Ohio History Journal

THE ODYSSEY OF PETROLEUM VESUVIUS NASBY             by DAVID D. ANDERSON

After more than a century the American Civil War remains garbed in tragedy and pathos, heroes and hero worship, sentiment and cynicism, as it has been since the guns fell silent and the printing presses began to pour out a still unabated torrent of memoirs, histories, and biographies. As an age of heroes, it is resplendent with the names of Lincoln, Grant, Lee, Sherman, Sheridan -- and Petroleum Vesuvius Nasby. Perhaps the least remembered of these is Nasby, although he, like the others, came out of obscurity to fame in the four years of the war. Yet, in spite of the shadow into which he has again passed, Nasby deserves inclusion in any list of the war's great men: he is our only authentic Civil War anti-hero. Nasby began his anti-heroic march, not in the ranks of either army, but in a long series of letters that began to appear with regularity on April 25, 1862, in the Hancock Jeffersonian of Findlay, Ohio.1 His attainment of     NOTES ARE ON PAGE 279

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PETROLEUM     VESUVIUS NASBY                                 233

 

the heights -- or depths -- of anti-heroism is made dramatically clear in his

own contribution to Civil War literature, the collection of these letters

and others, published in 1866 as Nasby: Divers Views, Opinions, and

Prophecies of Yoors trooly Petroleum V Nasby.

Differences abound between the letters as they appeared in the papers

and as they appear in the book;² Nasby, following the prerogative of

statesmen in every age, adapted the record to his own purposes. But both

letters and book agree that Nasby was the self-styled spokesman of the

midwestern Peace Democrats, who, under the leadership of Clement L.

Vallandigham, sought to bring the war to a quick end. Nasby further

clouded an already obscure program that would neither resolve the con-

stitutional crisis of secession nor, in all probability, restore the rapidly

disintegrating Union.

The letters and book also agree that Nasby was, as he proclaimed him-

self to be, a patriot, a Democrat, a Jeffersonian, and finally a clergyman.

They reveal, too, what he did not proclaim: that he was a lazy, illiterate,

cowardly, alcoholic seeker of political patronage and booty, a racist, an

unscrupulous opportunist, and the focal point of often bitter but always

pointed and humorous political satire.

Actually the emergence of Nasby from obscurity into notoriety marked,

also, the emergence of a brilliant satirical talent devoted to the preservation

of the Union. Nasby was the fictional creation of an Ohio newspaperman,

David Ross Locke, who was born September 20, 1833, at Vestal, New

York. An itinerant printer in upstate New York and western Pennsylvania,

Locke came to Ohio late in 1852, helped establish the Plymouth Advertiser,

worked on the Mansfield Herald, and on March 20, 1856, became editor

of the Bucyrus Journal.³ His introduction to Ohio journalism, within a

comparatively few miles of the Wingert's Corners that the book was to

make famous, is reflected in the emergence of Nasby.

In politics Locke was a strong antislavery Whig who joined forces with

the Republicans as an anti-Nebraska man. A product as well as a practi-

tioner of the no-holds-barred school of politics and journalism of the

1850's, Locke was eminently suited to satirize and berate the Democratic

opposition in the western tradition that the character of Nasby represents.

This political tradition, the result of frontier individualism and Jacksonian

democracy, not only influenced Locke and consequently produced Nasby,

but it was also the tradition that produced the new president, Abraham

Lincoln.

Crawford County, of which Bucyrus is the seat, was a Democratic

stronghold, as Locke must have learned immediately after arriving there.

