A Youth's History of the Great Civil War
Van Evrie, Horton & Co., ©1866
Revised edition, ©2006 www.ronie-mooney-encs.us
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CHAPTER XXXX, EVENTS IN THE NORTH IN 1863
I CANNOT dismiss the events of the year 1863 without referring to political affairs in the North, for it must be borne in mind all the time that Mr.Lincoln was carrying on two wars, one against the South and the other against everybody in the North who had the independence and courage to differ from him.
All who did not fall down and worship Mr.Lincoln were denounced as"traitors,""Copperheads" and "Rebel sympathizers," and no punishment was thought too severe for them.
On the 1st of January,1863, Mr.Lincoln issued his long announced "Emancipation Proclamation." In other words, he declared in the style of a dictator that all the negroes in the South should be "Free" to do as they pleased, to go where they pleased, and to be as lazy and useless as they pleased. And he declared that he would use the army and navy of the United States to protect them in these "rights." That was a part of the meaning of this abolition Proclamation. But it was even more. It really meant the amalgamation of the races. It was the first step in the direction of degrading and destroying the masses of the people by poisoning them with negro equality.
This "free" negro edict was followed by various acts of Congress authorizing the use of negroes as soldiers in the army. The abolitionists had been clamorous for this from the beginning, and they were now having things entirely their own way. This use of negroes to fight the South was the vilest, meanest and most barbarous act of all that Lincoln and Seward were guilty of, for it comprehended all crimes. Besides it was a confession that twenty-five millions of white men in the North could not whip eight millions in the South.
But the real object of the abolitionists was to degrade the white soldiers to a level with negroes, and familiarize the people with their amalgamation policy. They got up flags to present to these negro regiments. Even women, calling themselves ladies, I am ashamed to say, were guilty of this disgusting business, and in New York they presented a flag to a negro regiment as a memento, to use their own words, "of love and honor from the daughters of this metropolis." This revolting spectacle actually took place in Union Square, New York, and the women were "the fashionables," so called, of Fifth Avenue! Future ages will scarcely be able to believe that such madness could have existed among otherwise sane people.
Lincoln and Seward had now completely thrown off their masks, and openly falsified all their solemn pledges. It would seem as if they would have broken down the war by their bold negro equality policy, but about this time the "greenback fever" began to be felt. Everybody was getting rich on paper money. Most cunningly had the finances of the country been conducted. Instead of taxing the people to carry on the war, the abolition Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Chase, had brought about a general suspension of specie payments, and issued paper-money, which was declared by Congress "a legal tender," right in the face of the Constitution, which stated that nothing but gold and silver should be a legal currency.
This paper money was issued in floods, and with it the North was corrupted. With it high bounties were paid for soldiers, as volunteering for an abolition war was not even thought of. True, some of the more reckless of the abolition journals said, that as soon as Mr.Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation, the roads would swarm with volunteers. But no one saw them.
The effect of Mr.Lincoln's negro edict in the army was very marked. In the winter of 1863,the soldiers in some instances were almost in a state of mutiny. Their letters home to their friends were very desponding. Desertions were numerous. A young soldier, writing to his mother, January 10th,1863,from Camp Slocum, says: "One of the sweetest comforts of my life, while lying on the cold, damp ground here, is to hear from you. Mother, I tell you I am sorry that I ever enlisted. Not that I am afraid to fight for my country; no, no, I am willing to fight for the Stars and Stripes, but not for the nigger. If I was home again, I would never leave you until forced to do so, by seeing the rebels before our chestnut trees."
This letter is only a sample of scores and scores that I might quote, if my space allowed. It is sufficient to show, however, that the private soldiers knew how they had been swindled by Lincoln and Seward. But it was too late then to remedy the mistake they had made. Their officers, generally, kept a strict watch upon them; and some were shot for mutiny, because they said they did not "want to fight to free negroes."
The effect of the Lincoln proclamation was very great all over the North, and produced a decided reaction against his Administration and the war. But again Mr.Lincoln resorted to every effort to control public opinion, and to try to make it appear that it endorsed him.
In April, an election for Governor came off in the State of Connecticut. The Democrats had nominated as Governor, Thomas H. Seymour. Now Mr.Lincoln and his party hated Gov. Seymour with all their might, for he had denounced their war from the beginning. No man was so beloved by the Democracy of Connecticut. When the Mexican war broke out, he volunteered to fight the enemies of his country; and he it was, who, at the final charge on Chapultepec, cut down the Mexican flag with his sword, and raised the Stars and Stripes in its place.
When Mr.Lincoln commenced his war upon the South, some abolitionists in Hartford used Gov. Seymour's name without his consent at a war meeting; but he came out at once in a bold letter and told them they had no business to do it. They thought he would not dare to speak out. But they mistook their man. They then talked of mobbing him; but they knew there was too much fight in him, and so the cowards kept away.
