Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
~ Liberty, Will, and Violence: The Political Ideology of the Democrats of West-Central Indiana during the Civil War Thomas E. Rodgers” The people of Indiana were far from united in their responses to the Civil War. Hoosier Democrats reacted to the events of the day in a manner often at odds with their Republican neighbors. A small number of well-known Democratic leaders became War Democrats, but very few of their constituents followed their example. Most Democrats were opposed to the policies of Abraham Lincoln and Republican Governor Oliver P. Morton. While their opposition was muted during the first year of the war, it was not uncommon, and as the conflict continued their criticism of state and national leaders became ever louder.’ At first most Hoosier Democrats sat on the political and military sidelines. There were no major elections held in the state in the first year of the war, and thus no opportunity for Democrats to express their discontent at the ballot box. Relatively few Hoosier Democrats volunteered for service before the first drafts began in the summer of 1862. Then, in September, 1862, the smoldering embers of Democratic resentment of Republican policies were fanned into flames by Lincoln’s preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. In October and November, Hoosier Democrats flocked to the polls in numbers extraordinary for an off-year election, with the result that their leaders took control of the Indiana General Assembly. Democratic legislators lambasted the war and Republican policies. They attempted t o put limits on Governor Morton’s powers *Thomas E. Rodgers received his Ph.D. in history from Indiana University in 1991. He is the coauthor, with Robert L. Reid, ofA Good Neighbor: The First Fifty Years at Crane, 1941-1991 (1991). 1 The view that most Democrats opposed the war from the beginning is based on Thomas E. Rodgers, “Northern Political Ideologies in the Civil War Era: WestCentral Indiana, 1860-1866” (Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1991). Among the most important secondary works on Indiana during the Civil War are: Kenneth M. Stampp, Indiana Politics during the Civil War (reprint ed., Bloomington, 1978); Lorna Lutes Sylvester, “Oliver P. Morton and Hoosier Politics during the Civil War” (Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1968); Emma Lou Thornbrough, Zndiana in the Civil War Era (Indianapolis, 19651, 180-224; Gilbert R. Tredway, Democratic Opposition to the Lincoln Administration in Indiana (Indiana Historical Collections, Vol. XLWII; Indianapolis, 1973); and James Albert Woodburn, “Party Politics in Indiana during the Civil War,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1902 (2 vols., Washington, 19031, I, 223-51. INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY,XCII (June, 1996). 0 1996, Trustees of Indiana University 134 Indiana Magazine of History and to make Indiana take the lead in finding a negotiated settlement to the war. These efforts enraged Republican Hoosiers. When a state budget was not passed by the end of the legislative session, Morton refused t o call a special session and assumed extralegal powers.2 From the seating of the Democratic legislature until the end of the war, Republicans saw Democrats as traitors, and Democrats viewed Republicans as tyrants. Democrats particularly resented the draft, the arrest of civilians by military officials, and the denial of habeas corpus to those arrested. Hundreds of acts of interparty violence occurred in Indiana: fistfights and gunplay between individuals; disruptions and brawls a t political meetings; seizures of draft enrollment lists by bands of armed men; and the murders of two draft officials. Both Republicans and Democrats formed paramilitary groups. A violent confrontation between one such Democratic group and federal troops in Sullivan County was averted only when a government official quickly withdrew the troops by train to Terre Haute. In September, 1864, treason trials orchestrated by Governor Morton began. These trials, Republicans claimed, revealed a large-scale conspiracy against the government led by men who were well-known Democratic leader^.^ 2 See the general works cited in footnote 1 and Lorna Lutes Sylvester, “Oliver P. Morton and the Indiana Legislature of 1863,” i n Robert G. Barrows, ed., Their Infinite Variety: Essays on Indiana Politicians, (Indiana Historical Collections, Vol. LIII; Indianapolis, 1981), 130-46. On Democrats not volunteering in large numbers see Rodgers, “Northern Political Ideologies,” 537-61; and Thomas E. Rodgers, “A Collective Profile of Union Army Volunteers in West-Central Indiana” (Paper presented a t the annual meeting of the Social Science History Association; Baltimore, November, 1993). This paper will be published in a future issue of the Indiana Magazine of History. 3For background on the trials, examples of violence between Hoosier Republicans and Democrats, and interpretations of Democratic loyalty in general in Indiana see the works cited in footnote 1 and the following: Rodgers, “Northern Political Ideologies,” 571-89; Benn Pitman, The Trials for Treason at Indianapolis . . . (Cincinnati, 1865); [William H. H. Terrelll, Report of the Adjutant General of the State of Indiana (8 vols., Indianapolis, 1866-1869, I; Mayo Fesler, “Secret Political Societies i n the North during the Civil War,” Indiana Magazine of History, XIV (September, 1918), 183-286; Frank L. Klement, “Carrington and the Golden Circle Legend in Indiana during the Civil War,” Indiana Magazine of History, W (March, 1965), 31-52; Frank L. Klement, The Copperheads i n the Middle West (Chicago, 1960); Frank L. Klement, Dark Lanterns: Secret Political Societies, Conspiracies, and Treason Trials in the Civil War (Baton Rouge, 1984); Alan T. Nolan, “Ex Parte Milligan: A Curb of Executive and Military Power,” in We the People: Indiana and the United States Constitution (Indianapolis, 19871, 26-53; Kenneth M. Stampp, “The Milligan Case and the Election of 1864 in Indiana,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XXXI (June, 1944), 41-58. For general historiographical background on the issue of Democratic loyalty see: Robert H. Abzug, “The Copperheads: Historical Approaches to Civil War Dissent in the Midwest,” Indiana Magazine of History, LXVI (March, 1970), 40-55; William G. Carleton, “Civil War Dissidence in the North: The Perspective of a Century,” South Atlantic Quarterly, LXV (Summer, 1966), 390402; Richard 0. Curry, “The Civil War and Reconstruction, 1861-1877: A Critical Overview of Recent Trends and Interpretations,” Civil War History, XX (September, 1974), 216-20; Richard 0. Curry, “The Union as It Was: A Critique of Recent Inter- Liberty, Will, and Violence 135 A number of historians have described the turmoil on the Indiana homefront, but they have not explained adequately why it took place. Why did Democrats so fervently oppose state and national Republican policies? Were Hoosier Democrats disloyal to t h e Union? These and other questions of motivation have received relatively little attention. Among the motivations that historians have ascribed to Democrats are: southern birth or ancestry and consequent sympathy for the South; fervent, perhaps irrationally so, political partisanship; alienation created by the growing market economy; resistance t o the draft; conservative constitutionalism; racist outrage at emancipation and other policies related to blacks; and a sense that federal actions threatened their civil rights4 While a number of motivations have thus been suggested, historians have rarely developed these explanations fully. Why, for instance, did Democrats of southern ancestry oppose the Lincoln administration’s efforts to save the Union, while Republicans of southern ancestry supported it? Democrats held many racist views, but so did Hoosier Republicans. Democrats might have feared the expansion of federal power and the suspension of some rights, but why did they not put these fears aside, as Hoosier Republicans did, when the Union itself was at stake? Similarly, why was the preservation of the Union not so important a goal as to inspire Democrats to overcome temporarily their partisanship? In order to understand the wartime behavior and motivations of Hoosier Democrats, one must examine their political ideology, the ways in which that ideology influenced their perception of what was going on around them, and their reaction to those perceptions. This article examines the dynamic interaction of ideology and behavior among the Democrats of Indiana’s Seventh Congressional District. The district enclosed a n area of west-central Indiana around Terre Haute that included such alleged hotbeds of disloyalty as Sullivan and Greene counties. While this study focuses on only one part of Indiana, the findings are applicable to large areas of central and southern Indiana and Illinois and other regions of the Midwest. The Seventh District contained eight counties. The economic and political center of the district was Terre Haute, which had a population of 8,594 in 1860. The only other town with as many as 2,000 people was Greencastle, the county seat of Putnam County. pretations of the “Copperheads,” ibid., XI11 (March, 1967), 25-39; Frank L. Klement, “Civil War Politics, Nationalism, and Postwar Myths,” Historian, XXXVIII (May, 19761,419-38; and Klement, Dark Lanterns, 234-44. 4 See the works by Klement, Stampp, Thornbrough, Tredway, and Woodburn cited above. Some historians have tried to divide Hoosier Democrats into factions with varying degrees of loyalty. Based o n t h e S e v e n t h District, almost a l l Democrats, except for t h e very small group of War Democrats, were i n general agreement in terms of their political concerns and ideology. 