Glory Road (21 page)

Morton himself had tried to warn the national administration. He had forecast the Democratic victory in the fall election, giving Lincoln a precis of the opposition arguments—that selfish moneygrubbers from New England were exploiting the Northwest and growing rich by the war, that geographically and economically Indiana and her sister states were forever tied to the Southland with the Mississippi as the destined artery and outlet for their commerce, that the war had been forced upon the South by the anti-slavery fanatics, and that the Southerners had offered reasonable compromises which, if accepted, could have led to a just peace. "In some of these arguments," Morton had written, "there is much truth."
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Much truth, seen also by New York's Governor Seymour, who feared that the war was concentrating economic power in New England, to the lasting harm of his own New York. Much truth, and also much error and much failure to see what was going on in the world. For the railroads had bitten clear through the fated Mississippi artery and had tied the hinterland firmly to the markets and the banks of the East, so that the Lost Cause with its bronze garlands and its swords sheathed forever had perhaps been lost before the war even began. Yet the strange, tantalizing fact that lies beneath that entire war did remain as something for Lincoln, Morton, and all the others to grapple with: doomed to defeat, with the very stars in the sky marching against it, the Lost Cause might nevertheless triumph simply because the men who had to fight about it could conceivably overthrow destiny itself.

History does not have to go logically, and its inevitables are never really inevitable until after they have happened. One of the things that are real about any situation is what the people involved in that situation think about it. What the people in 1863 thought was that the war in the end would go as they made it go, and if anybody had told them that circumstances were going to be controlling, they would have retorted that they would fix all of that by changing the circumstances. In this belief, as Governor Morton might have said, there was much truth.

Among the possible victims of circumstance in this winter of 1863 were the Democrats who made up a majority of the Indiana legislature. Without realizing it, these men were struggling against the fact that the American political system, wide enough for many things, had not by the founding fathers been made wide enough to contain a civil war. They were Democrats taking normal advantage of the fact that they had won an election, and what they were running into was the fact that there was no way, in this moment of all-out war, by which they could do that and nothing more. They wanted to oppose the party that was running the war, and in spite of themselves they could do no less than oppose the war itself. There could be no delicate shadings of action or belief. The administration was fighting for complete victory; to stand against the administration in the ordinary way, using the grips, feints, and arm locks of normal political struggling, meant in actual practice to stand for something less than victory—something a good deal less, perhaps, if the wrestling got really strenuous, so that the struggle might finally appear to be a struggle against the war itself rather than simply against the people who were conducting the war.
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So the air was full of rumors, and Indiana that winter was a place where reality blended with the outrageous shapes of Cloud-Cuckoo-Land itself. The victorious Democrats were luxuriating in their new legislative majority, whose precise use they had not yet determined, and were camped comfortably in the center of the stage. (Too comfortably, in fact, for they went sound asleep and were taken.) From the wings, to complicate their job and to precipitate crisis before they were ready for it, came strange far-off noises of wondrous gabbled conspiracies, with oath-bound armies swearing a fantastic fealty. Not for the last time, this prairie state was nurturing an invisible empire complete with weird ceremonials, and what mattered about it was not whether any of it was especially real, but simply that a great many people believed in it devoutly, some with springing hope and some with fear and hatred, but in any event believed.

The name of this invisible empire varied. It was known as the Order of American Knights, and as the Mutual Protection Society, as the Circle of Honor, the Knights of the Golden Circle, and the Order of the Sons of Liberty. It may have stemmed originally from some obscure pre-war fraternity in the South, and its members came together with the belief that the Lincoln government had somehow usurped authority and should be overthrown. The original declaration of principles simply restated a strong states' rights doctrine, upheld chattel slavery, and called piously for a restoration of the old Union.

It was perfectly legal for any Northern citizen to believe in these things, but it was very hard for him to do anything concrete about his belief without appearing to give aid and comfort to the enemy. So this Copperhead order went underground, proliferated its cells from city to city and from town to town, and took on a darker coloration. It came to favor a Northwest confederacy, then it undertook to encourage desertion from the Federal armies, and it prepared at last to give active help to the Southern cause. It bought arms, drilled members in military tactics, commissioned its own "major generals," prepared for active field operations, and called for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Possibly a great deal of this was sheer unconscious make-believe. There was an uncommon amount of froth to the whole affair, and even now it is hard to say what was real and what just seemed to be real. This is not for any lack of facts. There are whole volumes of facts. This Copperhead order must have been one of the most thoroughly spied-upon organizations in human history. Reading the reports and the records, one at times feels that the secret-service men and the counterespionage agents must have been stumbling over one another's heels as they moved through its inner councils. All of these agents abundantly proved that the order had a huge membership—125,000 in Indiana alone, it was said—and they could cite chapter and verse to show that it was a malign revolutionary conspiracy which seriously tried to overthrow the government and lose the war.
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The only trouble is that one can never be sure how far the conspirators really meant it, and even the conspirators themselves do not seem to have been entirely certain. The great order never actually did much of anything. On the few occasions when Jefferson Davis tried to make use of it and sent operatives north to promote a little action, the soggy conspiracy came apart at the seams. The handful of hard-eyed Confederate veterans who came north to bring on some overt acts were a different breed from the well-intentioned, well-fed civilians who conspired in village lodge hall and in prairie grove. These Southern veterans were out for blood and they proposed to transform all of this mummery into irrevocable violence in which large numbers of the mummers would unquestionably get killed. It appears that they scared the conspirators almost out of their senses.

