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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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).