It had given its vote to every Democratic presidential candidate from

Andrew Jackson to Stephen Douglas. Wingert's Corners was a crossroads

village in the northwestern part of the county, and because it was a center

of county Democratic politics as well as the subject of much condescending

humor from the county seat, it was perhaps inevitable that Locke should

eventually select it as Nasby's home.⁴

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234                                               OHIO HISTORY

 

Although Locke left Bucyrus in the fall of 1861 to accept and then

resign a commission in a newly raised infantry regiment, he turned up

in Findlay a month or so later as editor of the newly revived Hancock

Jeffersonian, the paper in which he introduced the inimitable Nasby.⁵ But

the groundwork had been laid in Bucyrus, both in Locke's grasp of the

nature of the Copperhead movement and his use of satire as a weapon

against it. In the Bucyrus Journal for December 13, 1860, he had included

an unsigned, undated letter headed "Secession in a New Spot,"⁶ in which

he began to satirize the peace movement, the Democrats, and the secession

movement. However, Nasby, the character who was to grow in stature

until in the popular mind he merged with and eclipsed Locke's own per-

sonality, was not born until the first Nasby letter appeared in the Hancock

Jeffersonian.

But the odyssey of Nasby as he fought what he considered to be the

good fight with minimum exposure of his own person to danger is best

followed not in Locke's career but in Nasby's own "war memoirs," the

volume of 1866 containing his war letters. The book begins with an adap-

tation of Locke's earlier, non-Nasby ordinance of secession, rewritten in

Nasby's own inimitable style. In the ordinance, a stirring (to Nasby),

mocking (to Locke) declaration, the grievances of Wingert's Corners and

of Nasby himself are enshrined in history:

 

 

TO THE WORLD!

In takin a step wich may, possibly, involve the state uv wich we hev

bin heretofore a part into blood and convulshuns, a decent respeck for

the good opinion uv the world requires us to give our reasons for

takin that step.

Wingert's Corners hez too long submitted to the imperious dictates

uv a tyranikle goverment. Our whole histry hez bin wun uv aggreshn

on the part uv the State, and uv meek and pashent endoorence on ours.

It refoosed to locate the State Capitol at the Corners, to the great

detriment uv our patriotic owners uv reel estate.

It refoosed to gravel the streets uv the Corners, or even re-lay the

plank-road.

It refoosed to locate the Penitentiary at the Corners, notwithstandin

we do more towards fillin it than any town in the State.

It refoosed to locate the State Fair at the Corners, blastin the hopes

uv our patriotic groserys.

It located the canal 100 miles from the Corners.

We hev never hed a Guvner, notwithstandin the President uv

this meetin hez lived here for yeers, a waitin to be urgd to accept it.

It hez compelled us, yeer after yeer, to pay our share uv the taxes.

It hez never appinted any citizen uv the place to any offis wher

theft wuz possible, thus wilfully keepin capital away from us.

It refoosed to either pay our rale-rode subscripshun or slackwater

our river.

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236                                              OHIO HISTORY

 

Therefore, not bein in humor to longer endoor sich outrajes, we

declare ourselves Free and Independent uv the State, and will maintain

our position with arms, if need be.

Next day, Nasby avers, the Corners raised a company "uv minit men . . .,

and wun uv 2 minit men. The seceshn flag, muskrat rampant, weasel

couchant, on a field d'egg-shell, waves from both groserys. . . . We are

in earnest. Armed with justice and shot-guns, we bid the tyrants defiance."

He concludes:

 

P.S. -- The feelin is intense -- the children hev imbibed it. A lad

jest past, displayin the seceshn flag. It waved from behind. Disdainin

concealment, the noble, lion-hearted boy wore a roundabout. We are

firm.

N.B.--  We are still firm.

N.B., 2d. -- We are firm, unyeeldin, calm, and resoloot.

 

From this point the Nasby letters follow in parallel the course of antiwar

feeling in the North, while at the same time they grow in intensity to

the point where Locke the satirist almost disappears and Nasby takes on

depth and breadth as the ignorant, illiterate spokesman of northern Cop-

perheads and southern secessionists. At the same time, Nasby becomes

increasingly an individual in his own right, pathetic, despicable, and

somehow appealing as he issues proclamations and undergoes the vicissi-

tudes inherent in devotion to his cause.

