Opposition to the American Civil War

Popular opposition to the American Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865, was widespread. Although there had been many attempts at compromise prior to the outbreak of war, there were those who felt it could still be ended peacefully or did not believe it should have occurred in the first place. Opposition took the form of both those in the North who believed the South had the right to be independent and those in the South who wanted neither war nor a Union advance into the newly declared Confederate States of America.

The main opposition came from Copperheads, who were Southern sympathizers in the Midwest. Irish Catholics after 1862 opposed the war, and rioted in the New York Draft Riots of 1863. The Democratic Party was deeply split. In 1861 most Democrats supported the war, but with the growth of the Copperhead movement, the party increasingly split down the middle. It nominated George McClellan a War Democrat in 1864 but gave him an anti-war platform. In terms of Congress the opposition was nearly powerless—and indeed in most states. In Indiana and Illinois pro-war governors circumvented anti-war legislatures elected in 1862. For 30 years after the war the Democrats carried the burden of having opposed the martyred Lincoln, the salvation of the Union and the destruction of slavery.

The beginnings of opposition to the American Civil War were stirred in at the beginning of the war. In states such as New Jersey, New York, and the rest of New England, smatterings of people who did not favor the war arose. This was especially evident in the state of Connecticut. When President Abraham Lincoln was elected as President-elect, he left several democratic Congressmen split from their party. These congressmen were William W. Eaton of Hartford, E. B. Godsell of Bridgeport, James Gallagher of New Haven, Ralph I. Ingersoll, and Thomas H. Seymour of Hartford. In addition to these Congressmen, peace advocates such as democratic Ohio Congressmen Clement L. Vallandigham and Samuel S. Cox, Wisconsin newspaper publisher Stephen D. Carpenter, and Connecticut Senator William C. Fowler.

However, Vallandigham, Cox, Carpenter, and Fowler’s grounds for opposing the war were against Lincoln’s desire to abolish slavery. Cox voiced his opinion on the matter by saying at a meeting in the House of Representatives, “this Government is a Government of white men; that the men who made it never intended by anything they did, to place the black race on an equality with the white.” Furthermore, this group of men strived for war against the South, deeming it constitutional, but criticized Lincoln of “waging a battle for the conquest and subjugation of the South” in a cruel way by challenging the constitutional rights of individuals and states. They also criticized the emancipation proclamation, saying that it unconstitutionally changed the intentions of the North against the South from preservation of the Union to abolition of slavery. The opinions of Vallandigham, Cox, Carpenter, and Fowler further attack Lincoln’s premise of war by saying Lincoln secretly went to war over slavery, and that abolitionists working with Lincoln started the war. In a last resort, Vallandigham proposed that the war stop by simply having both the Union and Confederacy withdraw their troops, have peace talks amongst officials, and restore social and economic order. He did not explain how this would be executed, and no agreement was reached. Interestingly, Vallandigham seemed to take sides with the South. He attempted to work with Confederate agents in Canada to start a revolution in the northwestern states, which would establish a Confederacy and ally with the South to crush the Union and end the war. This attempt by Vallandigham was desperate and was not successful in creating such a revolution. In that, it was not a major opposition movement.

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Wikipedia