CARL M. BECKER
Newspapers in Battle: The Dayton
Empire and the Dayton Journal
During the Civil War
Throughout the Civil War, as Union
armies fought and bled,
Northern newspapers opposing and
supporting the Lincoln adminis-
tration engaged in a war of words that
sometimes triggered violence on
the home front. Especially in the Middle
West the Peace Democrats, or
Copperheads as these ultra-conservative
Democrats came to be known,
employed the press for a continuing
assault on Lincoln and his
policies.1 Damning the administration as
a military despotism that had
illegally used coercion to stay
secession and that was suppressing civil
liberties in the guise of patriotism
were editors of such copperhead
organs as the Chicago Times, the
Detroit Free Press and the Indiana-
polis State Sentinel.2 Calling
the Copperheads traitors and defending
the administration were editors of
numerous Republican journals-the
Chicago Tribune, the Cincinnati Commercial
and the Indianapolis
Carl M. Becker is Professor of History
at Wright State University.
1. Because Republicans believed or
wanted voters to believe that the Peace Demo-
crats were traitors, they began early in
the war to label them as Copperheads to denote
snake-like qualities. Copperheads would
sometimes identify themselves as such by
wearing on their lapel an Indian head
cut from a copper penny. Another term used to
describe Copperheads was
"Butternut." More specifically, it referred to poor farmers in
the border states and in the southern
parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois who colored
their outer garments with the brown dye
of the butternut, the fruit of the white walnut
tree, and who were usually Peace
Democrats. For the origin of the use of "Butternut"
and "Copperhead," see Albert
Matthews, "Origin of Butternut and Copperhead,"
Publications of the Colonial Society
of Massachusetts, XX (1918), 205-37.
2. The best account of the activities of
Copperhead editors in the Middle West and of
the Copperhead movement there is Frank
L. Klement, The Copperheads in the Middle
West (Chicago, 1960). Also useful is Frank L. Klement, The
Limits of Dissent: Clement
L. Vallandigham and the Civil War (Lexington, Kentucky, 1970). For studies of
newspapers and journalists during the
Civil War, see Louis Starr, Bohemian Brigade
(New York, 1954); Bernard Weisberger, Reporters
for the Union (Boston, 1953); and
Robert S. Harper, The Ohio Press in
the Civil War (Columbus, 1961). More general
studies worth consulting are Frank L.
Mott, American Journalism (New York, 1950) and
Edwin Emery, The Press and America (Englewood
Cliffs, 1954).
30 OHIO HISTORY
Journal, to name a few. For these newspapers and many others,
Copperhead and Republican editors, their
pens dripping with vitriol,
turned out column after column of
poisonous print as they scored or
defended Republican policies. Within the
same city and from city to
city, they hurled epithets at one
another in the name of virtue and
patriotism. Certainly one of the more
acrimonious conflicts took place
in Dayton, Ohio, where the Dayton Daily
Empire and the Dayton Daily
Journal almost literally battled each other to death and
destruction.
A small but growing city of 20,000
people, Dayton was in various
respects an inevitable focal point for a
confrontation between Copper-
heads and Republicans. In the opening
months of the war, Dayton
Copperheads insisted, as did Copperheads
throughout the nation, that
the use of force to halt secession was
unconstitutional. Among them
were the legatees of the states' rights
doctrines espoused by the
Resolutionists of 1798. Virginians and
Kentuckians had constituted the
bulk-about 70 percent-of the early
nineteenth century migration to
Dayton and the area immediately
surrounding it.3 Their progeny,
though declining in the 1850s and 1860s
as a percentage of a population
fed by northern and European sources,
was still an influential group in
the city, manifesting itself in the
continuing articulation of states' rights
views. Germans and Irish migrating to
the community in the 1850s
broadened the Copperheads' strength.
Germans rose in number from
about 1,940 in 1850 to at least 3,730 by
1860, the Irish from around 310
to over 1,320.4 Many of the
Germans were Catholic, as were nearly all
the Irish. Fearing that the Republicans,
whom they saw as repressive
Protestants, might emancipate the
slaves, who then would swell the
supply of labor, the Germans and Irish
usually cast their lot with the
Copperhead cause. Some commercial
interests, aggrieved by the loss
of southern markets and fearful of
eastern capitalists, also supported
the Copperhead cause. Political kinship
with a fellow-Daytonian,
Clement Laird Vallandigham, a
representative to Congress from their
district and the apotheosis of the
anti-Lincoln mission nationally,
imbued Dayton Copperheads with a sense
of purpose giving further
vitality to their labor.
