Jennifer L. Weber

“Fort Sumter, the Dubuque Herald accused the administration of goading Southerners into war: Nothing will satisfy the fanatics of the North but a provocation to civil war, in which they may accomplish their darling object—that which they have toiled for many years: the incitement of slaves to insurrection against their masters, and … the consequent emancipation of those slaves, the abolition of slavery, and the ruin and subjugation of the South to the political thraldom of Northern fanaticism. Even War Democrats were wary of a hidden agenda to get rid of slavery. One, John Campbell of Philadelphia, suspected that a scheming Britain was behind the abolitionist movement “to do us all the mischief she is able.” Nevertheless, he thought the administration “must not be crippled in its efforts to suppress rebellion and punish traitors.”18 Suspicions about the Republicans’ real aims ran so deep among some Democrats that Lincoln met with scoffs when he insisted that he had no intention of touching slavery where it already existed.”
― Jennifer L. Weber, Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln's Opponents in the North