Download CWRT NewsLetter march 2013 - Harpers Ferry Civil War Round

HARPERS FERRY
CIVIL WAR ROUND TABLE
PO BOX 1079, HARPERS FERRY, WV 25425
Vol. 32 March 2013 No. 07
DATE:
Wednesday, March 13th, 2013
TIME:
Dinner 7:00 PM; Program 8:00
PLACE:
Camp Hill Methodist Church, Harpers Ferry, WV
SPEAKER:
Jim Addy
SUBJECT:
Lincoln and Liberty
The Speaker:
Jim Addy grew up in Baltimore, Maryland and moved to Harpers Ferry in 1976. He
graduated from Towson University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Education, a
Master of Arts degree from Loyola University, Baltimore and a Doctorate from George
Washington and Johns Hopkins Universities. He earned two post doctorate fellowships in
African - American history and economic education.
Jim has taught history, economics, and philosophy in the Baltimore City and County
schools. In the past, Jim taught African - American history at Loyola University and
Bowie State University. Presently, he teaches US history at the Community College of
Baltimore County, Essex Campus.
Jim was Mayor of Harpers Ferry for ten years, 2001-2011. He is married to Alden
Addy and they have three children, two sons and one daughter. There are two granddaughters.
The Subject
The presentation of Lincoln and Liberty will be a review of Lincoln's attitude on
slavery prior to 1861 and how he managed the issue during his presidency. Also, Jim will
examine the constitutional crisis between Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney concerning
Lincoln's suspension of the habeas corpus writ, civil rights suspension, and his treatment
of Congressman Clement Vallandigham and other Copperheads who supported Southern
secessionist positions on slavery and state’s rights. Suppression of public dissent in
newspapers will be addressed. The question to be answered is how did Lincoln justify
curtailment of the first amendment right of freedom of speech in a time of rebellion and
secession?
The Meal
A family-style meal will be served at 7:00 PM prior to the program. The cost of the
meal is $15.00 per person. Reservations for the meal must be phoned in no later than
Sunday, March 10th, to Kyle Wichtendahl at 301-639-8855, or you can email him at
[email protected]. The meal will be Corned Beef and Cabbage, Carrots,
Potatoes, Iced Tea, Coffee, Irish Soda Bread, Butter & Dessert.
Clement L. Vallandigham
Clement Laird Vallandigham (1820-1871) was a United States Congressman from
Ohio and member of the Democratic Party during the period of the American Civil War,
and the best known of the anti-war "Copperheads." His efforts to sabotage the war effort
led to his arrest and exile into the Confederacy.
Vallandigham was born in New Lisbon, Ohio, on July 29, 1820. He was educated in
the common schools and afterwards studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1842.
Elected to the Ohio House of Representatives in 1845, he became an extreme state rights
Democrat, emphasizing his principles in the legislature in the local and national party
conventions, and in the columns of a newspaper, the Western Empire, which he edited at
Dayton, Ohio, in 1847-49. He was elected to the United States House of Representatives
in 1857, opposed from the beginning to the policies of the newly-formed Republican
Party, especially as they related to slavery. Of Southern ancestry, his beliefs and politics
were pro-South; so much so that by the time the Civil War began he was the leader of a
group of Democrats whose mission was to undermine the Republican war effort by
convincing men through inflammatory speeches, letters, and publications not to enlist.
They were known as "Copperheads" after the poisonous snake.
In late April, 1863 he was delivering derogatory speeches against Lincoln and the war
effort in Ohio - some of which called on soldiers to desert - in defiance of a military order
by Brigadier General Ambrose Burnside to anyone within the Military Department of the
Ohio not to sympathize with the enemy. Burnside felt it deliberately undermined the war
effort and ordered his immediate arrest on May 5; Vallandigham was tried and found
guilty by a military commission of treasonable conduct in the service of the Confederacy
and sentenced to prison. Lincoln changed his sentence to banishment to the Confederacy.
By then, Vallandigham was one of the most reviled and hated men in the Union. In
February 1864 Vallandigham appealed through counsel to the U.S. Supreme Court for
revision of the sentence of the military commission. His petition was denied, the Supreme
Court declaring that its authority did not extend to the proceedings of a military
commission.
Copperheads were strong in the lower Middle West and Vallandigham was their hero.
His sympathizers vigorously attacked the administration for his "unlawful arrest"; they
claimed that his right of habeas corpus guaranteed by the Constitution was denied by his
military tribunal. Ohio Democrats defiantly nominated Vallandigham for governor in
1863, and others tried to put pressure on Lincoln to reverse his decision and restore him
to his seat in Congress. To a small committee of Democrats, Lincoln famously answered:
"Must I shoot some poor soldier boy who deserts, and not touch a hair of a wily agitator
who induces him to desert?"
Vallandigham did not stay in Southern exile for long. By that fall he was in Canada,
continuing his denunciations of the war effort. The campaign for the governorship
weakened in the wake of the twin Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Although
he returned secretly to Ohio in 1864, Union authorities did not arrest him, even when he
actively campaigned on behalf of General George B. McClellan for president and wrote
the anti-war Democratic platform.
After the war, Vallandigham called the Reconstruction policy of the Republicans
tyrannical and unconstitutional, but in actuality he was finished as a politician, Lincoln's
tag line of "wily agitator" now firmly implanted. By 1870 he had urged his party to steer
away from opposing Reconstruction and concentrate on financial issues; he himself
would find more success as a lawyer. On June 16, 1871, he was rehearsing his final
arguments in a murder trial; he wanted to demonstrate to the jury that the defendant's gun
could have fired accidentally while pulling it from his pocket. While making the same
move, Vallandigham shot himself in the abdomen; he died the next day.
Commit to Freedom for All
In 1860, New York Republicans invited Lincoln to speak in the big city for the first
time, and with an eye already on the presidency, he responded with a thoughtful, almost
scholarly defense of the federal government’s right to restrict the spread of slavery.
“Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that
much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we,
while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to
overrun us here in these Free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by
our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical
contrivances…such as groping for some middle ground between right and wrong.
…Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor
frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to
ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might.” (Excerpted from Cooper Union New
York speech, February 27, 1860)