CHAPTER XII VALLANDIGHAM CHAP. XII. W. R. Vol. XXIII., Part I., p. 11. 1863. ENERAL BURNSIDE took command of the Department of the Ohio (March 25, 1863) with a zeal against the insurgents only heightened by his defeat at Fredericksburg. He found his department infested with a peculiarly bitter opposition to the Government and to the prosecution of the war, amounting, in his opinion, to positive aid and comfort to the enemy; and he determined to use all the powers confided to him to put an end to these manifestations, which he considered treasonable; and in the execution of this purpose he gave great latitude to the exercise of his authority. He was of a zealous and impulsive character, and weighed too little the consequences of his acts where his feelings were strongly enlisted. He issued, on the 13th of April, an order, which obtained wide celebrity under the name of General Order No. 38, announcing that "all persons found within our lines, who commit acts for the benefit of the enemies of our country, will be tried as spies or traitors, and, if convicted, will suffer death." He enumerated, as among the acts which came within the view of this order, the writing and carrying of secret letters; passing the lines for treasonable purposes; recruiting for the Confeder- CHAP. XII. ate service; harboring, concealing, or feeding public enemies within our lines; and, rising beyond this reasonable category of offenses, he declared that "the habit of declaring sympathy for the enemy will not be allowed in this department. Persons committing such offenses will be at once arrested, with a view to being tried as above stated, or sent beyond our lines into the lines of their friends." And in conclusion he added a clause which may be made to embrace, in its ample sweep, any demonstration not to the taste of the general in command: "It must be distinctly understood that treason, expressed or implied, will not be tolerated in this department." This order at once excited a most furious denunciation on the part of those who, either on account of their acts or their secret sympathies, felt themselves threatened by it, and many even of those opponents of the Administration who were entirely loyal to the Union 1 criticized the order as illegal in itself and liable to lead to dangerous abuses. The most energetic and eloquent of General Burnside's assailants was Clement L. Vallandigham, who had been for several years a Member of Congress from Ohio, whose intemperate denunciation of the Goyernment had caused him the loss of his seat, and 1 One of Burnside's own staffofficers, Colonel J. M. Cutts, wrote to the President July 30: "Order 38 has kindled the fires of hatred and contention. Burnside is foolishly and unwisely excited, and if continued in command will disgrace himself, you, and the country, as he did at Fredericksburg." MS. 2 2 At the first threat of civil war Vallandigham made haste to profess himself opposed to any forcible execution of the laws. He declared the States of the Union the only judges of the sufficiency and justice of secession, and promised he would never vote one dollar of money whereby one drop of American blood Burnside, 1863. w. R. Order, April 13, Vol. XXIII., Part II., p. 237. CHAP. XII. whose defeat had only heightened the acerbity of his opposition to the war. General Order No. 38 furnished him a most inspiring text for assailing the Government, and he availed himself of it in Democratic meetings throughout the State. A rumor of his violent speeches came to the ears of the military authorities in Cincinnati, and an officer was sent, in citizens' clothes, to attend a May 1, 1863. meeting which was held at Mount Vernon, Ohio, "Globe." Feb. 7, 1861, pp. 794, 795. should be shed in civil war; and in February preceding the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln he proposed to amend the Constitution by dividing the Union into four sections, giving each section a veto on the passage of any law or the election of Presidents or VicePresidents, and allowing to each State the right of secession on certain specified terms. Having thus early taken his stand, he retained his position with more consistency than was shown by any other member of his party. After his defeat by General R. C. Schenck, in his canvass for reelection to Congress, he renewed his attacks upon the Government and its war policy with exaggerated vehemence. In a speech delivered in the House of Representatives on the 14th of January, 1863, he boasted that he was of that number who had opposed abolitionism or the political development of the antislavery sentiment of the North and West from the beginning. He called it the develop ment of the spirit of intermeddling, whose children are strife and murder. He said: "On the 14th of April I believed that coercion would bring on war, and war disunion. More than that, I believed, what you all in your hearts believe to-day, that the South could never be conquered-never. And not that only, but I was satisfied . . . that the secret but real purpose of the war was to abolish slavery in the States, . . . and with it. . . the change of our present democratical form of government into an imperial despotism. I did not support the war; and to-day I bless God that not the smell of so much as one drop of its blood is upon my garments. . . Our Southern brethren were to be whipped back into love and fellowship at the point of the bayonet. Oh, monstrous delusion! . . . Sir, history will record that, after nearly six thousand years of folly and wickedness in every form and administration of government, theocratic, democratic, monarchic, oligarchic, despotic, and mixed, it was reserved to American statesmanship, in the nineteenth century of the Christian era, to try the grand experiment, on a scale the most costly and gigantic in its proportions, of creating love by force and developing fraternal affection by war; and history will record, too, on the same page, the utter, disastrous, and most bloody failure of the experiment." Appendix, "Globe," Jan. 14, 1863, pp. 53, 54. where Mr. Vallandigham and other prominent CHAP. XII. Democrats were the orators of the day. The meet ing was an enthusiastic one, full of zeal against the Government and of sympathy with the South. Mr. Vallandigham, feeling his audience thor- May 1, 1863. oughly in harmony with him, spoke with unusual fluency and bitterness, greatly enjoying the applause of his hearers, and unconscious of the presence of the unsympathizing recorder, who leaned against the platform a few feet away, and took down some of his most malignant periods. He said it was the design of those in power to usurp a despotism; that it was not their intention to effect a restoration of the Union; that the Government had rejected every overture of peace from the South and every proposition of mediation from Europe; that the war was for the liberation of the blacks and the enslavement of the whites; that General Order No. 38 was a base usurpation of arbitrary power; that he despised it, and spat upon it, and trampled it under his feet. Speaking of the conscription act, he said the people were not deserving to be free men who would submit to such encroachment on their liberties. He called the President "King Lincoln," and advised the people to come up together at the ballot-box and hurl the tyrant from his throne. The audience and the speaker were evidently in entire agreement. The crowd wore in great numbers the distinctive badges of "Copperheads " and "Butternuts"; and amid cheers which Vallandigham's speech elicited, the witness heard a shout that "Jeff Davis was a gentleman, which was more than Lincoln was." The officer returned to Cincinnati, and made his 1863. CHAP. XII. report. Three days later, on the evening of the 4th of May, a special train went up to Dayton, with a company of the 115th Ohio, to arrest Mr. Vallandigham. Reaching Dayton, they went at once to his house, where they arrived shortly before daylight, and demanded admittance. The orator appeared at an upper window, and, being informed of their business, refused to allow them to enter. He began shouting in a loud voice; pistols were fired from the house; the signals were taken up in the town, and, according to some preconcerted arrangement, the fire-bells began to toll. There was evidently no time to be lost. The soldiers forced their way into the house; Vallandigham was compelled to dress himself in haste, and was hurried to the cars, and the special train pulled out of the station before any considerable crowd could assemble. Arriving at Cincinnati, Vallandigham was consigned to the military prison, and kept in close confinement. During the day he contrived, however, to issue an address to the Democracy of Ohio, saying: "I am here in a military bastile for no other offense than my political opinions, and the defense of them, and of the rights of the people, and of your constitutional liberties. . . I am a Democrat for the Constitution, for law, for the Union, for liberty-this is my only 'crime.' Meanwhile, Democrats of Ohio, of the Northwest, of the United States, be firm, be true to your principles, to the Constitution, to the Union, and all will yet be well... To you, to the whole people, to Time, I again appeal." "Annual Cyclopædia," 1863, p. 474. While he was issuing these fervid words his friends in Dayton were making their demonstration |