In June 1862, just before the crucial congressional elections when the

Republicans were trying to extend their control over congress, Nasby

went to Washington to interview his hero, Clement L. Vallandigham, then

congressman from Ohio's third district and a candidate for reelection.

As he stands in the shadow of the capital, Nasby meditates:

 

I am in Washington. I stand under the shadder uv the tempel uv

Liberty, and am reposin my weery lims in kool shades of Fredom.

But I cant reelize that this is the saim Washington I yoost 2 visit.

I yoost to go frum Pennsilvany to the cappytle wunst a year, to git

my stock uv Dimocrisy recrootid, and to find out what we wuz expectid

to bleeve doorin the cumin year, thus gettin full 6 munths ahed uv

my nabers. I wuz wunst electid gustis of the peese in Berks County,

by knoin neerly a year in advanse what we wuz to vote for that

autum. They thot Nasby wuz a smart man.

 

Because Nasby was not merely a complete scoundrel but an appealing

one, it was perhaps inevitable that he would become popular, both in his

native Ohio and in the threatened capital at Washington. As effective as

the portrayal was in satirizing both the principles and the character of

the secessionists, it was at the same time a familiar one to the westerner,

whether in an Ohio town or in the White House. Nasby was the fumbling,

unscrupulous political opportunist to be found in every county seat as an

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PETROLEUM VESUVIUS NASBY                                       237

 

inevitable consequence of democracy. But, unaware of his increasing po-

litical or symbolic importance, Nasby resumes his lamentation:

 

O! my country! Where is Tooms, and Yancy, and Wigfall? The

lofty domes uv the cappytle dont re-ekko no more 2 their sole-inspirin

voices. Ez I reflek that these pillers uv Dimocrisy aint here--and,

what is wuss, that they dassent cum here--that these place that

knode em wunst will kno em no more furever--my manly buzzum

throbs with sorrer, and my prowd form is bowed in anguish. O thou

fell sperit uv Abolishnism, thow hast much 2 anser for--mucher

than thow canst anser. . . . Avant, thow grim and nasty cuss! My

stumick heeves wheneer I think uv thee.

 

Nasby's visit with Vallandigham was reported faithfully and hilariously.

They sat down to a bottle "uv concentratid contentment" and the conver-

sation commenced:

 

"Nasby," sez he, "we're in a fix."

"Vallandygum," sez I, "to wich do yoo elude--our distractid

country?"

"Nary," sez he; "I wuz a speekin uv myself and the rest uv us.

Them's my country."

 

As the conversation continues and the "concentratid contentment" in

the bottle diminishes, Nasby reveals Vallandigham as the Republicans

saw him, ignorant, dishonest, selfish, and traitorous. To Nasby, however,

Vallandigham was a "trooly grate man," to whom he remained loyal.

But, unfortunately for the cause, Nasby was unable to be of much service

in the campaign that fall. He had intended both to campaign strenuously

and to be a candidate for "ary 1 uv the offices to be fild this ortum," setting

forth his qualifications as:

 

1st. I want an offis.

2d. I need a offis.

3d. A offis wood suit me; ther4

4th. I shood like to hev a offis.

 

However, Nasby's attention was distracted from the political wars to a

threat to his own person: the governor had instituted a draft to fill the

"volunteer" regiments. With a sudden lack of political bias, Nasby

commented:

 

I know not wat uthers may do, but ez for me, I cant go. Upon a

rigid eggsaminashen uv my fizzlekle man, I find it wood be wus ner

madnis for me 2 undertake a campane, to-wit:

1. I'm bald-headid, and hev bin obliged to ware a wig these 22 years.

2. I hev dandruff in wat scanty hair still hangs around my vener-

able temples.

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238                                        OHIO HISTORY

 

3. I hev a kronic katarr.

4. I hev lost, sence Stanton's order to draft, the use uv wun eye

entirely, and hev kronic inflammashen in the other.