136 Indiana Magazine of History Thus the district was overwhelmingly rural in character, and its economy was based on a g r i c ~ l t u r e . ~ The population of the district was predominantly native born. While a few foreign-born individuals could be found in almost every part of the region, only Terre Haute and Greencastle had significant numbers of foreign-born citizens. Most of these immigrants were from Ireland or one of a variety of German states. The nativeborn voting population contained substantial numbers of individuals who were either born in a northern state o r were the sons of northerners. Such individuals were most common in the district’s towns and northernmost counties. The largest number of voters, however, were of southern origins. Southerners predominated in most of the rural areas of the region. The numbers of southern born and southern stock given in Table I understate the southern component of the population, since the origins of a number of Indiana-born men could not be determined and some of the Ohio-born males counted as northern were probably of southern ancestry and acculturation. The district was evenly divided between the political parties with a slight edge t o the Democrats. John G. Davis, a Democrat from Parke County, was the district’s congressman during most of the 1850s, while Daniel W. Voorhees, a Democrat from Terre Haute, was the congressman during the Civil War. Although these two Democrats won a number of elections, the district’s political battles were almost always hotly contested. Voting patterns in most areas of the district were consistent. Terre Haute’s politics, however, were volatile, with first one then the other party winning office. Native-born farmers were the key constituents of both parties. The Irish and the German Catholics were consistent supporters of the Democratic party, but they were few in number compared to the thousands of native-born Democratic farmers in the district. The overwhelming majority of these rural native-born Democrats were men of southern birth or ancestry. It was to these farmers that Democratic leaders tailored their party’s ideology. While Democratic positions i n t h e Seventh District were similar t o those of Democrats around the country, Democratic thought in west-central Indiana was heavily influenced by the cultural and ideological baggage these Democrats brought from the South and the socioeconomic conditions within which they lived. The political statements of Democratic orators and editors are a key source of information about ideology. A few aspects of Demo5Despite Terre Haute’s size, even in Vigo most of the people lived in the rural areas of the county. The eight counties of the district during the Civil War were Clay, Greene, Owen, Parke, Putnam, Sullivan, Vermillion, and Vigo. Information from Fountain and Hendricks counties, which border the district, is also used. For socioeconomic, demographical, and political background on the district i n this and the following paragraphs see Rodgers, “Northern Political Ideologies.” Table I Percentage of the Adult White Male Population Who Were of Southern, Northern, or Foreign Birth or Parentage in Selected Counties, Townships, Towns, and Wards of West-Central Indiana in 1860" Polity Southern Northern Foreign Parke County Howard Township Jackson Township Penn Township Rockville (town) 38.5% 66.9 50.5 46.7 31.4 25.4% 14.2 16.2 19.0 33.7 7.7% 3.4 4.3 3.6 11.2 Putnam County Cloverdale Township Russel Township Greencastle (town) 50.0 61.0 52.3 36.5 14.8 13.2 7.6 23.2 9.3 4.3 4.6 18.8 Sullivan County Hamilton Township Gill Township Jefferson Township 43.7 40.1 40.3 56.3 11.7 17.7 16.1 4.1 3.9 3.3 4.0 4.1 Vigo County Linton Township Nevins Township Otter Creek Township Riley Township Terre Haute (2nd Ward) Terre Haute (3rd Ward) 19.2 59.7 31.7 18.5 23.3 9.2 8.2 27.2 13.3 38.3 37.0 40.8 33.3 25.2 24.9 0.9 2.2 7.1 7.1 35.2 46.3 * Derived from US., Eighth Census, 1860, Schedule 1. 138 Indiana Magazine of History cratic ideology went largely unexpressed and must be distilled from the social arrangements and behaviors of Hoosier Democrats, but most of what can be known about Democratic ideology must be based on statements party members and leaders left as part of the historical record. Unfortunately, few observations by rank-and-file Democrats have survived. The existing documents are mainly convention resolutions, newspaper editorials and descriptions of the public mood, and the speeches and writings of political leaders. In the Seventh District, Congressman Daniel W. Voorhees was especially important in defining and enunciating the party’s views. He consistently placed the events of the war years into an ideological context. Thus, while drawing on a variety of historical sources, this study will focus especially on Voorhees’s speeches. If Voorhees and other leaders provide many of the sources for Democratic ideology in the district, it is important to determine to what degree they were representative of their constituents. Hoosier political parties of the mid-nineteenth century were made up of extensive networks of party activists that extended from the rural neighborhood and township to the county, district, and state levels. A good understanding of the dynamics of how candidates and convention resolutions came to be chosen can be obtained from the correspondence between the members of the Democratic network in the Seventh District and J o h n G. Davis a n d from newspaper reports on conventions and campaigns6 Potential Democratic candidates for Congress began traveling the district and making speeches during the early months of election years. Many of these candidates were lawyers who took time for politicking while doing business on the judicial circuit. Local leaders judged the response of their friends and neighbors to both 6 The material presented here on the interactions of political leaders and constituents summarizes a much longer analysis presented in Rodgers, “Northern Political Ideologies,” especially 125-98, 597-624. While the analysis here and the one in the dissertation a r e based on a plethora of primary sources, the most important sources are the letters written to Davis. See M 82, John Givan Davis Papers (Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis); and Ind. MSS. B, John Givan Davis Papers, (The S t a t e Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison [hereafter cited as Davis Papers, Wisconsin]). The secondary sources on mid-nineteenth century political ideology and organization that have influenced the conclusions presented here include: Jean H. Baker, Affairsof Party: The Political Culture of Northern Democrats in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, N.Y., 1983); Ronald P. Formisano, The Birth of Mass Political Parties: Michigan, 1827-1861 (Princeton, 1971); Ronald P. Formisano, “The Invention of the Ethnocultural Interpretation,” American Historical Review, XCIX (April, 19941, 453-77; Michael F. Holt, The Political Crisis of the 1850s (New York, 1978); Paul Kleppner, The Third Electoral System, 1853-1892: Parties, Voters, and Political Cultures (Chapel Hill, 1979); Joel H. Silbey, The Arnerican Political Nation, 1838-1893 (Stanford, Calif., 1991); Joel H. Silbey, A Respectable Minority: The Democratic Party in the Civil War Era, 1860-1868 (New York, 1977); Joel H. Silbey, “‘The Salt of the Nation’: Political Parties in Ante-Bellum America,” in Richard L. McCormick, ed., Political Parties and the Modern State (New Brunswick, N.J., 19841, 21-51. Liberty, Will, and Violence 139 the candidate and to the positions he presented. They then communicated their evaluations to other members of the network. By the time the district nominating convention was held, Democratic leaders had a very good impression of which candidate and which positions resonated best with the largest numbers of the rank-and-file party members. Large numbers of party members attended district conventions, but a relatively small group of longtime party leaders were generally in charge of running the convention and heading up the resolutions committee. Thus the district nominating conventions were dominated and manipulated by a small group of party activists, but these leaders used their control of the proceedings to pick a candidate and resolutions that they already knew most of the party’s supporters favored. Picking a candidate and positions that appealed to the Democratic constituency was very important because the key to electoral success in mid-nineteenth-century Indiana was turnout. Outside of Terre Haute, voting patterns were stable. Motivating the rank-andfile to vote was the way to win elections. The big Democratic victory in Indiana in 1862 came about because the party inspired a presidential-year-sized vote, while Republicans voted in numbers typical for a n off-year election. How, though, could a large turnout be obtained? A popular candidate or national controversies were not enough. Seventh District Republicans found this out in 1858, when they nominated John G. Davis, the incumbent Democratic congressman from the district. Davis backed Stephen A. Douglas in the Lecompton Constitution controversy, which dominated national politics at the time and divided the state and national Democratic party into pro-Buchanan and pro-Douglas factions. The Republicans ran Davis on a vague, eclectic platform that incorporated both standard Republican and Democratic positions. Davis pulled in some Democratic voters in his home county of Parke and some in Vigo, but most Democrats remained loyal to their party, while many Republicans were not motivated to vote. The turnout was very low for both parties, in spite of the momentous Lecompton issue. The Republicans won the election but had little else to show for all their work: Democratic crossover voters in Parke and Vigo returned to their party; the Republican rank-and-file was confused by the mix of Republican and Democratic positions and stayed home in large numbers; and Davis quickly returned to being a fervent Jacksonian Democrat after the election and became a vociferous critic of Lincoln’s policies as soon as the war began. If controversial issues and popular candidates were not enough in themselves to motivate voters to come to the polls, what then was required? The answer was a skillfully designed and articulately expressed political ideology. Both political parties appealed to various cultural groups. Culture here is used to mean the basic beliefs, attitudes, and values of a group of people. A group’s culture 140 Indiana Magazine of History answers the questions of existence, from what is man’s purpose to how society works. It defines reality. For most people in the Seventh District cultural values were not something precisely defined and formally learned. Instead, they were adopted through the process of socialization. Hoosier farm boys learned farming from what