Yet in the winter and spring of 1863 this strange unreal plot was a genuine factor. It was believed in, North and South. In Richmond the war clerk-diarist, J. B. Jones, wrote confidently at the end of January that he had no doubt the year would bring "the spectacle of more Northern men fighting against the United States Government than slaves fighting against the South." On February 1 Jones noted:

"It is said and believed that several citizens from Illinois and Indiana, now in this city, have been sent hither by influential parties to consult our government on the best means of terminating the war; or, failing that, to propose some mode of adjustment between the Northern states and the Confederacy, and new combination against the Yankee states and the Federal administration." A fortnight later he was gravely remarking that when the Northwestern states did withdraw from the Union, Virginia probably would take them under her wing "if they earnestly desired to return to her parental protection." He added that if Indiana and Illinois joined the South, victory would be assured.
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If the business was taken as seriously as that in the capital of the Confederacy, one can hardly be surprised to find it treated as a matter of life or death in the capital of Indiana. Here men had it in then-back yards, and to say that treason stalked the streets by daylight was to do more than indulge in a mere figure of speech. There was a war on, and Indiana regiments in the field were sending home resolutions denouncing all Copperheads—and here was where the Copperheads lived and moved and acted; here they uttered hair-raising threats in public; here their conspiracy was a matter of common street-corner knowledge.

In addition to all of which, the thing was a natural. It was dressed to command attention from skeptic and believer alike. It had an elaborate ritual of oaths and ceremonials which was intended to impress new converts but which probably had the ultimate effect of making a great many sober citizens feel that all Copperheads should be hanged. For this multifariously named order with its degrees and its grips and its ritualized impotent hatred created the atmosphere in which men who supported the Union could be ruthless. It made compromise impossible, and it drove both the war party and the peace party to extremes.

The new member of the order was taught a handclasp for recognition of other members: shake in such a way that the tip of the forefinger touches the pulse of the other man's wrist. He was given a sign of recognition to be used in public places when it was vital to know if other of the faithful were present: shade the eyes with the right hand, put the other hand on the left breast, and never mind if the pose looks odd to the uninitiate. There were verbal signals with which a beset Knight could call for help in a crowd: the word "Aokhoan!" uttered loudly (provided the beset Knight could just pronounce it), or at times the word "Nu-oh-lac," which was "Calhoun" spelled backward. The ritual set forth that a member who violated his obligations was to meet "a shameful death"; specifically, his body was to be divided into four parts, which were to be cast out at the four gates of the temple, the temple being the local Odd Fellows' hall, the room over the corner hardware store, or such other mundane spot as had been chosen for secret meeting place. Becoming slightly more practical, the order also warned its members that if one were brought into court or haled before a grand jury he should refuse to answer questions on the constitutional ground that he could not be made to incriminate himself.
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Clearly enough, all of this adds up to a great deal of mumbo-jumboism and nothing much more. But it was a cloak for men who felt deeply, even though they did not really feel deeply enough to risk their lives if they could help it. Until the moment of final risk came they might easily believe that they were going to risk eveirthing, and if they felt that way they would talk—and, up to a point, act-accordingly. And this was going on in a gossipy, chatty, neighborly Middle West where there were really no secrets and mumbo-jumbo would become a matter of universal knowledge in no time. If the participants themselves could believe that this was real and no sham, those on the outside would believe the same.

So when the Democratic majority in the Indiana legislature prepared to whittle down Indiana's part in the war, Morton had his cue. The immediate issue was the bill which would take control of all military matters—troop recruitment, purchase of overcoats, all else—out of the hands of the governor and vest it in a board of hand-picked Democrats. There were in both houses of the legislature the votes to pass this bill, and Morton knew it. He could of course veto the bill, but the Indiana constitution contained an oddity, a provision that the legislature could re-enact a vetoed measure by a simple majority. The Democrats would infallibly pass this law over any veto which Morton might lay down.

If that happened, Morton said bluntly, there would be unshirted hell to pay; "it would involve the state in civil war in twenty-four hours," and "our people would be cutting each other's throats in every county." For Morton was not on any account going to give up his power, no matter what was voted and no matter what the law said. There was as he saw it but one way out, and "that was to break up the legislature."
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Indiana's constitution contained a second oddity: not less than two thirds of each house of the legislature constituted a quorum. Without a quorum, of course, no business could be done. So that winter the Republican members quietly bought tickets home and disappeared. The legislature could not act because it lacked a quorum, and so the Democrats went home, too, and Indiana's government consisted solely of Governor Morton and the rest of the executive branch.

The Democrats were unworried. Since it convened early in January the legislature had done nothing but orate, caucus, and investigate. No appropriation bills had been passed, there was no enabling legislation making appropriations legal, and the state treasury had no money and no way to get any. Morton might in effect prorogue the legislature, but sooner or later he would have to have money. To get money he would have to call in the legislature, because only the legislature could raise money. Once the legislature reconvened, the Democrats would have him over a barrel. It was an open-and-shut case, and all the Democrats had to do was wait a little while and be patient.

Except that there was a revolution in progress, and Morton was a perfectly genuine revolutionist. He was, in fact, one of the few men in all history who have understood how a dictatorship can be set up and operated in America. In the winter of 1863 he put that knowledge to work.