5. My teeth is all unsound, my palit aint eggsactly rite, and I hev

hed bronkeetis 31 yeres last Joon. At present I hev a koff, the paroxisms

uv wich is friteful 2 behold.

6. I'm holler-chestid, am short-winded, and hev alluz hed panes in

my back and side.

 

Nasby continues the enumeration of his ailments, a list that would un-

doubtedly sound familiar to any World War II draft board examiner,

concluding with a statement that "the above reesons why I cant go, will,

I maik no doubt, be suffishent." But, as Nasby learned, they were not;

the examining physician was a Union man, the commissioner was a "bluddy

Ablishnist," and Nasby's next letter bears the dateline "Brest, Kanada

West." He had joined the exodus of "Peece Invalids" who managed to

escape a few jumps ahead of the provost marshal. Unfortunately for

him, Nasby, as always, was broke.

This ribaldly ridiculous episode was not funny to Nasby, but it was

typical of the growing body of western humor, much of it politically

inspired, that had become popular with the publication of A Narrative

of the Life of David Crockett in 1834 and was to lead directly to Mark

Twain's Roughing It and Innocents Abroad. Told seriously, with the nar-

rator hiding behind a mask of graveness, it exploits the techniques of

ludicrousness, grotesqueness, and ineptness, ostensibly characteristics of

the narrator, but in reality those of all mankind.

Such a tradition was not merely familiar to Abraham Lincoln, but he

was part of it, and Lincolniana is full of verified and apocryphal accounts

of Lincoln's contributions to it. At the same time during the war that Locke

in the guise of Nasby was dealing specifically and satirically with the

problems that Lincoln was trying to resolve in practical fashion, he was

doing so in terms familiar to Lincoln and that Lincoln himself employed

effectively on a number of occasions. Locke's ability to combine the tradi-

tion that Lincoln knew so well with the problems that Lincoln faced

daily made it inevitable that Lincoln would become a Nasby fan, perhaps

as early as 1862, but certainly by the fall of 1864.7 Behind Locke's

caricature Lincoln recognized a kinsman.

Nasby's illiterate style, his backwoods conceit, his naive and seemingly

unconscious caricature of the northern Copperhead were very much in

the style of the letters Lincoln himself had written to the Springfield

Sangamo Journal, the so-called "Rebecca letters" of August 27 and 29,

1842. In them Lincoln had used the same technique to attack Democrat

James Shields, the state auditor of Illinois. The result of these letters

was Nasby-like in its ludicrousness. Shields challenged Lincoln to a duel,

Lincoln accepted, naming cavalry broadswords as the weapons, and the

two parties slipped away to the Missouri side of the Mississippi to avoid

arrest while they settled their differences.

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Lincoln and Shields sat on logs in the misty morning waiting for the duel to begin, and then Lincoln reached up with his sword to cut a twig from a tree far beyond Shields's reach. After this demonstration the duel was settled without loss of honor or blood, but as the skiff returned to Illinois, spectators on the shore saw a man lying down, apparently seri- ously wounded. But the wounded man was a log covered with a red shirt; Lincoln and Shields had a good laugh at the expense of the onlookers; and they parted amiably. It was the sort of situation in which Nasby found himself at the moment as he attempted to subsist in Canada without work- ing, but to him it wasn't funny. Yet, in spite of all probability or logic, Nasby's predicament grew worse. Deciding that because the draft had been suspended, he is safe from induction, he attempts to return to Wingert's Corners, where his wife is employed as a washerwoman. But on the dock at Toledo he is apprehended, and he finds himself an unwilling member of the "778th Ohio Kidnapt Melishy," wearing the "Ablishnist" blue that he despised. "Hentz4th," he commented, "the naim uv Nasby will shine in the list uv marters." He laments that "Looizer Jane" may never see him again; he requests that she "send me half or three-quarters uv the money she gits fer washin, ez whisky costs fritefully here," and he resigns himself to his fate. But Nasby's career in the Union army was short; at the first opportunity he deserted to "my nateral frends, the soljers uv the sunny South." In the "Camp uv the Looisiana Pelicans," Nasby bumbles his innocent way through a series of situations that he accepts in puzzled bewilderment as he attempts to interpret a harsh and unpleasant reality in terms of his stereotype of southern righteousness. The first of these incidents