their fathers formally told them but also by watching and helping their fathers in the field and barn. In the same way they picked up the cultural values of their forebears from what they were formally taught and from what they observed. Political ideology consists of a series of positions on such basic questions as the role of government, the nature of personal freedom, the best means to establish and maintain social order, and the nature of the Union. Ideology reflects the cultural values of a party’s most important constituent groups; it is, in essence, the common denominator of the major cultures of the rank-and-file party members. For instance, southern upland Democrats and Irish immigrant Democrats were both pessimistic about the ability of human beings t o change their ways o r to overcome self-interest. This shared cultural view helped t o inspire such staples of Democratic ideology as opposition t o government-sponsored reform movements and to strong, activist governments that would allow men in power to use their positions to pursue their self-interests by enriching themselves7 In order to motivate the rank-and-file, a skillful politician had to take the issues of the day and cogently put them into an ideological context. That context would explain to the voter how his most basic values and beliefs would be effected for good or ill by the way he voted on an issue. A controversial issue alone could not motivate Hoosier voters. It had to be put into an ideological (and thus a cultural) context. Experienced voters might on some occasions make ideological connections for themselves, but party orators and newspaper editors were especially important in making such connections. A successful party leader, then, not only reflected the views of his constituents on the issues of the day, he did much to mold them. Leaders could not make their constituents believe just anything: they were limited by the basic cultural and ideological values of their supporters. There were other factors involved in party success, such as good organization and social activities that brought the party faithful together and reinforced their party identity. Still, the key to winning elections was the symbiotic relationship between the cultural values of a constituent and a politician creatively putting the issues of the day into an ideological context. Seventh District lead- ‘Democratic ideology did not fit each cultural group equally well. The groups whose cultural values were most like the ideological tenets of the party were the groups least likely to switch parties. Liberty, Will, and Violence 141 ers did not have to create party ideology from scratch. Many of the major tenets of Democratic ideology had been worked out since at least the 1830s. But they did have to modify the ideology to fit the particular mix of cultural groups in the district. And, of course, they had to perform the creative act of cogently interpreting each new issue t h a t arose in ideological terms. Because rural, southern uplanders were so predominant in the party in west-central Indiana, it was to their cultural values that party leaders had to cater.8 Among the wartime Democratic leaders of the Seventh District, Daniel W. Voorhees was peculiarly successful at both shaping and expressing the views of his supporters. As the son of Virginian migrants to Indiana, his own socialization in all likelihood made him sensitive to uplander cultural values. And this sensitivity was kept current by the steady flow of information from the Democratic leadership network and by the remarkable number of personal appearances a congressional candidate made throughout the district during a campaign. Voorhees was a creative leader, who made long speeches on the issues of the day. He was an excellent communicator, who was in demand as a speaker at Democratic rallies in a number of northern states as well as in his own d i s t r i ~ t . ~ His influence with Democrats within the Seventh District was quite strong. The initial federal draft appears to have taken place in the Seventh District primarily because Voorhees personally barnstormed the district to convince his constituents to cease their resistance to it. The praise and adulation Voorhees received from Democratic voters went beyond the norm. In the manuscript census one can find families who named a child after him. And he was given all kinds of laudatory nicknames, such as “the tall sycamore of the Wabash,” “gallant Dan,” and the “Tiger of the West.” Such sobriquets, with their connotations of strength and heroism, are indications that the Democrats of west-central Indiana saw him as their champion, the defender of their values, and, perhaps, in a sense, their cultural hero. Republicans, too, saw Voorhees as the intellectual and political leader of the region’s Democrats. He is frequently mentioned-and condemned-in private Republican letters as well as Republican newspapers.” 8 Democratic ideology could differ in various particulars from region to region. Pennsylvania Democrats had, for instance, a different view of tariffs than Hoosier Democrats. 9 Voorhees has received relatively little scholarly attention. Among the works about him t h a t have been published are: F r a n k Smith Bogardus, “Daniel W. Voorhees,” Indiana Magazine of History, XXVII (June, 1931), 91-103; Henry D. Jordan, “Daniel Wolsey Voorhees,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, VI (March, 1920), 532-55; Leonard S. Kenworthy, The Tall Sycamore of the Wabash: Daniel Wolsey Voorhees (Boston, 1936); and Henry Lane Wilson, “AnEarly Indiana Political Contest,” Indiana Magazine of History, XXIV (June, 1928),96-104. 10 On Voorhees‘s nicknames, his role in the draft, and Republican reactions to him see the sources in footnote 9 and E. B. Allen to Henry S. Lane, September 7, 1860, typescript, box 1860, Henry S. Lane Manuscripts (Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington); Atelus Dooley to Rufus Dooley, November 11, 1862, Sarah A. 142 Indiana Magazine of History DANIEL VOORHEES IN 1860, THE YEAR HE WAS FIRST ELECTED TO THE HOUSEOF REPRESENTATIVES Reproduced from Harriet Cecilia Voorhees, ed., Forty Years of Oratory: Daniel Wolsey Voorhees ( 3 vols., Indianapolis, 18981, 11, frontispiece. The crisis of the Civil War led Voorhees and other Democratic leaders to make expansive speeches on the basic meanings of such things as liberty, democracy, and America itself as well as on specific issues of the day. To understand the ideology of Hoosier Democrats and the way in which they viewed the world, one must comprehend the manner in which Voorhees and his party defined such basic concepts as liberty, social order, equality, Union, the Constitution, and the characteristics of the truly free man. One must also, however, know something about the socioeconomic situation of Hoosier Democrats because this experience was an inte- Dooley to Rufus Dooley, May 9, 1863, M 383, Rufus Dooley Papers (Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis); Sullivan Democrat, July 16, 1863; Terre Haute Daily Wabash Express, September 8,29,30,1862,August 23,1864. Liberty, Will, and Violence 143 gral, if often unexpressed, part of some of the tenets of their ideological views and definitions.” When one examines how a party interprets liberty, one must also examine its views on social order. Liberty and order are two sides of the same coin: the former cannot exist without the latter. The Democrats of west-central Indiana defined liberty and order very differently t h a n their Republican neighbors. Republicans viewed personal liberty as the product of a n elaborate process of developing self-control and self-discipline. One could be truly free only when one’s passions were checked, one’s values made to conform to the moral absolutes of evangelical Protestantism, and one’s reason properly cultivated. Because men who were truly free operated from common values, individual liberty and social order were not at odds.12 11 Evaluations of Voorhees’s attitudes are based mainly on surviving letters and speeches. Some of his most important speeches were collected i n Daniel W. Voorhees, Speeches of Daniel W. Voorhees of Indiana, comp. Charles S . Voorhees, introduction by A. B. Carlton (Cincinnati, 1875). Speeches appearing in this work will be cited as Speeches. Voorhees‘s speeches were given in his home district, in Congress, and on the stump while campaigning outside his district in Indiana and in many of the other northern states. Many of the speeches he gave outside of the district were reprinted in district newspapers. Apparently, some of his speeches were translated into German for constituents who spoke t h a t language r a t h e r t h a n English. In addition, accounts of stump speeches given in the district indicate that he used many of the same points and probably even some of the same lines in his numerous speeches to his constituents that he used i n his more formal speeches given elsewhere. On these points see: Sullivan Democrat, April 16, 1863; Rodgers, “Northern Political Ideologies,” 164-67. It should be noted that the ideological analysis that follows focuses on the most common views of the Democrats of west-central Indiana. These views were mainly rooted in the social experiences and culture of the rural southern-born or stock Democrats who dominated the party in numbers and ideology in the Seventh District. Space does not allow a consideration of the ways in which the various other types of Democrats in the district ( i e . , northern-born, foreign-born, conservative, Victorian) agreed and disagreed with the predominant ideology presented here. An analysis of these similarities and differences is provided in Rodgers, “Northern Political Ideologies,” 422-50. 