A Stillness at Appomattox (143 page)

The
really
crippling
thing,
however,
was
that
Thompson and
Hines
and
everybody
else
made
the
same
mistake
which a
number
of
good
Republicans
and
Union
generals
were forever
making:
when
they
looked
upon
the
vast
body
of supposedly
militant
Northern
Copperheads,
they
took
them seriously.

The
Copperheads
talked
and
at
times
acted
as
if
they
had both
the
means
and
the
will
to
revolt
against
the
Lincoln government,
and
they
had
grandiose
plans
for
detaching from
the
Union
various
north
-
western
states
and
setting
up a
new
confederacy
actively
friendly
to
the
South.
Their
action
arm
was
a
mildly
secret
organization
known
as
the
Sons of
Liberty,
and
their
prophet
was
the
famous
Clement
Laird Vallandigham,
the
former
Ohio
congressman
whom
Burnside in
an
excess
of
zeal
had
arrested
in
1863
for
seditious
speech-making
and
who
had
been
rustled
across
the
fighting
lines and
given
to
the
Confederacy.
Vallandigham
had
visited Richmond
and
had
talked
with
government
people
there. Then
he
had
flitted
north
to
Canada,
and
in
June
of
1864 Captain
Hines
met
him
at
Windsor,
across
the
river
from Detroit.
Vallandigham
talked
largely
about
the
size
and power
of
the
Sons
of
Liberty.
They
had
85,000
members
in Illinois,
he
told
Hines,
50,000
in
Indiana,
and
40,000
in Ohio,
and
with
such
an
organization
it
seemed
likely
that
a great
deal
could
be
done.
⁴

Soon
after
this
Vallandigham
donned
a
false
beard
and smuggled
himself
across
the
river,
going
thence
to
Ohio, dropping
the
beard,
and
beginning
to
make
speeches.
(The Lincoln
government
carefully
looked
the
other
way,
figuring that
as
long
as
it
did
not
officially
know
that
Vallandigham had
returned
it
would
not
have
to
make
a
martyr
out
of him
all
over
again
by
re-arresting
him.)
In
his
speeches, Vallandigham
expressed
a
vague
menace.
He
warned
the Lincoln
tyranny
that
"there
is
a
vast
multitude,
a
host
whom they
cannot
number,
bound
together
by
the
strongest
and holiest
ties,
to
defend,
by
whatever
means
the
exigencies
of the
times
shall
demand,
their
natural
and
constitutional
rights as
freemen,
at
all
hazards
and
to
the
last
extremity."
At
the end
of
August
he
went
to
Chicago
to
take
part
in
the
Democratic
convention.

Captain
Hines
and
sixty
of
his
boys
were
in
Chicago,
too, dressed
in
civilian
clothes
and
carrying
revolvers.
They
had money
and
they
knew
where
there
were
more
weapons,
and they
had
had
a
series
of
annoying,
protracted,
but
apparently fruitful
conferences
with
Copperhead
leaders
looking
toward direct
action.
The
modest
Federal
garrison
in
Chicago
had recently
been
increased,
and
there
were
Democrats
who
felt that
this
could
only
have
been
done
for
the
purpose
of suppressing
their
convention
and
thereby
ending
the
last
of America's
civil
rights.
County
chairmen
of
the
Sons
of
Liberty,
accordingly,
had
been
notified
to
alert
their
members and
stand
by
to
strike
a
blow
for
freedom,
and
the
leadership assured
Hines
that
they
were
"sure
of
a
general
uprising which
will
result
in
a
glorious
success."

Hines,
meanwhile,
reflected
that
there
were
5,000
perfectl
y good
Confederate
soldiers
locked
up
at
Camp
Douglas,
near Chicago,
and
7,000
more
in
another
prison
camp
at
Rock Island.
He
appears
to
have
hoped
that
the
Copperheads would
create
enough
trouble
and
confusion
so
that
those prison
camps
could
be
seized
and
the
prisoners
released
and armed.
Then,
with
12,000
good
troops
loose
in
northern
Illinois,
he
could
make
trouble
for
the
Yankees
on
a
really impressive
scale.
⁵

Unfortunately,
as
the
time
for
action
came
closer
the leaders
of
the
Sons
of
Liberty
grew
more
and
more
nervous. Talking
nobly
about
taking
up
arms
for
the
constitutional rights
of
free
men
was
all
very
well,
as
long
as
it
was
just talk.
The
trouble
was
that
this
quiet,
blue-eyed
Kentuckian was
in
deadly
earnest
and
so
were
the
men
he
had
with
him, and
they
proposed
to
turn
this
talk
into
action
in
which
many Sons
of
Liberty
would
probably
get
shot,
with
the
gallows looming
large
in
the
background
for
those
whom
the
bullets missed.
Copperhead
leadership
began
to
have
second thoughts,
and
it
hedged
and
temporized,
grossly
exaggerating the
number
of
Federal
troops
present
in
Chicago
and
dwelling
long
on
the
probability
of
failure.