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240                                               OHIO HISTORY

 

was that of the disposition of his clothes, just after he had been made

welcome by his "nateral frends." Nasby's new uniform of Union blue

is confiscated, only to reappear on the backs of the company officers, while

he is clothed in the rags of a private Confederate soldier. This change

Nasby can tolerate, although he finds it a questionable practice; but soon

he voices his disillusionment:

 

I am here, and mizrable!

I am not less that 213 per cent. more mizrable nor I used to be! ...

Knowin that I cood at eny time desert to my Suthern frends, I

felt satisfied at bein draftid. Sence my enrollment in the ranks uv

the Pelicans, the romance uv the thing hez departid. Nothin 2 eat,

nothin to wear, no money, and hard work. This is our fix. The plump,

rosy Nasby is no more -- anserin 2 his name is a lean indiviggooal,

upon whose nose a bullet cood be split.

 

In spite of his protests that "sustaned and soothed by an unfaltrin

trust in the rychusnis of the Suthrin coz," he stuck to his "beluvd rejyment,

the Loozeaner Pelikins, with a tenassity wich I did not dreme I possest,"

Nasby's military career ended quickly. In his first skirmish he deserted

once more and made his way home to Wingert's Corners. Still convinced of

the righteousness of the southern cause, he had determined that he could

best serve it at home by aiding deserters and draft rioters rather than

by force of arms. In the course of these activities, however, he is arrested

in spite of his protests that he "wuz a Methodist preacher sellin fruit-trees."

But his real indignation is directed at his release because he "wuz 2 smal

pertaters to notis." A free man, he returns once more to Wingert's Corners,

resolved to carry on the cause.

This return to the political war in the heart of the Democratic country

in Ohio provided Locke with the opportunity for his most biting satire,

a satire that was not directed at the Confederacy or its cause as it had

been thus far but at the forces of the Peace Democrats, led in Ohio by

Clement L. Vallandigham. Under his leadership both as a member of

congress until his defeat in 1862 and as a Democratic candidate for

governor in 1863, the Democratic party in Ohio was becoming what the

administration considered a serious threat to the federal war effort.

But Vallandigham as congressman and as candidate for governor was

presumably untouchable in spite of the fact that he was under constant

surveillance, primarily because the administration did not want to pre-

cipitate a political crisis. On May 1, 1863, however, the issue was forced

when, at a speech at Mount Vernon, Ohio, Vallandigham declared that

the war was not being fought to preserve the Union but to free the

slaves and enslave the whites. General Ambrose E. Burnside, commanding

the Department of the Ohio, promptly had Vallandigham arrested under

General Orders No. 38, which stated that "the habit of declaring sym-

pathies for the enemy will not be allowed in this department." He was

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PETROLEUM VESUVIUS NASBY                                       241

 

confined, tried by a military court, and sentenced to confinement for the

duration of the war.

At this point, President Lincoln intervened and commuted Vallandig-

ham's punishment to exile to the Confederacy. Turned over to bewildered

Southern pickets under a flag of truce, Vallandigham proceeded to repeat

Nasby's experience in spirit if not in fact. Making his way to Canada,

he resumed direction of the Ohio Democratic party and was nominated

for governor. Unable to return to Ohio, he campaigned by long distance,

only to be defeated by John Brough in the fall elections.