12 In west-central Indiana there was such continuity between Whig a n d Republican thinking that many historical interpretations of Whig ideology are very germane to the ideology of their successors. The generalizations about Republican ideology presented in this article are based on Rodgers, “Northern Political Ideologies,” 269-377. Some of the studies that have influenced the interpretation presented here are: John Ashworth, ‘Agrarians’ & ‘Aristocrats’: Party Political Ideology in the United States, 1837-1846 (London, 1983); Elliott R. Barkan, “The Emergence of a Whig Persuasion: Conservativism, Democratism, and the New York State Whigs,” New York History, LII (October, 1971), 367-95; Thomas Brown, Politics and Statesmanship: Essays on the American Whig Party (New York, 1985); Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (Chicago, 1979); Daniel Walker Howe, “The Evangelical Movement and Political Culture in the North during the Second Party System,” Journal of American History, LXXVII (March, 19911, 1216-39; J. V. Matthews, “‘Whig History’: The New England Whigs and a Usable Past,” New England Quarterly, LI (June, 1978), 193-208; Major L. Wilson, “‘Liberty and Union’: An Analysis of Three Concepts Involved in the Nullification Controversy,” Journal of Southern History, XXXIII (August, 1967), 331-55; and Major L. Wilson, Space, Time, and Freedom: The Quest for Nationality and the Irrepressible Conflict, 1815-1861 (Westport, Conn., 1974). 144 Indiana Magazine of History Voorhees and his supporters had a much simpler definition of individual freedom. Freedom was the absence of external political or economic controls and restraints. If the expressed Democratic definition of liberty was simple, understanding how they believed they could create a society in which such a broad freedom could be exercised without begetting chaos presents a more complex task. Democrats said little of a direct nature about social order. Indeed, the current literature on political ideology in the nineteenth century has a great deal to say about Whig and Republican concepts of order, but little about Democratic views in large part because Whigs and Republicans wrote so much about this subject while Democrats said so little about it.13This Democratic silence, however, does not mean t h a t they were without ideas on the subject. Their conception of order is revealed in their socioeconomic behavior and the relationship of this behavior to some key Democratic ideological tenets concerning the role of government. For the Democrats of west-central Indiana liberty and order were reconciled within the socioeconomic fabric of the rural neighborhoods and crossroads towns in which most of them lived. The role of Democratic politicians was t o limit the actions of government that directly infringed upon local sovereignty or that indirectly endangered it by creating powerful economic entities that could financially enslave the p~pulation.’~ Economic liberty was rooted in the social and economic relationships that existed in rural neighborhoods. Steven Hahn and other historians of the antebellum South have argued that southern yeomen attempted t o limit their contact with market forces through neighborhood-based exchange economies. These findings appear to be applicable to the great majority of west-central Indiana rural Democrats, who were, of course, overwhelmingly southern in origin. In an exchange economy neighbors trade commodities and labor among themselves and become involved in the market economy only t o the extent necessary to obtain commodities not produced locally and the small amounts of cash needed for taxes 13 For example, Lawrence Frederick Kohl spends most of his chapter on Whig and Democratic views of social order discussing Whig ideas. He contends that the Democrats had little to say on the subject except that a natural order would exist if government did not intervene too much in society, while the Whigs wrote extensively about ways to bring about order. Lawrence Frederick Kohl, The Politics of Zndiuidualism: Parties and the American Character in the Jacksonian Era (New York, 1989), 145-85. 14Generalizations about Democratic ideology in this article that are not otherwise footnoted are based on Rodgers, “Northern Political Ideologies,” 378-487. The analysis of Democratic ideology presented here has been especially influenced by the works by Asworth and Wilson cited in footnote 12 and the following works: John Ashworth, “The Jacksonian as Leveller,” Journal of American Studies, XIV (December, 1980),407-21; Marvin Meyers, “Jacksonian Persuasion,” American Quarterly, V (Spring, 19531, 3-15; Silbey, Respectable Minority; Kohl, Politics of Individualism; and John William Ward, Andrew Jackson: Symbol for a n Age (New York, 1955). Liberty, Will,and Violence 145 and other unavoidable monetary expenses. In west-central Indiana probably all rural people-regardless of party-helped and traded with their neighbors. Democrats just did so more often and more systematically. One of the main economic differences between banner Republican and Democratic townships was that the Republican ones had a much larger per capita production of wheat and other agricultural commodities produced for market.15 If exchange economies limited the contact of Democrats with market forces, they could not eliminate them altogether. In fact, the goal in such economies was not to eliminate contact but to ensure that market forces did not take away an individual’s freedom of economic action. Democrats assumed that the natural economic state of society was one of a relative equality of wealth. This natural state could be destroyed when government provided some individuals with undue special privileges. I t was the job of Democratic politicians to prevent the government from taking actions that threatened the natural social state of rough equality. This was what the Sullivan Democrat meant when it carried on its masthead the phrase: ‘“EQUAL RIGHTS TO ALL-EXCLUSIVE PRIVILEGES TO NONE.”’ During the Civil War, active intervention in the economy by the Republican-dominated Congress provided Voorhees and other Democrats ample opportunities to voice their traditional objections to government interference in economic life.16 15 This production differential appears to indicate a more extensive Republican production for market, although production differentials are not always clearc u t when i n d i v i d u a l Republican a n d Democratic f a r m e r s a r e s t u d i e d . On productivity and market orientation of Republican and Democratic areas and individuals see Rodgers, “Northern Political Ideologies,” 200-207. For a demographic analysis of selected parts of west-central Indiana see ibid., 69-84. Because people of rural southern background predominated among the district‘s Democratic voters, studies of yeoman social, economic, and political behavior in the South proved to be very informative. Among the most useful of these studies are: Steven Hahn, The Roots of Southern Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry, 1850-1890 (New York, 1983); Steven Hahn, “The ‘Unmaking‘ of the Southern Yeomanry: The Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry, 1860-1890,” in Steven Hahn and Jonathan Prude, eds., The Countryside in the Age of Capitalist Transformation: Essays in the Social History of Rural America (Chapel Hill, 19851, 179-203; Steven Hahn, “The Yeomanry of the Nonplantation South: Upper Piedmont Georgia, 1850-1860,” in Orville Vernon Burton and Robert C. McMath, Jr., eds., Class, Conflict, and Consensus: Antebellum Southern Community Studies (Westport, Conn., 1982), 29-56; John T. Schlotterbeck, “The ‘Social Economy’ of a n Upper South Community: Orange and Greene Counties, Virginia, 1815-1860,” in ibid., 3-28; Robert C. Kenzer, “Family, Kinship, and Neighborhood in a n Antebellum Southern Community,” i n William J . Cooper, J r . , Michael F. Holt, a n d J o h n McCardell, eds., A Master’s Due: Essays in Honor of David Herbert Donald (Baton Rouge, 1985), 138-60; and J . Mills Thornton 111, Politics and Power in a Slave Society: Alabama, 1800-1860 (Baton Rouge, 1978). Some nonsouthern works that are useful are John Mack Faragher, Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Prairie (New Haven, 1986); and Hal S. Barron, “Rediscovering the Majority: The New Rural History of the Nineteenth-Century North,” Historical Methods, XIX (Fall, 1986), 141-52. 16 For examples of Voorhees’s attacking government for creating unfair economic conditions in favoring New England, see Speeches, 123-24; Sullivan Democrat, February 11, 1864. 146 Indiana Magazine of History Just as Democrats relied upon local exchange economies to balance economic freedom and market forces, they believed the local community could maintain both individual liberty and social order. This Democratic localism had two major aspects. The first was creating and maintaining local communities of shared interests and values. Each adult male could be free to do as he wished because he and the other members of the community desired the same things. Because all were in broad agreement, one’s beliefs as well as one’s liberty from external physical restraint were free from challenges and threats. When a member of the community openly challenged the common viewpoints of his neighbors, that person could be ostracized, beaten, or both. Such vigilante action was often labeled “regulation.” Regulators might crush outside threats to the community, such as criminal gangs, but they also chastised errant neighbors and in some cases threw nonconformists out of their neighborhoods.l7 The second part of localism was protecting communities from outside political interference. This aspect of localism received extensive a t t e n t i o n from Democratic orators a n d editors. Democrats denounced many reforms, such as state-sponsored temperance, as unacceptable attempts t o homogenize society. Abolitionism was seen as nothing less than a n attempt by New Englanders to impose Yankee culture on the rest of America. In fact, Hoosier Democrats sometimes used the term abolitionism as a kind of code word for cultural imperialism, or what scholars today might call cultural hegemony. The Sullivan Democrat used this definition of the term when it stated “that abolitionism is essentially monarchical, and that the cry of ‘freedom for negroes’ is but a trick of kings and despots, and their tools and flunkey’s, to rob white men of their birthright of Liberty.’”8Similarly, a Democratic pamphlet contended that abolition was designed “to satisfy a craving desire, of puritan origin, to attend to every man’s affairs except your 17 Rodgers, “Northern Political Ideologies,” 87-90, 574-75; Elliott J. Gorn, “‘Gouge and Bite, Pull Hair and Scratch‘: The Social Significance of Fighting in the Southern Backcountry,” American Historical Review, XC (February, 1985), 18-43; Kenneth S. Greenberg, “The Nose, the Lie, and the Duel in the Antebellum South,” ibid., XCV (February, 1990), 57-74; Charles S. Sydnor, “The Southerner and the Laws,” Journal of Social History, VI (February, 1940), 3-23; Thornbrough, Indiana in the Civil War Era, 270-73; and Bertram Wyatt-Brown, Southern Honor: Ethics & Behavior in the Old South (New York, 1982). 