to smoke out Jefferson Davis, and to get davis to say publicly that his war aim is independence. Davis doesnt really bite on this. Lincolns idea was that if davis would just make this announcement, maybe the northern public would blame davis instead of lincoln as being the person who was blocking a path to peace. That, however, doesnt happen. Instead, northerners become increasingly sour over the course of the summer. On august 22nd and i dont normally pay, you know, a lot of attention to dates, but in this case i think the dates are quite fascinating, because a Lot Companies here in a really, really short period of time. On august 22nd, henry raymond, who is the editor of the New York Times and the chairman of the Republican Party, writes a letter to lincoln, telling lincoln that he is going to lose the election. That hes going to be really lucky to carry two or three states, and that among the states that he is going to lose is illinois, his own home state. He wont carry it. He suggests to lincoln that lincoln send a delegation south to meet with Jefferson Davis and to propose peace terms on the idea of reunion alone. Now, i find this a really extraordinary moment. This is the chairman of the Republican Party, which had been founded only 10 years earlier on the explicit platform of being antislavery. And here they have emancipation in the palm of their hand, and this man, the chairman of the Republican Party, is talking about letting it go. Whether he is sincere or whether this is a ruse to get davis to tip his hand is unclear to me. But lincoln thinks about this. In fact, he writes out a memo to send somebody south to meet with Jefferson Davis. And as he often does, he puts it in one pigeon hole in his desk and he sleeps on it overnight. And he wakes up the next day and says that god would judge him for time and eternity if he betrayed his promise to the slaves. And so he doesnt. He doesnt send that memo, he doesnt send a delegation down south. This is a moral decision on lincolns part, this is a decision where he decides hes going to be right, rather than president. Its also a practical decision. Because by this time, about 200,000 africanamericans are in the United States military forces. The army and navy. Thats about 10 10 , i think of 20 of the total force. Its a significant amount of the american men in the field. If lincoln goes back on this promise of emancipation, what is going to hold these men in the field . Nothing. Theyre going to leave because they no longer have a promise of emancipation, either for themselves or for their families. Their motivation is gone. Theres nothing to fight for if he removes emancipation. So theres a really practical aspect of this as well. And remember, the army has been having an extremely difficult time raising men, even with a draft. For two years. So the presence of africanamericans in the military is crucial for the war effort. So that memo goes away. What happens instead is that lincoln writes a memo to his cabinet. And in it he lays out a sketch of what he intends to do between november and march. The four months that he will be a lame duck, he anticipates. The four months between the time that the democratic candidate will have been elected and the time he takes office. And lincoln sketches out this plan. He takes this piece of paper, and he folds it up. He puts it in an envelope. He seals the envelope, he takes it to a cabinet meeting. He asks all of his members to sign the envelope, without telling them what the contents are. Sign the envelope and promise to carry out the instructions inside. And they do. So now were talking around august 24th, 25th. On august 29th, the democrats meet in chicago. Now whats been going on over the summer as things have not been going well for the union militarily is that there is growing Antiwar Movement. More and more people are joining the ranks of the copperheads. The antiwar democrats over this over the course of this summer. They are at the pinnacle of their influence. Theyve been talking against the war since its outset, some of them. Theyve been joined, the ranks have been joined over the course of the war, over issues like habeas corpus, emancipation, and the draft. Those alienate a lot of people who had been otherwise sitting on the fence, and they join the Antiwar Movement. But nothing like this summer has driven people into the ranks of the copperheads. They are so powerful at the time of this convention that the war democrats are really scrambling to try to hold them off. To try to maintain a more moderate position. But they have to do some things to hold the copper heads at bay, overep them from taking the entire convention and running roughshod over the party as a whole. So what the democrats do is they , name george mcclellan, who they considered a war hero, and they fought with incredibly appealing to union soldiers, as their president ial nominee. Their Vice President ial nominee is George Pendleton from