other business methods, appealed to the mingled motives of patriotism and self-interest and induced the people to lend large amounts of money to the government. An impetus was given to this process by the general character of the financial legislation of Congress, and in particular by the clause in the nine hundred million dollar loan act which limited to July 1st the privilege of exchanging legal-tender notes for five twenty bonds. Immediately after the adjournment of Congress the confidence of the people began to show itself by the purchase of these securities. By the end of March Chase told Sumner that he was contented with the condition of the finances, and ere three months more had passed by, he could see that his popular loan was an assured success. The subscriptions averaged over three million dollars a day.2 The Germans were likewise buying our bonds. April 26, Sumner wrote to the Duchess of Argyll: "The Secretary of War told me yesterday that our rolls showed eight hundred thousand men under arms, - all of them paid to February 28, better clothed and better fed than any soldiers ever before. . . . Besides our army, we have a credit which is adequate to all our needs; and we have powder and saltpetre sufficient for three years even if our ports should be closed, and five hundred thousand unused muskets in our arsenals, and the best armorers of the world producing them at the rate of fifty thousand a month." 3 Again he wrote to John Bright: "The Democracy is falling into line with the government and insisting upon the most strenuous support of the war." In view of succeeding events this last is too strong for a historical statement, but it is undeniable that during the months of March and April there was a lull in the bitter opposition of the Democrats to the administration.5

4

1 Pierce's Sumner, vol. iv. p. 130.

2 Belmont to Lord Rokeby, May 7, Letters privately printed, p. 85.

3 Pierce's Sumner, vol. iv. p. 137.

March 30, ibid., p. 130.

5 The "feeling for a vigorous prosecution of the war [is] stronger than ever, and [there is] a complete unanimity of feeling against foreign interven

66

a

Yet all was not bright. The iron-clad fleet, which had been carefully and expensively fitted out, failed to reduce Fort Sumter to ruins and to take the city of Charleston, result confidently expected by the naval officers engaged, the department in Washington, and the people at large.1 The tidings which came from another movement against Vicksburg, under the personal command of Grant, are spoken of as "bad news." 2 But," Sumner wrote to Bright, "we are not disheartened. These are the vicissitudes of war. . . Our only present anxiety comes from England. If England were really neutral,' our confidence would be complete." 3 The intelligence came that more cruisers for the Confederates were being built in British ports with the design of preying upon our mercantile marine. This news, together with the frequent reports of the capture and burning of our vessels by the Alabama, whose escape through the negligence, or as most people then believed through the unfriendly animus, of the British government, made the links of "England and our blazing ships "4 complete, and caused emotions of sorrow, anger, and bitterness which long endured.5

tion and any peace except upon the basis of a reconstruction of the Union. The violent language of Jefferson Davis and his organs has produced quite a reaction at the North, and has silenced entirely the few peace-at-any-price men who had sprung up after the elections of last November." - Belmont to Lionel de Rothschild, April 3, Letters, p. 77. See, also, Belmont to Rokeby, May 7, ibid., p. 84.

1 The attack was made April 7.

2 Sumner to Bright, April 7, Pierce's Sumner, vol. iv. p. 131.

8 Ibid.

4 The heading of an article in N. Y. Times, March 7.

5 Bryant wrote to Bigelow, Dec. 3, 1862: "The English have lost more ground in public opinion in America within the past year and a half than they can redeem in a century."-Life of Bryant, Godwin, vol. ii. p. 183. August Belmont wrote Lord Rokeby, May 7: "The fitting out of armed war vessels like the Alabama and Florida. in your ports in open violation of the Queen's proclamation and the foreign enlistment act have produced a most painful feeling here." - Letters privately printed, p. 83.

...

My authorities for this account other than those mentioned are: N. Y. Tribune, March 7, 10, 16, 21, April 13; N. Y. World, March 16; see, especially, articles in the Boston Advertiser of March 19, and the Phila.

We now come to the most celebrated case of arbitrary arrests during the war. Vallandigham is not an attractive character. Had his vehement opposition to the war been the bursting out of a soul which could not contain itself in view of the growing militant spirit of the people, of the corrupt and arbitrary methods of many in power, our sympathy might in a measure be drawn to him, as it goes out to many who in history have stood up for the rights of the minority. But his efforts were not spontaneous; indeed, if the traditions be true, he was cold, calculating, selfish, ambitious, vindictive. He lacked generous impulses. He accepted favors of pecuniary and other character, and when the chance came to return them which a gentleman of ordinary sense of gratitude would eagerly have embraced, he turned the cold shoulder. In any leader of men it is difficult to say how much is self-seeking, how much is patriotism; but there is reason to believe that in Vallandigham's mind the advancement of self dominated all other motives. His speeches and his action lend themselves to such a construction. In the first part of 1863 Horatio Seymour was the leader of the democracy. Had Vallandigham been content to follow, he would have taken the same line, acting in union with his colleagues in Congress, Pendleton and Cox, whose course approached the ideal of an opposition that I have set forth. But in that there was no leadership. By a violent and sensational antagonism, by making himself the exponent of the extreme Democrats of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, he might draw the party to him, he might become the chief of the Copperheads of the West. Such was his course, such the result. He was a man of parts, an attractive and bright public speaker. If it be true that he lacked sincerity, he imposed upon his fellowcitizens by the intensity of his utterances, the earnestness of