18Sullivan Democrat, February 4, 1864. 19 Democratic State Central Committee, Facts for the People! pamphlet ([Indianapolis], 18621, 11. The Democratic party’s opposition to outside forces imposing values was welcomed by t h e district‘s relatively small number of foreign-born Democrats, who settled mainly in Terre Haute and some of the larger towns. Democratic activists in Vigo County included a number of Irish and German immigrants who were engaged in the production and/or distribution of alcoholic beverages. For a discussion of the appeal of the southern-oriented ideology of Hoosier Democrats to various types of immigrants, see Rodgers, “Northern Political Ideologies,” 242-58, 428-31. Liberty, Will, and Violence 147 When engaging in extralocal organizations, a person’s individual liberty was restrained by group loyalty. A man was free to join or not join an association, but once he chose to join he was expected to be loyal to the group and to acquiesce to the will of the majority. When a Democrat deserted the party he could expect the wrath of the remaining party faithful. Indiana party leaders who became War Democrats were lambasted. Even Joseph Wright, the popular former Democratic governor of the state, was vituperated in the Democratic press for “his . . . somersault from democracy into the stagnating pit of abolitionism.”20 The Democrats of west-central Indiana believed liberty was precious and almost always endangered. Democrats thought that liberty and those who possessed it were subject to repeated attacks by the forces of tyranny. In fact, Voorhees understood and portrayed history as an endless series of struggles between the forces of freedom and the minions of despots. In this long history of struggle, America was the latest defender and champion of liberty. As Voorhees put it, In the vast and complicated annals of the past, we behold all the multiplied forms in which human government has been attempted. But in all its thousand shapes, there have been but two contending principles in behalf of which men have enlisted their minds i n council and their arms in action. The unlawful assumption of power by those who hold authority, has been waging a n unbroken contest with the rightful sovereignty of political institutions from the earliest dawn of history to the present time. Liberty and despotism have been the two great opposing forces which have convulsed the world, torn down old systems and planted new ones, and marked the world’s highway of progress with fields of battle. Their struggles for supremacy have never ceased.’l Hoosier Democrats believed that once America had defeated the British tyrants in the Revolution, the main potential threat to liberty came from within the United States. The purpose of the Union created by the Revolutionary Fathers was to allow its citizens to be free. The Constitution defined the structure of the Union and was designed to prevent the federal government from becoming a vehicle of despotism. As was common for Americans steeped in republicanism, Voorhees saw the executive branch as the most likely source of tyrannical action.2zTo safeguard liberty, the Constitution included the separation of powers not only within the federal government, but between state and federal governments as well. Sullivan Democrat, June 26, August 28, September 4, 1862. ZlSpeeches, 32. 22 While Hoosier Democratic ideology shared certain concepts with the republicanism of the American Revolution, so, too, did the ideology of Hoosier Republicans. Neither Democratic nor Republican political ideology embodied enough of the tenets of republicanism to be considered the heir of this revolutionary philosophy, even though aspects of both Republican and Democratic ideology owed obvious intellectual debts to it. For more on this point, see Rodgers, “Northern Political Ideologies,” 680-86. 20 Indiana Magazine of History 148 To go beyond these basic points and fully appreciate the implications of these views on the nature of the Union and the Constitution three questions need to be addressed. How did Voorhees and fellow party members view human nature? What was the precise relationship between the state and federal governments? And t o how great a degree could the Constitution legitimately be altered? The key to understanding how the Democrats of west-central Indiana viewed human nature is the concept of self-interest. The historian John Ashworth has found this concept to have been a central feature of Democratic ideology in It was the view of Voorhees and his followers that all men know and pursue their selfinterest. Such a view was expressed t o a n English traveler by a Terre Haute Democrat when the visitor incredulously asked why the electorate was qualified to vote on judges. The Hoosier Democrat defended the practice of judges running on party tickets and then went on to say: I calculate that the people are those most interested in having a good judge; since it is for themselves and t o themselves that he will have to administer the law! . . . The lawyer must have distinguished himself to have become known a t all: and from amongst those who have distinguished themselves, it is everybody’s interest to choose the best man.24 The view of Hoosier Whigs and their Republican descendants was that men could discipline and control their passions through the development of their characters over time. Men who were especially successful at building their characters were capable of becoming what Whigs and Republicans called a statesman: a person who sought to balance competing interests and to put the general public good before t h e i r own a n d t h a t of t h e i r constituents. Voorhees and his followers considered these concepts of character and statesmanship to be ludicrous. They took the pessimistic view that men were what they were, and no one could change basic human nature. Ironically, Democrats evolved a broad egalitarianism from this pessimism about human nature. Since all men knew their interests and no one could overcome the imperative to pursue them, all white males were equal, regardless of their wealth, education, or religious piety. Since men were incapable of resisting the urge to follow their self-interest, all men who were given powerful offices had to be watched. Men in government, Democrats thought, used their offices to enrich and empower themselves and their friends and families. The interest of the majority of citizens outside of government was to use the power of their numbers and votes t o block leaders whose See the works by Ashworth cited in footnotes 12 and 14. J. Richard Beste, The Wabash: or Adventures of a n English Gentleman’s Family in the Interior ofAmerica (2 vols., London, 1855), 11, 167-69. 23 24 Liberty, Will, and Violence 149 pursuit of self-interest threatened to h a r m the majority and infringe on its liberty. Thus, containing man’s imperative to selfaggrandizement when given power was an essential feature of government in a free society. As Voorhees put it: It is in the heart of man to grasp a t power. . . . A crown with its jewels . . . have never failed to lure the daring mind, unchastened by the love of legal liberty, to tempt the dangerous heights of sole supremacy. But . . . resistance to the power of one over many . . . has been obstinate, fierce, and perpetual. The love of power is shared by all alike, and the laboring millions of a government cherish it as dearly as he who wears away his days, and consumes his nights i n feverish longings after t h e fleeting emblems of temporal greatness. Freedom from the impositions and restraints of one supreme will has been the wholesome object sought in almost every popular revolution in which mankind ever engaged.” One way to restrain politicians from using government for their own ends was to have an electoral majority control leaders as much as possible. Politicians were not elected to make decisions that they thought were best; they were elected to do the will of the majority. Voorhees made this point clear when he stated in published comments to his constituents: “I do not vainly imagine that your devotion has been merely personal. On the contrary, I would have been as nothing in your estimation, but for the principles which you maintain, and which I represent for you in Congress.”26 For Voorhees “the voice of the people” was “the voice of Stephen Burton, a Democratic state representative from Sullivan County expressed the same view when he stated: “Some think me a little ultra, but, while I reflect the sentiments of the people, I can’t be far wrong. . . . “VOX Populi’ is ‘VOXDe”.’”’ Sometimes, however, even a vigilant majority could not prevent leaders from successfully pursuing their own interests. This was why it was necessary for a government to have as few powers and responsibilities as possible. The more power government possessed, the more power there was for leaders t o exploit. Furthermore, the powers given t o government had t o be spread among different levels. For Voorhees the Union was a loose confederation. It was indissoluble, but it was so loosely constructed and allowed the states so many powers that no situation would likely arise that would make secession appear t o be legitimately needed. As Voorhees put it: the American Union is the first confederation of States in the annals of mankind where the attributes of sovereignty were allowed to remain in its individual members. Centralization of power has been the bane of every confederation of which history gives any account, and the brightest displays of learned statesmanship . . . ever beheld were made by the founders of this government, in originating and adopting the means whereby that rock of shipwreck and disaster might be forever avoided. 25Speeches, 32-33. 26 Sullivan Democrat, May 26, 1864. Speeches, 87. 28 Indiana, Brevier Legislative Reports (1863), VI, 195-96. 