3. David C. Schilling, "Relation of
Southern Ohio to the South During the Decade
Preceding the Civil War," Quarterly
of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio,
VIII (1913), 3-19. The general picture
of Dayton during the war may be found in Irving
Schwartz, "Dayton, Ohio During the
Civil War," (Master's thesis, Miami University,
1949).
4. 1 derived these figures from a line-by-line
reading of the Schedule of Population,
Seventh Census, 1850, Montgomery County,
Ohio; and the Schedule of Population,
Eighth Census, 1860, Montgomery County,
Ohio. The Germans came primarily from
Hesse-Cassel, Hanover, Badin and
Bavaria.
Newspapers in Battle
31
Deriving its strength from various
elements in the community, the
Republican party there mirrored much of
its general national compo-
sition. Old-time Whigs and anti-slavery
men opposing the extension of
slavery into the territories,
manufacturers and native workingmen
identifying their economic well-being
with Republican promises on
tariffs, and War Democrats committed to
maintaining national integrity
formed a solid nucleus for containment
of Copperhead power.5
Copperheads and Republicans alike
looked, of course, to partisan
newspapers for a continuing statement of
their ideals and goals. The
Copperhead champion in Dayton was the Empire,
an old-line Demo-
cratic organ. As its owner and editor
from 1847 to 1849, Vallandigham
had given it a pronounced Democratic
imprint. After he sold his
interest in it, a rapid succession of
men followed in his footsteps
through the 1850s, all echoing Southern
demands for protection of
slavery in the states and territories
and calling for an end to Northern
strictures of the South.6 Late
in the decade the Empire was assertively
supporting Buchanan in his fight with
Douglas Democrats; and in 1860
J. F. Bollmeyer, a native of Stolzenau
in Hanover, left his position in
the Treasury Department to become its
editor, apparently as an
emissary from Buchanan.7 Speaking
for the Republicans was the
Journal. Like many other Republican newspapers, the Journal had
been a Whig organ in its earlier days.
On the eve of the Civil War its
editors were W. F. Comly, a co-owner
since 1834, and his son, John F.
Comly, who had become co-editor in
1857.8 The Comlys were full-
5. Early in the war Republicans and War
Democrats formed a coalition known as the
Union party. The Republicans liked the
appellation because it hid their partyism. The
departure of War Democrats from the
Democratic party made it easier for the Peace
Democrats to control their party. For a
brief commentary on the Union party, see
Klement, The Limits of Dissent, 70.
6. The editors were George Clason, David
Clark, Daniel Fitch and J. Z. Reeder.
A. W. Drury, History of the City of
Dayton and Montgomery County, Ohio (2 vols.,
Chicago, 1909), I, 402.
7. Vallandigham, a native of New Lisbon,
Ohio, may have known Bollmeyer there.
Sometime early in the 1830s Bollmeyer
had come to the community as a baby with his
family. He lived there until 1847 when
at his father's death he moved to Warren, Ohio,
taking employment as a printer with the
Warren Democrat. In the same year Vallandig-
ham had moved to Dayton. In 1853
Bollmeyer became one of the proprietors of the
Chillicothe Advertiser, and in
1855 he took a clerkship with the Treasury Department in
Washington, D.C. Cincinnati Enquirer,
November 5, 1862; Dayton Empire (hereafter
cited as DE), November 12, 1862; Dayton Journal
(hereafter cited as DJ), September 14,
1863.
8. William J. Hamilton, "Dayton
Newspapers and Their Editors," (Typed manu-
script in Dayton and Montgomery County
Public Library, Dayton, 1937), 11; and W. H.
Beers & Company, The History of
Montgomery County, Ohio (Chicago, 1882), Book II,
708.
32 OHIO HISTORY
throated Republicans, endorsing all
their party's declarations on
slavery, tariffs, and other issues.
During the 1850s the Empire and Journal
repeatedly clashed on the
great issues of the decade-on the
Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Dred
Scott Decision, for example. Their
positions further polarized in the
face of the mounting secession crisis
and the coming of the war: the
Empire seconded Vallandigham's call for support of proposals
for
compromise, notably the ancient one that
would permit slavery to
extend into the territories south of the
latitude of 36° 30'; and the
Journal, unlike some other Republican newspapers, called for
imme-
diate suppression of the rebellion. Then,
during the early months of the
war, the two newspapers jousted along
conventional lines, their
editorial lances expended primarily on
constitutional tilting. But as
Union armies floundered and as Congress
considered confiscation
measures in late 1861 and early 1862,
the Empire complained bitterly of
Lincoln's ineptitude and above all
cursed the war as a wicked
abolitionist crusade. The Journal, now
owned and edited by Lewis
Marot and William Rouzer, two printers
whose fealty to the Republi-
can party far exceeded the felicity of
their language, began, by vague
implications, to equate such criticism
with treason.9 Though their
exchanges were acerbic, neither
newspaper developed any particular
focus beyond reciprocal umbrage.