On his return to Wingert's Corners after his recognition that discretion

is the better part of valor, Nasby proceeded to organize "the First

Dimekratik Church uv Ohio," the order of exercises of which included

the singing of " 'O, we'll hang Abe Linkin on a sour apple tree,' or some

other improvin ode, hevin a good moral." The church, less formally and

more popularly known as "The Church of St. Vallandigum," was im-

mediately successful, so much so that Nasby commented:

 

I bleeve good will be accomplisht. Last week, in makin a pastoral

visit, jest about noon, to the house uv wun uv my flock, who hez

fine poultry, I wuz amoosed at hearin a meer infant, only three years

uv old, swinging his little hat, and cry, "Horraw for Jeff Davis."

It was tetchin. Pattin the little patriot on the head, I instantly borrowd

five cents uv his father to present to him.

 

In the church the mobbing of recruiting and draft officers became a

major work of mercy, while the Reverend Nasby continued the tirade

against a "tyrannikle" president and government, both of which denied

recognition of Nasby's own personal talents, the rights of "free men,"

and the democratic heritage that incorporates in it the right to keep

the Negro in his proper place, a place more wretched than Nasby's own.

In sentiments reminiscent of both the Know-Nothings of the 1850's and

the tirade of Huckleberry Finn's father against the Negroes, Locke

occasionally slips from satire into viciousness as he records Nasby's

words, but such lapses are only momentary, as Nasby's bumbling ridic-

ulousness reasserts itself. The letter of despair written after Vallandig-

ham's defeat by Brough is Nasby at his pathetic best, frustrated on every

side:

 

Despondent and weery uv life, I attempted sooiside. I mixt my

licker fer a day; I red a entire number uv the Crisis; I peroozed

"Cotton is King," "Pulpit Pollytiks," and "Vallandigum's Record," but

all in vane. Ez a last desprit resource, I attemptid to pizon myself by

drinkin water, but that faled me. My stumick rejected it -- I puked.

 

From this low point, however, the irrepressible Nasby soon rebounded.

Temporarily becoming a "War Democrat," he proclaims that Vallandigham

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242                                               OHIO HISTORY

 

is a traitor and that "the war for the Union must go on until its enemies

is subjoogated." In order to carry on the Democratic cause in the face

of the repudiation of the peace program in 1863, he journeys once more

to Washington to engage "Linkin . . . a goriller, a feendish ape, a thirster

after blud," in political debate. Lincoln listens, dryly agreeing that he,

too, would have abandoned Vallandigham after the election, as Nasby

delivers what he maintains is his final political plea:

 

"I wood accept a small post-orifis, if sitooatid within ezy range uv

a distilry. My politikle daze is well-nigh over. Let me but see the old

party wunst moar in the assendency; let these old eyes once moar

behold the Constooshn ez it is, the Union ez it wuz, and the nigger

ware he ought 2 be. . . . Linkin, scorn not my wurds. I hev sed. Adoo."

 

But this was not to be Nasby's departure from politics. As the threat

of the Peace Democrats temporarily subsided after their defeat in the

elections of 1863, Locke had shifted his target to the widening split in

Democratic philosophy as well as the party itself and had begun to prepare

for the campaign of 1864. In that campaign, General George B. McClellan,

a War Democrat, was to win the nomination although the party was to

advance a peace platform based on the increasingly frequently heard

principle, voiced by Nasby and the draft rioters, of "The Constitution as

it is and the Union as it was." In effect this split indicated a Democratic

stagnation which, if it were successful, would restore the philosophical

and political stalemate that had made the war inevitable. Nasby, still

strongly anti-abolitionist and anti-Republican, demonstrates the uncer-

tainty of his party and himself in the exhortation issued from his pulpit

on November 9, 1₈₆₃:8

 

We lost control, my brethren, by bein stubborn. O! let us dodge

that fatal errer. The last elecshen shode that we cood not lede the

people -- let the people lede us. Ef the people want war, let us be

war men; ef they want peece, let us sing hosanners to peece! Ef

they want war in Ohio, let Ohio Dimekrats be war men, and ef Noo

York wants peece, let em be peece men. Our platform is broad enuff

to accommodait all.