27 150 Indiana Magazine of History ADVERTISEMENT FOR A DEMOCRATIC PARTY COUNTY INDIANAP R E S S , SEPTEMBER 18,1858 MEETING, PUTNAM Courtesy Roy 0. West Library, Depauw University, Greencastle, Ind. . . . If this Union, through fanaticism and licentious sectional hate, shall perish, shall therefore American liberty itself fail? . . . Who shall say when the trustee becomes unfaithful, and all the methods recognized in the different departments of the government have been exhausted in vain, to compel the performance of the conditions on which the trust was created, that each State of this Union may not reinvest itself with all its original rights, privileges, and powers? This double chance for the American citizen to perpetuate his freedom is the chief glory and crowning virtue of our complex, and at the same time simple and beautiful system of government.’’ Secession, in fact, was a threat to liberty in a number of ways. First, it threatened the concept of majority rule. As one Hoosier Democratic publication put it: “The great crime of the South was 29 Speeches, 45-46. On Voorhees’s belief that the Union was indissoluble, see his rejection of Thaddeus Stevens’s state suicide theory in ibid., 173. A useful background article on differing interpretations of the nature of the Union before the Civil War is in Kenneth M. Stampp, The Imperiled Union: Essays on the Background of the Civil War (New York, 1980), 3-36, 271-78. Liberty, Will, and Violence 151 in not fighting these [Republican] heresies inside of the Union. They forsook the maxims of Jefferson, and would not ‘abide by the decision’ in the election.”30Second, it threatened t o destroy the United States, the nation that defined and championed liberty for the Third, it undermined liberty by making the nation smaller. It was a commonplace among Democratic thinkers from Thomas Jefferson on that the larger the country was, the safer liberty would be. This was because a large country was harder for a corrupt minority to dominate than a small country. Secession, then, was a dire threat to liberty. Yet Democrats were loath to end it by force because this would require the creation of a very powerful federal army. That army could become an engine of tyranny as well as a mechanism for restoring the Union. In addition, a true Union had to be held together by the voluntary consent of the people, not at bayonet point. Thus, secession should be ended by negotiation. As Voorhees stated in 1863: “The danger of all civil wars is a military despotism. This evil is to be confronted; and to do so is a part of our mission. . . . The restoration of the Union, too, is a cherished purpose of the Democratic party. And after some time be past this will be accomplished, not in strife and blood; but in compromise, harmony and peace.”32If force or the threat of force was to be used it should be used in conjunction with negotiations, in the way t h a t had proved so successful, in Voorhees’s view, for Washington during the Whiskey Rebellion and Andrew Jackson during the Nullification Crisis.33 For the Democrats of west-central Indiana, the Constitution was only one of many documents that had embodied the eternal rules of liberty over the centuries. It was unique only in that it more fully and effectively embodied them than the Magna Carta or any other past document, frame of rights, or government. “Our constitution,” Voorhees declared, “is simply one more denial recorded in history of the power to transcend the written law in order to reach and injure the citizen in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property. It is simply one more declaration, added to those already made, that the people possessed an inherent power t o protect themselves against their old enemy-executive u ~ u r p a t i o n . ”When ~ ~ Voorhees and other Hoosier Democrats proclaimed that United States war aims 30 Facts for the People!, 5. The italics are in the original. This view was reflected in a speech in which Voorhees, after noting that many nations had been larger, richer, and so forth than the United States, stated: “But why do the attention and interest of mankind turn from them with a sense of relief and delight to the Western world? The student of ancient history drops the book from his hands and forgets to resume the story in gazing at greater wonders here than any which he reads. It is the spirit of liberty that has worked this wonder.” Sullivan Democrat, July 30, 1863. 32 This quotation is from a speech Voorhees gave in New Hampshire. A few weeks after he gave it, it was published in the Sullivan Democrat, July 30, 1863. 33Speeches, 145. 34Zbid., 80. 31 152 Indiana Magazine of History should be the “Union as it was, and the Constitution as it is,” they were saying t h a t the Union could only be preserved by strictly adhering t o the separation of powers expressed in the Constitution. This separation was the best rule ever formulated for preserving the liberty of the individual and the sanctity of relative local autonomy. The right of habeas corpus was one feature of the Constitution that helped to make it better than earlier charters of rights. Habeas corpus, Voorhees contended, was “the active agent by which the will of the people, as expressed in the constitution and laws made for their own protection, is enforced. . . . It was recognized at once by a race unwilling to accept the doom of slaves to be a law of necessiEven though habeas corpus was written into the Constitution, it was something that transcended it. “It is one of those high, unrepealable laws which liberty writes on the hearts of all her worshipers,” Voorhees thought, “and which, without t h e aid of legislation, became a part of the common law of England, simply because of that rule of God’s providence, which prescribes an eternal fitness of things.”36Obviously, Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus struck, in the Democrat’s view, at a core feature of the constitutional guarantees of liberty and at divine, natural law. In demanding a return t o “the Union as it was,” Democrats were also suggesting, of course, that something had changed for the worse. This change, in their view, was the drive by New England abolitionists and the Republican party to abolish slavery and to remake the Union in a Yankeefiepublican image. This attempt to create a cultural hegemony threatened the localism that was a vital part of the Democratic conception of liberty. It was the root cause of the disunion crisis. Voorhees charged that “the descendants of a bigoted and speculating class now seek to absorb the right to think, the right to act, and the right to possess and enjoy, for, and in the place of, and to the exclusion of all who exist outside of their malign a n t circle.”37As for t h e Confederates, “in their estimation,” Voorhees contended, they seceded in order “to preserve the integrity of their local laws, their social institutions, [and] the right to control their domestic affairs free from federal i n t e r f e r e n ~ e . The ”~~ Sullivan Democrat voiced similar thoughts: “if the mother [of the war] was a Southern party . . . the father was Northern fanaticism and anti-slavery, and the child of shame bears more resemblance to the father than to the mother.”39 35Zbid., 82. 36Zbid. 37Zbid., 47. 38Zbid., 152. 39 Sullivan Democrat, January 23, 1862. While it is clear that Voorhees and most other Hoosier Democrats thought secession was wrong, one rarely finds denunciations of the South or of secessionists that are anywhere near as vehement as their condemnations of Republicans, abolitionists, and New England. Liberty, Will, and Violence 153 Democratic fears of Republican intentions t o dominate the nation were expressed from the early days of the war. For example, in June, 1861, a Hoosier Democratic leader wrote in a private letter to Voorhees that he believed: that a n attempt will be made to place the whole country under military rule, that all the means of the government will be employed to arm the minions of the administration and to disarm all opponents, that a n absolute reign of terror will be inaugurated, and when the means of resistance of t h e masses a r e removed a military despotism will rule until all state rights under this constitutional organization shall have been abolished and a monarchy absolute or limited established. . . . I look upon this war as much and more a war upon the democracy than anything else. . . . A state forced to obedience at the point of the bayonet I regard a s much & more a subversion of the government than secession itself. . . .40 Voorhees opposed any fundamental change in the Constitution or the nature of the Union. He did not see the Constitution as a flexible and amendable document. In his view amendments that introduced fundamental changes in the Constitution were invalid. The Constitution embodied eternal laws and principles that guaranteed freedom. If one altered it so profoundly that it ceased t o embody these concepts, then it became not a bastion of liberty, but a vehicle for tyranny. In essence, this was the Democratic variation of “higher law,” and Voorhees invoked it when he came out in ardent opposition t o the Thirteenth Amendment t o the Constitution. Commenting on this amendment, the Hoosier congressman said: the constitution does not authorize a n amendment to be made, by which any State or citizen shall be divested of acquired rights of property or of established political franchises. The construction which our fathers gave to the constitution, and to which we have all hitherto adhered, guaranteed to the slaveholding States the right of property in slaves. . . . It is true that the provision of the constitution which authorizes its amendment, is very broad. . . . But it is always implied as a limitation of power, that a well-settled principle of public law shall not be violated. To majorities are intrusted great and diversified powers, but among t h e m . . . is never granted the power to rob a minority of its vested rights.41 Voorhees defined the United States as more an idea than a place. The Union, he thought, was defined by certain ideas and values, not by geographical boundaries. The Constitution was the 40 Joseph Ristine to Daniel Voorhees, June 20, 1861, manuscript 130, Carrington Family Papers (Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, New Haven, Connecticut). Ristine was a Democratic leader in Fountain County and the state auditor during 1863-1864. This letter was part of the correspondence seized during a raid on Voorhees‘s office in Terre Haute in 1864. Parts of the letter were reprinted in Union State Central Committee, Record of the Disloyal Democracy (Indianapolis, 1866). Although it was obviously a partisan publication, the things quoted in this pamphlet are accurate, though very selective. It contains a number of local Democratic wartime resolutions that reflect views very similar to those expressed by Voorhees. 