ohio. Is a committed and wellknown copperhead. They also put this man on the platform committee. Clement vallandigham was the nations most notorious copperhead. He had been a congressman from ohio from dayton when the war broke out. He had been gerrymandered out of his seat in 1862. He had gone home in the spring of 1863 and started making a lot of speeches in which he attacked the administration for its actions during the war, saying that what it had done was unconstitutional, that lincoln was a tyrant and a despot. This prompted the commander of the department of the ohio, ambrose burnside, to issue an edict saying that anybody who spoke out publicly against the administration would be tried as a traitor. Free speech here is a dead letter. Valllandigham sees this edict as an opportunity. He is a smart guy smart , politician. He sees it as a chance to become a martyr for the cause and to go down the cause. So he goes right back out, makes another speech in which he criticizes lincoln and the administration. And at 2 00 the next morning, the soldiers are at his door. They bundle him up. They give him just enough time to get dressed, they bundle him up, a small riot breaks out among his supporters, hes shipped off to cincinnati, where he is tried not in a regular court but a by military tribunal. Found guilty and sentenced to spend the rest of the war in a military prison. Lincoln finds out about this the way that everybody else finds out about it, which is by reading the papers. And he is none too happy about this. It puts him in an extremely awkward position. Republicans themselves are not very happy about this because they recognize this arrest for what it is, which is a gross infringement on free speech. It makes them look terrible. And so lincoln is left in a quandary. What to do . What do you do with this man . If you let him go, you undercut your general. If you leave him in prison, you make him a martyr. Not that hes not enough of one him more but you make of one. And so he comes to a incolnianntially l solution which is both pragmatic and amusing. And that is if you like the south so much, fine. Were going to banish you there. So, vallandigham is sprung from prison. Hes taken down to tennessee. Hes taken almost to a confederate picket line in the dead of night and told to walk this way. Some picket encounters him, and can you imagine being some, you know, private, an 18yearold kid, and heres this guy who stumbles out of the dark, hes got this speech that hes rehearsed about how hes a political prisoner of abraham blah, blah, blah. What do you do with this guy . So he goes up the chain of command. He goes all the way to Jefferson Davis. Hes taken to richmond, ultimately. He meets all these confederates along the way. They all tell him that what they want is independence. What the copperheads have been talking about is an immediate end to the war. An immediate halt. They never really say what the terms are that they would be willing to agree to in a peace negotiation, but they want an immediate end to the hostilities. When the confederates tell vallandigham that they want independence, they do not want to reunite with the north. The way that the copperheads keep thinking that they will. Vallandigham pays no attention to them whatsoever. What he does is essentially put his fingers in his ears and go , la la la la. And thats it. He discovers he doesnt really like the confederates. The confederates learn they dont really like him either. And so, after a month in the confederacy, vallandigham and the confederates come to an agreement that he will leave. And so he gets on a blockade runner that goes to the caribbean. He picks up another ship there and goes up to canada and spends , the next year or so in windsor, ontario. Right across the Detroit River from detroit. There is a union gun boat parked in the middle of the river as long as he is there with its guns trained on his front parlor. But hes having a lot of meetings with confederate agents, with copperheads. He is up to probably all kinds of no good. But he wants to come home. He runs for governor of ohio in 1863. From windsor. The copperheads think hes going to win. Because the soldiers will vote for him en masse because he wants an end to the war. Hes going to stop it and release them from service. They completely misread the situation, not for the only time. Vallandigham is crushed. In the november elections where hes running for governor in 1863. The soldier vote goes 95 against him. Fast forward seven months. He sneaks back in to the United States in june of 1864. Lincoln gets all these notifications about it, what do we do . Do we arrest him . Lincoln says, no, just let him be. Keep an eye on him, but just let him be. He is in chicago for the convention and he is put on the platform committee. He puts a plank in to the platform that calls the war a failure and demands an immediate cessation of hostilities. This is widely voted for. It has almost