The Democrats did a good thing in nominating him, and right nobly too did they labor to elect him. They were sure of success; but Mr.Lincoln thought it would be a death-blow to him to allow it, so he sent home some two or three thousand soldiers from his army to defeat him. As it turned out, it was these soldiers' votes that defeated Mr.Seymour.
Early in the year, General Burnside had been appointed to the command of "the Department of the Ohio,"which included the States of Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, and Indiana. As there were elections for Governor to come off in the first two of these States, one in October and the other in August, it does not require a good guesser to tell what he was sent there for.
He commenced his despotic course by arresting, on the 5th of May, the Hon.Clement L.Vallandigham. Mr. Vallandigham had been a member of Congress since 1861; and no one did the abolitionists hate more cordially than he, and for no other reason than because he opposed the policy of Mr.Lincoln's Administration. They knew that the Democrats intended to nominate him as their candidate for Governor, in October. Hence they wanted to break him down. So they trumped up charges that Mr. Vallandigham had "talked treason" in some of his speeches, and they tried him before "a military commission," which sentenced him to imprisonment. But Mr.Lincoln did not exactly dare to put him in prison, for it is doubtful whether it would not have been torn down, and Mr.Vallandigham released, so great was the indignation of the people. So Mr.Lincoln thought it was "a smart joke," no doubt, and sent Mr. Vallandigham across the lines into the Confederate States.
Mr.Vallandigham quietly pursued his way to a seaport, and sailed for Canada, where he remained some time. He was defeated in October for Governor, though the Democrats made a gallant effort to elect him. Mr.Lincoln's "men and money" were too much for them. After awhile Mr.Vallandigham returned of his own accord to Ohio, despite of Mr.Lincoln's order of exile. They at first talked of arresting him again, but did not venture to do it.
In Kentucky, General Burnside's "political campaign" was equally serviceable. In that State the Democrats had nominated the venerable Hon. Chas. A.Wickliffe, a name known and honored throughout the whole country. On the 30th of July, just three days before the election, General Burnside declared martial law in the State. Several Democrats, Who were running for Congress, were arrested and Burnside ordered that no "disloyal men" should be allowed to vote; but as all Democrats were called "disloyal," he might as well have ordered that no Democrats be allowed to vote. In some counties no one was permitted to cast a vote for Wickliffe. The result was a defeat, or rather there was no election held. Never was there a more complete overthrow of the ballot-box. Shameful as it was, the abolitionists gloried over the result.
But this does not begin to exaust the chapter of General Burnside's tyranny. All over the West there existed a complete "reign of terror." No Democrat's life or property was safe, if he dared boldly to doubt the wisdom of Mr.Lincoln. In 1862, after the mails had been reopened to Democratic papers, a new process had been resorted to, to injure their circulation and break them down. It was held that any commander of a Department, or provost marshal, could prohibit the circulation of any paper in his district, which he regarded as detrimental. This, of course, was an invitation to every petty provost marshal to turn upon the Democratic newspapers. Its effect was also to stimulate mobs, and Democratic editors all over the West were insulted and outraged, and their offices often destroyed.
Some were killed for the defence of the right of free speech. At Dayton, Ohio, the home of Mr.Vallandigham, Mr.Bollmeyer, the editor of the Dayton Empire, was deliberately shot dead by an abolitionist, and a jury of his own county actually cleared the assassin!
General Burnside also turned his attention to suppressing newspapers. On the 1st of June, he issued an order suppressing the publication of the Chicago Times, a leading Democratic paper in the West, and also one suppressing the circulation of the New York World, in his Department. In this movement, General Burnside made the same mistake he did at Fredericksburg; he got whipped. The Democrats of Chicago were determined to be fooled no longer by Mr. Lincoln's satraps. So the editor of the Times, Mr.Story, called a meeting of citizens in front of his office to see how the Democrats felt about it.
The upshot of the whole affair was, that they sent word to Mr.Lincoln that if he did not rescind the order of his man Burnside, an allow the Chicago Times to be published, then there should no Republican or abolition paper be allowed to be published in that city. And the Democrats went to work quietly and determinedly to carry out their threat. Mr.Lincoln, however, backed down, when he saw the pluck displayed, and so Mr.Burnside had all this splurge for nothing.
The interference of the little provost marshals, however, continued, and for a long time all Democratic papers were denied circulation in Missouri and Kentucky. Mr.Lincoln never yielded his warfare on the freedom of the press, only when compelled to do so. He seemed to feel by instinct that he stood no chance if free discussion was allowed.