 

At the same time, Nasby bemoans the fate of a party badly led and

almost hopelessly split. Even a seance in which Nasby seeks guidance

through "speritooalism" gives him no hope. The spirits of the great

Democratic leaders, "Tomus Jefferson," and "Androo Jaxn," and Senators

Benton and "Duglis," disappoint him as they are proven in his mind to

be imposters and spiritualism is revealed as a fraud; each of the party's

saints had, in turn, denounced both the Democratic party and its wartime

principles.

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PETROLEUM VESUVIUS NASBY                                        243

 

Although an anti-McCellan man in principle, Nasby determines to sup-

port him, both because it appears that he will get the nomination and

because "expeejensy, which is the classikle fraze for bred and butter,"

demands it. At this point, however, Nasby, the master politician, proposes

a pair of candidates and a platform that will unite all factions and parties,

win the election, and end the war. It is "FREMONT and VALLANDI-

GUM!" The platform is logical:

 

We kin do it and be consistent. Compermise hez alluz bin a bam for

Dimekratik wounds, and we must compermise -- each faction sofnin

down a little. The Ablishnists must give up ther Ablishnism, the

pro-slavery men ther pro-slaveryism, the war men must give up ther

war, and the peece men ther peece, and all yoonite on the brod and

comperhensive platform uv opposishen 2 Linkin. . . . I went out into

the woods, last Sunday, to see wether I cood holler "Hooror for

Fremont!" The fust 15 or 20 times it stuck in my throte, but after

a hour or 2, it workt smooth. Dimokrasy is flexyble.

 

Nasby's proposal to reunite the nation was ridiculous, so much so that,

as Locke intended, it pointed out the state of the northern Democracy as

it fumbled for an elusive common goal and identity in the months before

the election of 1864. Democracy was indeed flexible, as Nasby commented,

so flexible that it was unable to assume a logical form. The controversy

that Locke derides had the same indecisive basis as that which, in the

1830's and 1840's, had split the party of Jackson into Locofocos, Barn-

burners, and regulars as it saw much of its vitality seep into the Liberty

party, the Free-Soil party, and later the Republicans. It was similar to

the controversy that had split and destroyed Locke's own Whigs a decade

before. Only the Republican party, a sectional group of many minds

united by the intensity of its dislike for slavery, was to avoid such a split

during the years of antislavery agitation and war because it accepted,

however its members may have varied in degree, a common cause against

slavery as its basis.

But neither Locke nor Nasby was concerned with the implications of

the controversies that destroyed and revamped political philosophies; they

were concerned with the pragmatic policies of the moment. Consequently

the letters exploit the Democratic breach as they turn to the program

advanced by a number of northern Peace Democrats who supported the

slogan that demanded a return to "The Constitution as it is and the

Union as it was." To Nasby the problem is simple; the South has lost

the war, but it can still win the peace. To Jefferson Davis, the logical

defender of a slogan that attempts to return to the past, he writes:

 

You've found the eagle stile uv doin things a hard rode to travil;