Not until the state and congressional
elections of the fall of 1862 did
the continuing debate between the two
journals begin to take on
concrete dimensions. The Empire, endorsing
all Democrats, gave
special support to Vallandigham, who was
running for relection to the
House of Representatives against Robert
C. Schenck, who, in his
campaigning, could and did point to a
wound received at Second Bull
Run and friendship with Lincoln.10 Taking
anti-abolition and anti-war
positions, the Empire demanded
that the Lincoln administration adhere
scrupulously to the Constitution,
parading in all of its editorial columns
the shibboleth, "The Union as it
was; The Constitution as it is." As
Bollmeyer portrayed Lincoln, the
president was a Jacobin pursuing
revolutionary goals; the editor had
particularly in mind the administra-
tion's emancipation proposals and its
arbitrary arrests of its critics. For
its part, the Journal, along with
the Cincinnati Commercial and the
Cincinnati Daily Gazette, both
Republican advocates, aimed its fire at
9. After W. F. Comly became the
postmaster of Dayton in 1861, he and his son sold
their interest in the Journal to
Marot and Rouzer. Beers, The History of Montgomery
County, Book II, 708.
10. Lincoln personally urged Schenck to
run against Vallandigham. Klement, The
Limits of Dissent, 104-05.
Newspapers in Battle 33
Vallandigham and Bollmeyer; these men,
said the editors of the
Journal, gave encouragement to the Southern cause through their
incessant attacks on Union purposes and
means of conducting the war.
The editors implied, a local Copperhead
would later charge, that
Bollmeyer was a traitor whose
"existence in the community ought not
to be tolerated."11
In other parts of the state, the Copperheads
and Republicans argued
in corresponding terms. But outside of
Dayton the Copperheads,
perhaps because they were not encumbered
with fiery personalities
like Vallandigham, had the better part
of the debate. Democrats,
largely of the Copperhead variety, won
fourteen of nineteen congres-
sional districts; Vallandigham, though,
lost his race, owing partially to
a Republican-legislated gerrymander.12
As it turned out, however, Bollmeyer was
the principal loser. A few
days after the election, he was shot and
killed in the city's market area
by one Henry Brown, a local hatter and
Republican. Almost immedi-
ately Dayton Copperheads took up the cry
that it was a politically
inspired assassination. Within a few
minutes after the shooting, "sev-
eral hundred" men gathered near the
Empire office, which seemed to
be a kind of rallying point for
Copperheads.13 Some firebrands resolved
to remove Brown from the county jail to
administer necktie justice to
him. The mayor, William H. Gillespie, a Democrat
tinged with
Copperheadism, persuaded them to forgo
vigilantism; but later in the
afternoon, sixty or seventy men
assembled at the Empire office, and
after a brief deliberation they
proceeded to the jail and there demanded
the surrender of Brown. 14 Again
authorities persuaded them to give up
the business. But in the evening
"thousands" of men, "stronger and
more infuriated" than before,
ranged around the jail, determined to
take Brown by force.15 They
came, as it were, as an army of the
11. Thomas Lowe, a young Copperhead and
friend of Vallandigham, made the
allegation in a letter to the Empire.
"The Assassination of J. F. Bollmeyer," DE,
November 3, 1862.
12. One may read detailed accounts of
the campaign in George H. Porter, Ohio
Politics during the Civil War Period (New York, 1911), 128ff; Eugene H. Roseboom, The
History of the State of Ohio: The
Civil War Era, 1850-1873 (Columbus,
1944), 399ff; and
Klement, The Limits of Dissent, 102ff.
13. I have written an article on the
murder of Bollmeyer and the related rioting. Carl
M. Becker, "The Death of J. F.
Bollmeyer: Murder Most Foul?" Bulletin, The
Cincinnati Historical Society, XXIV
(1966), 249-69. There are a number of basic
newspaper accounts bearing on the
subjects: "The Shooting Affair on Saturday," DJ,
November 3, 1862; "The Tragedy on
Saturday," DE, November 3, 1862; "Tragedy at
Dayton, Ohio-Editor of the Dayton Empire
Shot Dead," Cincinnati Commercial,
November 2, 1862.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
34 OHIO HISTORY
Empire, carrying as they did two swivel guns obtained from the Empire
office. They were, however, a mob, not
an army. No one among them
would fire the guns, and finally a
detachment of guards from the jail
seized the guns and turned them towards
the crowd. After the guards
and mob exchanged a few random pistol
shots, the insurgents, fearing
the imminent arrival of soldiers from
Cincinnati, departed the field of
combat.
