Lincoln's Critics: The Copperheads of the North

by Frank L. Klement

Klement, a nationally recognized Civil War expert, authored nine books and numerous articles, and taught history at Marquette University for 35 years. His research had significant impact on knowledge about those Democrats of the north who criticized Lincoln's policies. This volume presents both his early and his later writings on the subject, edited and introduced by Steven K. Rogstad, and includes a complete bibliography of Klement's writings. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Genres: History

261 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1998

About the author

A specialist in political dissent in the North during the American Civil War, Frank L. Klement was professor of history at Marquette University.

Reviews

[Richard Derus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating: 3 somnolent stars of five

The Book Report: This is the final collection of scholarly articles and essays by Civil War scholar Dr. Frank Klement, whose original research into the subject of Southern sympathizers in the North during the American Civil War changed the Copperheads (their contemporary nickname) from slightly louche figures of romance to actual people with an actual agenda and point of view.

Of course that means the romance and fantasy goes *flooey* but ain't no omelettes made with whole-shell eggs.

My Review: I do not for one single instant doubt either the erudition or the scholarship of the late Dr. Klement, famous (if you know who he is) for his refutation of the existence of an organized Fifth Column of Confederate sympathizers in the North. I do wish he'd been thwacked a few times with the Lash of the Muse of Writing instead of JUST the Muse of History.

This is one dry, dusty, dull read. If you're really, really, really interested in the Civil War, dabble around. If you're a casual reader, purse your lips knowingly and murmur, "aaah yes, the Copperheads, never came to much did they?" and your social obligation to the Civil War nut will be forever discharged.

NOT recommended for civilian reading, historiographers only.

[David Bates · Rating 3 out of 5]

Frank L. Klement’s Lincoln’s Critics, summarizes a lifetime of pugilistic scholarship on anti-war Democrats. Klement began his career in the late 1940s, positioning himself through his scholarship against the anti-dissent nationalism which he felt permeated America during World War II and the early Cold War. Two popular works published in 1942, Wood Gray’s The Hidden Civil War and George Fort Milton’s Abraham Lincoln and the Fifth Column, both portrayed anti-war Democrats as insidious pro-Confederate traitors. Both works had been praised by Allan Nevins in his presidential address to the American Historical Association. Drawing on research into prominent anti-war politicians and editors in the upper-Midwest Klement sought to dismiss the charges of treasonous intent and seditious secret societies and reframe Copperheads as conservative western sectionalists with legitimate civil liberty and socio-economic grievances against Republican rule.

Klement relied heavily on analysis of Republican newspapers in order to defang charges that Copperheads were involved in the sort of conspiratorial societies outlined in Gray and Milton’s works. For Klement, the sudden “discovery” of such secret societies following the 1862 midterm victories by anti-war Democrats, and the steadily increasing attention devoted to them by Republican editors and politicians, were suspicious. The details of the reports were, when reviewed with the benefit of historical hindsight, often erroneous or falsified. The assembly of Union Leagues across the nation to combat “disloyalty” appeared to be a cynical political ploy to tar the opposition party as treasonous and to use the charge as a rallying point for both official and unofficial attacks on the rights of dissent. In reality, Klement asserted, the Knights of the Golden Circle and the Sons of Liberty had existed mainly in the frantic rhetoric of men like Edwin Cowles of the Cleveland Leader who wrote that the political opposition should be treated “as Assassins; as men who, if they would not aim the knife at your breast, would not at least move a finger to arrest the blow. They are assassins; they are traitors; and that last word is the sum of everything vile.” Such attacks regenerated sagging support for Republican rule by its own political form of assassination.

Disposing of the secret conspiratorial aspect of the peace movement, Klement turned to its open political program, which he viewed as rooted in agrarian western sectionalism and a conservative attachment to civil liberties, States Rights and skepticism of centralized power. Citing the wartime suspension of habeas corpus which led to numerous incidences of political imprisonments, and the attacks on the anti-administration press both by official order and mob violence, Klement put dissent within a rational framework of lived experience. While the civil liberties flame was primarily carried by middl-class Jacksonian Democrats, anti-war sentiment ran strong as well among the border states and within the southern tier of northern states like Indiana, rooted in the cultural antagonisms of agrarian Butternut small holders toward the Yankee diaspora to the north. The fusion of religious and ethnic intolerance within the Republican Party which manifested as nativism, anti-Catholicism and prohibitionism created a third leg for anti-administration sentiment among alienated Irish and German immigrants. Among the Butternuts and immigrants anti-abolition rhetoric had particular resonance, as increasing fears of economic competition followed each encroachment on the peculiar institution.