41 Speeches, 178-79. Bayless Hanna, a Vigo County Democrat, made a similar argument before the Indiana Senate. Indiana, Brevier Legislative Reports (18651, VII, 197-99. 154 Indiana Magazine of History embodiment of those basic ideas. Thus, to alter substantially the Constitution was tantamount to destroying America. As Voorhees put it: But does mere land and water, mere extent of soil, constitute the life of this nation? No, sir; immortal liberty is its life-the soul which animates the body-and without which the mere form of our government will be a cold and lifeless corpse. . . . T h e c o n s t i t u t i o n i s my c o u n t r y , a n d I h a v e n o c o u n t r y o u t s i d e of i t s provision^.^^ The Constitution, the separation of powers, and even majority rule were not enough-as the Civil War crisis illustrated-to preserve liberty. Ultimately, it was the vigilance of individual free men that guaranteed liberty for all. In normal times, this vigilance was accomplished through the expression of the will of the majority in elections. But in times of crisis men who truly possessed and truly deserved liberty had to be ready to do more than vote. What was it they had to be ready t o do? What was it, in Voorhees’s view, that distinguished free men from those who were not free? A cursory r e a d i n g of t h e passages a b o u t free men i n Voorhees’s speeches suggests that he gave a racial definition to the question of who was free and who deserved to be free. Voorhees often referred to the Anglo-Saxon peoples as “the race of liberty.” How the Anglo-Saxons achieved this status was something about which Voorhees was ambiguous. In some speeches he suggested that their propensity for liberty was a divine gift: “that divine emanation from the bosom of God to the soul of man.” In others he suggested a kind of frontier thesis in which the Anglo-Saxon experience in the forest wildernesses of early Europe somehow turned them into lovers of a liberty that “arose from the fresh, untamed regions of Northern Europe with all the newness of life-with the bounding energy of a youthful giant.”43 If Voorhees was vague about how Anglo-Saxons came to possess liberty, he was quite definite about the characteristics of free men and what they must do to maintain their liberty. Voorhees’s description of the numerous past struggles between liberty and tyranny makes it clear that other races were at one time people of liberty. The Jews of the Old Testament, the ancient Greeks, the citizens of the Roman Republic, and other peoples had, for a time, been the race of liberty.44In fact, in spite of all his racial rhetoric, a close reading of Voorhees’s speeches makes it clear that what ultimately defined the man of liberty was not race but personality 42Zbid., 96. 43Zbid., 37, 98, 101. Note how t h e l a s t quotation is reminiscent of J o h n William Ward’s description of the American character’s being influenced by what he calls nature and providence. Ward’s discussion of will, nature, and providence is especially useful if one limits his interpretation to Democrats rather than applying it, as Ward does, to all Americans. See Ward, Andrew Jackson. 440n this aspect of history see Speeches, 81. Liberty, Will, and Violence 155 traits. In particular, it was the free man’s will to fight for his freedom that distinguished him from the rest of mankind. Like so much else in Democratic thinking, will was a spontaneous quality; it was not something learned or developed. As noted above, Whigs and Republicans believed that a man could be truly free only after undertaking a long and arduous process of self-discipline. For Democrats liberty was freedom from outside restraints. What Voorhees’s definition of a free man made clear was that anyone who deserved to be free of outside controls had to be willing to resist any restrictions placed on him by Voorhees’s interpretation of the American Revolution reflected his views on the characteristics of the free man. For Voorhees the Founding Fathers were great men, not so much because of their character and their republican virtue, but because they fought back when tyrants tried to take away their freedom. The Founding Fathers had the will t o use violence t o protect their liberty. This will to fight to the death for liberty, this “honest, upright manhood,” was the defining characteristic of the free man, the man of liberty. Every free people of the past had possessed this will. When they ceased to have it, when they gave in to “luxury, sloth, and indifference,” they lost their freedom to a despot. Once a people lost their liberty, they never regained it. Another race of liberty arose to take their place.46Voorhees and his fellow Democrats praised the sagacity of the Founding Fathers, but when they talked about being able to live up to their standards and preserve liberty, what they talked about, primarily, was the guts of the Fathers, not their The crude race-baiting that Voorhees and the Hoosier Democratic press increasingly engaged in during the Civil War was a blatant appeal t o bigotry, but it was more than this. Voorhees and others used racial stereotypes to turn the black slaves of the South into the negative referent of the man of liberty. In their rhetorical portrayals, slaves were not simply members of an inferior race, they were also men who lacked the qualities of free men. Male slaves were depicted as lacking resolution and courage and as being meek and passive virtually to the point of being like little children. In the thinking of the Democrats, the black slave did not deserve freedom because he was a slave. Anyone who would allow himself t o be a slave could never be worthy of liberty. I n effect, slaves deserved to be slaves because they were slaves. Anyone who believed that southern slaves could be made into good citizens was attempting to overturn the natural order. Thus one Seventh District Democratic paper referred to the “ideas of the Abolitionists” as 45 On Republican ideology in this and the following paragraphs, see the works cited in footnote 12. 46Speeches, 66, 88, 127-36. 47See, for example, ibzd., 58-59, 101. 156 Indiana Magazine of History being “insane, fanatical and suicidal.” And Voorhees referred to the freedom Republicans planned t o give slaves as a “worthless liberty.’’48 Like black men, women had no meaningful place i n t h e Democrats’ conception of the political realm. Republicans in westcentral Indiana had no intention of allowing women t o vote, but their conception of liberty created a niche in which women, whom they and others often stereotyped as being morally superior, could be permitted to participate in many political and other public forums. For Republicans, women had a duty to reinforce the values that provided the vital foundation of the Republican conceptions of liberty and social order. Republican women gave patriotic speeches t o mixed audiences and published pro-Union prose and poetry. They formed soldiers’ relief organizations. They were involved before and after the war in reform organizations. They even served as officers in mixed male and female temperance organization^.^' 48Ibid., 153, 172-82; Greene County Southern Indianian, March 26,1863. For examples of Democratic appeals to racism see Sullivan Democrat, September 4, 1862, June 11, August 13, September 17, October 1, 1863. For background on the Democrats and racism see: Baker, Affairs ofthe Party, 212-58; Stephen E. Maizlish, “Race and Politics i n the Northern Democracy: 1854-1860,” i n Robert H. Abzug and Stephen E. Maizlish, eds., New Perspectives on Race and Slavery in America: Essays in Honor ofKenneth M. Stampp (Lexington, Ky., 1986),79-90;Silbey, Respectable Minority, 80-83; Emma Lou Thornbrough, “The Race Issue in India n a Politics during the Civil War,” Indiana Magazine of History, XLVII (June, 19511, 165-88; and V. Jacque Voegeli, Free but Not Equal: The Midwest and the Negro during the Civil War (Chicago, 1967). Note that the Democrats’ position on race reflected their more general view that there were natural limits to how much men could change or be changed and, consequently, to how much society could be reformed. Thus, Democratic race-baiting and criticisms of abolitionism were not simply and exclusively aimed a t efforts to end slavery but were also attacks on many of the vast array of reforms and ideas they found both absurd and threatening. As a means of attacking the Republican agenda of social reform and activist, positive government, the race-baiting approach had great potential because it resonated so well with basic Democratic beliefs and because in order to counterattack Republicans had to defend black abilities in a society where racist assumptions of black inferiority were widespread, even among Republicans. 