Inquirer, June 24; Chicago Tribune, May 16; Moore's Reb. Rec., vol. vi. Diary, pp. 45, 48, 59, 62; Pierce's Sumner, vol. iv. p. 129 et seq.; Diplomatic Correspondence, 1863, part i.; Nicolay and Hay, vol. vii.; the Atlantic Coast, Ammen; The Mississippi, Greene; Schuckers's Chase; Report of the Secretary of the Treasury, Dec. 10, 1863.

his manner. He has been compared to Charles James Fox. In the opposition of the Englishman to the war against the thirteen colonies, the likeness fails for obvious reasons, but a comparison is pertinent between Vallandigham opposing Lincoln and Fox opposing Pitt in the war with revolutionary France. In every respect save in personal morals, Fox is nobler than Vallandigham. The Englishman had a warm heart, dearly loved his country, and was capable of making sacrifices for it; 2 the American placed self first and country afterwards. One of the cleverest and most widely read sketches that grew out of the war was that written by Edward Everett Hale, whose conception was vitalized by the career of the Ohio Copperhead: "The Man without a Country struck the chord that recalled to the minds of the majority Vallandigham. When he was banished and on his way to the South, passing from the lines of one army to those of the other, a guard was needed to protect him from the fury of the Union soldiers, but no sentinels paced before his door as he slept in the domain of the Southern Confederacy.1

" 3

Better had it been to leave his punishment to public opinion. But Burnside, smarting under his defeat at Fredericksburg and the criticisms to which he was subject, had been assigned to the command of the Department of the Ohio, with headquarters at Cincinnati; and when he came in contact with the Copperheads of Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana, he began literally to breathe out threatenings. April 13 he issued his famous General Order No. 38, in which, after denouncing the penalty of death for certain overt acts in aid of the Confed

1 How it appeared to a contemporary is shown by Lord Sheffield's words of Jan. 23, 1793, to Gibbon : "Charles [Fox] seemed disposed to support the enemies of the country, against the country, as he and his Party did the last war. 99 - - Private Letters of Gibbon, vol. ii. p. 364.

2 See, for example, Trevelyan, The American Revolution, part i., passim, especially p. 246.

3 Published in the Atlantic Monthly for December, 1863. In thirteen years half a million copies of it were printed. See The Man without a Country and its History, Boston (1897).

4 Life of Vallandigham by his brother, pp. 298, 300.

erates, he said: "The habit of declaring sympathy for the enemy will not be allowed. . . . It must be distinctly understood that treason, expressed or implied, will not be tolerated in this department." Vallandigham, who had long been obnoxious to the Union men of Ohio, was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor, and was continually making speeches which were undoubtedly a source of irritation to Burnside. May 1 a Democratic mass-meeting took place at Mount Vernon. There was a large procession of citizens in wagons. Hickory poles, an emblem of the party since Jackson's time, were used to bear the American flags, and the conventional thirty-four young women rode in a· decorated wagon to represent the thirty-four States of the whole Union. What was new in such a Democratic assemblage was the large number of butternut badges and of pins that were made of the heads cut out of old copper cents, and were worn with pride. Vallandigham was the chief speaker, and aroused much enthusiasm from the many thousands who had gathered there from all parts of Knox County. Two of Burnside's captains in citizen's clothes were taking notes, which are the only reports of the speech, and are of little value as historical evidence, for detached sentences and isolated remarks fail to give the tenor of a discourse; but it was undoubtedly harsh and violent, and went as near giving “aid and comfort to the rebellion" as any talk could that proceeded from a good lawyer who knew the law. The captains' reports, however, were sufficient to convince Burnside that his General Order No. 38 had been grossly violated. Without consulting his subordinates or an attorney, he ordered his aide-de-camp to go to Dayton and arrest Vallandigham. The aide with a company of soldiers took a special train, and reached his house at half-past two in the morning. They thundered at the doors, awaked the inmates, and, telling their errand, were refused admittance. They broke into the house, seized Vallandigham in his bed-chamber, and took him quickly

1 O. R., vol. xxiii. part ii. p. 237.

2 May 5.