spozn yoo try the snaik? Gefferson, surrender. Ask uv the Northrin

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Staits that they each appint a commissioner to arrange the terms uv yoor kumin back. Name yoor men, and be shoor that Fernandywood uv Noo York, and sammy Cox uv Ohio, and the ever-blessid Brite uv Ingeany, is uv them. Ef the goriller Linkin refoozes, wat then? Methinks we hev him. Let him refooze enny offer uv peese, and enuff week-need Ablishnists will jine the ranks uv the Dimokrasy, (wich is now, alluz hez bin, and ever will be yoors 2 kommand,) to enable us to carry the next eleckshun. Then, O, then, Gefferson, woodent the old times kum agin? Woodent they? In spite of Nasby's suspicious fear of McClellan, like a good party man he fell in line after his nomination; after all, there was much to be said for him: "Suffice it 2 say, that no general wuz ever so beluvd South, and so hated North, wich wuz wot prokoord his nominashen." Confident of victory, Nasby takes up a collection, securing eight dollars to defray campaign expenses. Hence, he writes, "I shel probably appere on the stump in a new pair uv pants." As a party regular he points out desperately that there is room on the platform for all varieties of Democrats, that McClellan is both a man of peace and a man of war, but finally he realizes that the issue is in doubt because what ought to please everybody, "sumhow" did not. As the pos- sibility of defeat overwhelms him, for the first time the irrepressible Nasby despairs: "Troo, all is lost! The Suthren coz is lost, the post-orfises is lost, the doggerys is lost!" Earlier Nasby's doubts about the outcome of the election had been shared by Abraham Lincoln. Convinced that the sentiment for peace grew stronger as the casualty lists mounted from Grant's hammering campaign and that he would not be reelected, Lincoln made plans to save

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PETROLEUM VESUVIUS NASBY                                        245

 

the Union in spite of itself as he prepared to turn over the government to

his successor. But when the early fall predictions came in it was evident

to Nasby that McClellan would lose: "Ohio! Pensilwany! Injeany!" he

laments. "Pennsilwany is cussid, Ohio is cusseder, but Injeany is cussidist."

From the election of 1864 to the end of the war the odyssey of Petroleum

Vesuvius Nasby is anticlimax, just as those final months were for the

Confederacy. As the returns come in, Nasby's parishioners who had given

him money for offices in the McClellan administration accuse him of

fraud and demand their money back. Only ingenuity saves him from the

tar and feather fate reserved for the confidence man:

 

My privit barel uv whisky wuz in my study -- I wuz saved! I

histid it out uv a winder, and calmly awaited results. They flockt

around it -- they took turns at the bung-hole. In wun short hour they

wuz stretched helpless on the plane, ded drunk. Then and there I

resined my charge, and borrerin sich munny and watches ez the

ungrateful wretches hed about em, to make up arrears uv salary and

sich, bid adoo 2 em furever. I shell go 2 Noo Gersey.

 

The election was closer than the electoral vote for Lincoln indicates.

It was not like the total rout suffered by Nasby, but in New Jersey,

the only northern state that had given McClellan a majority, Nasby

sought his elusive peace at "Saint's Rest," a haven for party stalwarts.

Here, of course, he could find no peace, just as he could find no hope for

the future in a nation dominated by abolitionism; finally, as the war comes

to its end, he can only leave the testimony of his devotion and faithfulness

to a party in defeat:

 

I hev no apologies to offer. . . . I may not hev sed enuff agin the

nigger -- I may not hev suffishently aboozed Noo England -- I may

hev bin too easy on Linkin, and I may hev sed too much for Micklellan.

But, ef this be so, these errors must be inskribed to my head, and

not to my heart. That I am sound to the core in my Dimokrasy, let

my noze, and the fact that I never skratched a tikit, attest.

In concloosion.

To the leaders I recommend akootnis, energy, and perseverance.

To the voters, steddinis, submission, and unquestionin fidelity.

To orfis-holders in our Staits, liberality, and ez much honesty ez

is consistent with their own interests and the interests uv the party.

To our friends, my love!

To our enemies, my burnin cuss!

Adoo! Farewell!

But Nasby was not allowed to disappear so easily. In spite of the

bitterness and viciousness that the war and political strife engendered,

Nasby himself, in the person of David Ross Locke, became a favorite on

the lecture platform during the postwar years. Although Locke turned his

satirical attention to other aspects of politics and society, focusing specifi-

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246                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

cally on the greed of speculators and exploiters, Locke's identity became

so fused with his creation that Nasby he remained to his death in 1888.

During his career as Nasby, Americans learned from him and his friend

Mark Twain that they could laugh at themselves as well as at each

other and that they might grow in understanding as a result.

 

 

THE AUTHOR: David D. Anderson is

an associate professor in the department

of American thought and language at

Michigan State University.

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