49For Republican views on women and the wartime activities of Republican women see: Louise C. Manning, “Presentation of F l a g to 43rd Regiment at Evansville, 1861,” typescript, War (IN) Civil folder, Misc. Papers (Vigo County Public Library, Terre Haute, Ind.); Parke County Republican, January 27, 1859, August 13, 1862, April 8, 1863, February 1, 1865; Terre Haute Wabash Express (weekly), April 29, 1863; Report of the Ladies Aid Society, 2-5, printed report beginning with 1869, in Rose Ladies Aid Society, folder 1, box 800114 (Vigo County Public Library Archives, Terre Haute, Ind.); and Rodgers, “Northern Political Ideologies,” 107-109, 372-75. For background on the public roles of women in the nineteenth century see: Paula Baker, “The Domestication of Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780-1920,” American Historical Review, LXXXIX (June, 19841, 620-47; Anne M. Boylan, “Women and Politics in the Era before Seneca Falls,” Journal of the Early Republic, X (Fall, 19901, 363-82; Stephanie McCurry, “The Two Faces of Republicanism: Gender and Proslavery Politics in Antebellum South Carolina,” Journal ofAmerican History, LXXVIII (March, 19921, 1245-64; Carroll Smith Rosenberg, “Beauty, the Beast and the Militant Woman: A Case Study in Sex Roles and Social Stress in Jacksonian America,” American Quarterly, XXIII (October, 19711, 562-84; Mary P. Ryan, Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825-1880 Liberty, Will, and Violence 157 There is little evidence of similar public activity on the part of Democratic women. For example, in Sullivan, the Seventh District’s banner Democratic county, the two major committees of the Ladies’ Aid Society together contained nine men and only six women. At least two-thirds of these women were Republicans, a remarkable fact considering that nearly three-fourths of Sullivan’s voters were Democrats. Democratic women orators, authors, and poets were noticeably absent from Sullivan. Of the two female reform organization officers that were found in the county, one was a Republican and the other could not be identified by party. Democratic women simply did not play the same range of political and other public roles as did Republican women. The near total exclusion of Democratic women from the political realm was consistent with Voorhees’s view of the person who deserved the full status of a free citizen. For Voorhees, the man of liberty was defined by will and aggression, attributes nineteenth-century Americans considered m a ~ c u l i n e . ~ ~ After the tumultuous legislative session of 1863, themes of will, violence, and liberty became ever more prominent in the speeches and editorials of Voorhees and other west-central Indiana Democratic spokesmen. These leaders attempted to prepare their constituents for the use of force while trying to contain premature outbreaks of rank-and-file violence. Elections represented the key determinant as to when violence was justified. Democrats had felt all along that the Republicans were bent on imposing their agenda on the country at any cost. Morton’s assumption of illegal powers in Indiana, the forced exile of Clement Vallandigham from Ohio, the (Baltimore, 1990), especially 132-58;Catherine Clinton and Nina Silber, eds., Diuided Houses: Gender and the Civil War (New York, 1992); Elizabeth D. Leonard, Yankee Women: Gender Battles in the Civil War (New York, 1994). For background on antebellum conceptions of women and their proper sphere see: John Mack Faragher, Women and Men on the Overland Trail (New Haven, 1979), especially 110-43; Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860,” American Quarterly, XVIII (Summer, 1966), 151-74;Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: “Woman’s Sphere” in New England, 1780-1835 (New Haven, 1977); and Nancy A. Hewitt, “Beyond the Search for Sisterhood: American Women‘s History in the 1980s,”Social History, X (October, 19851, 299-321. 50 History of Greene and Sullivan Counties, State of Indiana . . . (Chicago, 18841, 602-603; Sullivan Democrat, February 6, 1862. That women were not generally associated with defined masculine qualities of courage, will, and so forth is suggested by a n incident t h a t took place in a military u n i t from t h e district. Two captured deserters were punished by losing six months’ pay and by being “dressed in women’s clothes and marched up and down the battalion a t the point of the bayonet.” Samuel H. Mattox to his mother and father, January 16, 1863, typescript, SpC. B, M4368, G.C., Diary and Civil War Letters of Samuel H. Mattox (Vigo County Public Library). While Democratic views were basically determined by the men of southern heritage who were the majority of the district‘s voters, it is worth noting that the district‘s Irish-born Democrats probably had views on women that were similar to those of voters of southern background. On male Irish immigrant attitudes towards women see Hasia R. Diner, Erin’s Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore, 1983). 158 Indiana Magazine of History military arrests, and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus validated and intensified their already existing fears of potential Republican tyranny. However, as long as reasonably free elections were held, the Democrats of west-central Indiana would fight for their liberty at the ballot box? The interconnections of liberty, will, violence, and fair elections were forcefully expressed by Voorhees in a speech he gave in Ohio on behalf of the exiled Democratic gubernatorial candidate Clement L. Vallandigham. His defiant speech there received wide circulation in the Seventh District. In this speech he stated: These Governors [Morton of Indiana and Yates of Illinois] tell the great state of Ohio that if she dares to select a man as her Chief Magistrate who is obnoxious to them and the President, war will be levied against h e r . . . . They threaten the streets of your cities with blood. . . . The horrible alternative was held up before you. Take Brough for Governor, or take civil war and the fate of Missouri. Are you slaves? Shall these men come here and crack their whips over your heads? Are you to be terrified like wayward children into submission? . . . I f . . . we are attacked by Brough, Morton or Yates, or all combined,-the President himself and all his followers . . . we will return blow for blow. . . . Let American freemen everywhere throw off their lethargy and prepare for the conflict. Cowardice invites oppression. Defiance often stops its advances. But, whether it recedes or approaches, i t is the duty of men determined to be free to remember that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. It may be hard to die . . . but it is still harder to a brave spirit to lay his mouth to the dust and accept the polluted hoof of power on his prostrate neck. . . . Nor, in such a conflict, will we fail. It will be as holy and just as that in which our fathers enacted the revolution. . . . I call on the Democracy of the nation . . . to rally with arms in their hands to the rescue of the principles of self government. And in that hour, if I fail to do what becomes a man of free birth, determined to die free, . . . then strike my name from the books of your remembrance, and let . . . the disgrace rest upon my name forever.52 In a similar vein the Southern Indianian, the Democratic organ in Greene County, warned that if Republicans continued to suspend habeas corpus and other basic rights that “it is not unreasonable to suppose, that forbearance will a t last cease to be a virtue, and that the people will avail themselves of the last remedy in their reach-revolution; and by a general uprising shake off the manacles of despotism, and hurl pretenders and usurpers from those high places, which they have disgraced in the eyes of every freeman.”53In private correspondence Democrats were saying similar 51 After telling a Democratic audience that Morton had armed men ready to keep Democrats from voting i n the 1864 elections, Terre Haute Democratic editor Grafton F. Cookerly stated, “Fellow Democrats, if we can’t beat them a t the ballotbox[,] we can at the cartridge-box.” Parke County Republican, August 17, 1864. 52 Sullivan Democrat, October 13,1863. The Greene County Southern Zndiania n , September 8,1863, praised Voorhees when he announced that he had decided to campaign for Vallandigham in Ohio. Voorhees became personally involved i n violence i n 1864. At the National Hotel in Washington, D.C., Voorhees engaged i n a fistfight with Republican United States Senator Zachariah Chandler of Michigan. Greene County Southern Indianian, June 14, 1864. 53Zbid., J u n e 4, 1863. Democratic leaders often asked for both calm and for Democrats to prepare for a fight in the same speech or editorial. They seemed to be Liberty, Will, and Violence 159 things. One Democratic voter confided to his son in a private letter that: “I think the Republicans and the democrats will be engaged in a war all over the united states[.] I fully believe it will come to that[.] I will hope to the better and prepare to meet the The Democratic ideology outlined here was more than just a set of ideas and beliefs. Ideology influences what one sees as well as what one believes. Democrats in west-central Indiana viewed the world through ideologically colored glasses. The reality that they saw was a reality different from that perceived by Republicans and by modern historians who choose to look only at events of the time without considering the ideological factor. When one begins t o understand their ideology, one can begin to see the logic of Democratic behavior. Democrats acted consistently and rationally within the reality their ideology defined. The Democrats of west-central Indiana were not disloyal to the Union. They were loyal t o their own definition of the Union. And the Democratic Union was threatened by Republicans as well as by southern rebels. Hoosier Democrats of southern origins did not support the Confederacy because of their ancestral ties. They opposed secession. What influence southern origins had was translated through the Democratic ideological views and the socioeconomic habits that were brought from the South. Democrats were conditioned by their ideology to expect tyrannical attacks on liberty. They anticipated an aggressive and dangerous Republicanism, and their ideology focused their vision on those actions of the Republican Morton and Lincoln administrations that confirmed their fears of potential Republican tyranny. Democrats did not engage in irrational partisanship. They were not blind to the danger the nation faced. Democrats responded logically within the parameters of their ideology to the threats to America they believed and perceived to exist. Finally, the existence of nonexistence of formal antigovernment plots by Harrison Dodd or others is not as important as the fact that probably most Hoosier Democrats felt that their liberty was in mortal danger and that they might be required to resort to violence to protect it. If they were not allowed to defend their freedom with the ballot, then their ideologically conditioned view of current events and of history and their sense of self-worth and self-definition-their manhood-demanded that they, like their Revolutionary fathers, exhibit the necessary will to defend their liberty through violent means. saying the time for violence had not come, but that it could very quickly. For a good example of this see ibid.,March 26, 1863. 54 J . W. Smith to B. W. Smith, January 23, 1863, typescript, Smith Letters, SpC, 929.2 L, G.C. (Vigo County Public Library).