So greatly had the Democrats of the West suffered from the minions of arbitrary power, that they organized a society called the "Sons of Liberty," for self-protection. But even this was used against them; for it was denounced by the abolitionists as "a secret organization to overthrow the Government," and many of its leaders were arrested and cruelly imprisoned. Three of these, Messrs.Bowles,Horsey,and Milliken, were sentenced to death by a "military commission," and only escaped death through the clemency of President Johnson, after his accession to office.
I must now turn to some remarkable events which occurred in the city of New York, in July. Mr.Lincoln was in great want of soldiers at this time. Men would not volunteer to fight to put themselves on an equality with negroes. So Congress passed a rigorous conscription act, which would compel men to go whether they wanted to or not. The abolitionists had hesitated to put it in force, knowing how unpopular it was. Finally, after deceiving the people several times by false alarms, they suddenly, one Saturday afternoon, set the fatal wheel in motion.
Many citizens of New York woke up on Sunday morning to find their names in Lincoln's army list, for every man was declared a soldier from the moment his name was drawn, and liable to be shot as a deserter if he got out of the way.
The pent-up wrath of the people now broke out. The war had always been unpopular in New York city, and when the first announcement was made, that the people were resisting the draft, the greatest excitement occurred. The abolitionists were terribly frightened. A good many ran away from the city. Others hid themselves. The drafted men first destroyed the enrolling offices, burning them to the ground, and came very near killing Kennedy, the police superintendent.
Like all popular outbreaks of this kind, it ran into every form of riot and outrage. The popular feeling seemed to regard with peculiar hatred the negro, as if he were the cause of the war and all the trouble resulting from it, while in fact it was the abolitionists and not the negro who were responsible.
The rioters burnt down the Negro Orphan Asylum, hung negroes to the lamp posts, and sometimes threw them into the docks. Boys particularly seemed to be engaged in the rioting. The writer of this was all through the city at all times of the day and night, during the continuance of the trouble. On one occasion he saw a crowd, and asked a little boy what it meant. "Oh, it is nothing but a dead nigger," was the reply. This shows how callous to human suffering even children may become in times of war and bloodshed.
These riots continued for four or five days, and it was fully a week before complete order was restored. All the stages and cars stopped running, and the stores and shops were closed. Men and women peeped cautiously out of their doors and windows, for fear bullets might hit them. Fires were burning almost constantly, and together with the ringing of the bells and the tramp of soldiers, New York city seemed like a military camp.
If the matter had been taken hold of properly at the start it might have been soon disposed of. But the mayor of the city, an abolitionist by the name of Opdyke, was afraid to go in the street. Governor Seymour hurried to the city as fast as he could, and by calm words and a firm policy soon brought order out of chaos. The abolitionists, however, tried to thwart his endeavors, and with some troops under Colonel Harvey Brown, from the forts in the harbor, shot down a good many innocent people.
The whole story of the riots can be easily summed up. They did not originate in a desire to harm any one, but simply to inform Mr.Lincoln that New Yorkers would not be dragged into the army to fight to free negroes. After they got under way, bad men used the confusion to rob, plunder, and steal.
One thing, however, these riots did do. They settled the draft in New York city. For though Mr.Lincoln sent on a large force, and threatened great things, yet no man, I believe, was ever taken out of New York city for the war, without his consent. The Common Council was forced to offer large bounties, and to get by buying what they could not secure by force.
During this year, too the abolitionists did all they could to stimulate the war feeling in the north by alleged cruelties on the Federal prisoners in the South, and particularly at Andersonville, Georgia. I have not space to go into a detail of this matter here, but it is certain that if Northern soldiers were suffering in the South, the abolition authorities could have got them out of it any day by exchanging prisoners, which the Confederates were anxious to do. The truth was, however, that the abolition government at Washington purposely refused to do so. They said the thirty or forty thousand Confederates the North had would go to recruit the Southern army, while in the case of the Federal prisoners their terms were mostly out and they would not probably re-enlist.
No doubt a good deal of hardship was experienced, but I saw soldiers who were in Andersonville nine months, who came out as healthy and as rugged as when they went in. Persons who were filthy and did not take care of their health, of course, suffered and died.
Southern officers confined at Chicago,Illinois, and Elmira, New York, however, declare that they were more cruelly treated than the Federal prisoners in the South. I will not stop here to more than say that I believe from all I know, that General Winder, was a humane man and did all that his limited means would allow for the Federal prisoners at the South, and I am fully satisfied that the abolitionists intentionally got up their horrible stories in order to inflame the Northern mind and keep it up to the work of abolishing "slavery." In fact this atrocious design was boldly avowed in a printed pamphlet, gotten up, with horrible cuts, for Northern circulation.
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