The next few weeks saw the battle move
to the columns of the
Empire, the Journal and a number of Cincinnati
newspapers. Setting
the pattern of conflict was the new
editor of the Empire, William
Logan, an acid-tongued man who had been
Bollmeyer's assistant
editor. In his view Bollmeyer's death
had stemmed from the incendiary
editorials of Republican newspapers.
Labelling Bollmeyer, Vallandig-
ham and many other Democrats as traitors
with no rights to be
respected by loyal men, Republican
editors in Dayton and Cincinnati,
wrote Logan, had "advised"
assassination and Brown had "per-
formed" it.16 The
Cincinnati Enquirer, Cincinnati's leading Democrat-
ic newspaper, sailed a similar tack. Its
editor, James J. Faran,
wrathfully declared that Bollmeyer had
been the victim of a political
vendetta.17 Regarded by the
Republican press as a spokesman for
Vallandigham, he had been denounced so
often and so maliciously,
Faran asserted, that he had become a man
marked for assassination.
Particularly the Cincinnati Commercial
had impugned his loyalty, had
called him a traitor, a liar. All that
had been needed, then, was a man
of weak intelligence and party prejudice
who would take as truth the
lies of the Commercial. Brown had
been that man, and now the
abolitionist editors could congratulate
themselves, their slander and
vituperation having taken evil root and
blossomed in blood. So went
Faran's brief. Both the Empire and
Enquirer singled out as compelling
evidence of their charges a Commercial
editorial that had responded to
Democratic criticism of Lincoln with the
proclamation that "throat-
cutting time had come in Ohio."18
Republican newspapers naturally saw the
death of Bollmeyer from a
different perspective. In lengthy
accounts citing testimony of supposed
witnesses, the Journal, the Commercial
and the Cincinnati Gazette all
argued that Bollmeyer's death had
emanated from a quarrel between
Bollmeyer and Brown over a dog.19 Bollmeyer's
dog and several
16. "The Demoralization of the
Community," DE, November 3, 1862.
17. "Assassination of Mr.
Bollmeyer," Cincinnati Enquirer, November 4, 1862.
18. "The Assassin's Organ on the
Rampage, Again," DE, November 13, 1862; "The
Commercial on the Assassination of Mr. Bollmeyer," Cincinnati
Enquirer, November
13, 1862.
19. "Tragedy at Dayton, Ohio,"
Cincinnati Commercial, November 2, 1862; "The
Newspapers in Battle 35
others, according to the reconstruction
of events leading to the
shooting, had knocked down one of
Brown's sons, Lieutenant John
Brown, as they ran from Bollmeyer's yard
into the alley behind
Brown's residence. Getting to his feet,
young Brown had fired his
pistol, killing Bollmeyer's dog. He and
Bollmeyer angrily exchanged
words, but nothing else happened. Then
on Halloween a number of
boys were ringing doorbells in
Bollmeyer's neighborhood. Bollmeyer,
annoyed by repeated ringing of his bell,
ran after the boys, caught one
and cuffed him. Only seven or eight
years old, he happened to be
Brown's youngest son. The next morning
when Brown and Bollmeyer
chanced to meet in the downtown market,
the editor set his market
basket down as though he intended to
attack Brown. Fearing Bollmey-
er, a stout, heavy-framed man, Brown, a
"very spare" man, impul-
sively reached for his pistol and fired.20
Patently, then, accusations of
a political murder were cut from
spurious cloth.
Perhaps seeking to shift attention from
Brown's act, which, after all,
was directed at a prominent Copperhead,
the Journal flailed the
Empire for attempting to deny even-handed justice to Brown. As
Marot
and Rouzer perceived the matter, the Empire's
unauthorized publica-
tion of testimony given at the coroner's
inquest-an ex parte proce-
dure-infringed upon the rights of the
accused.21 More objectionable
was the appearance in the Empire of
anonymously authored charges
contradicting testimony offered at the
inquest. The Journal editors
demanded that the Empire source
step forward and substantiate his
unfounded allegations.22 Clearly,
though, insisted a Journal editorial,
the Democrats had little interest in justice.
Otherwise, why did the
Empire and kindred sheets continue to call for Brown's
punishment
when Brown had already been indicted on
a first degree murder charge
and now awaited trial?23 Just
as the Empire falsely judged the motives
of the Lincoln administration for
political purposes, so it was now
seeking to transform a personal quarrel
into political capital. The
Journal also was raising questions about the failure of
municipal
authorities to punish the rioters who
had sought to take Brown from the
Shooting Affair on Saturday," DJ,
November 3, 1862; "The Fatal Affray at Dayton,"
Cincinnati Gazette, November 3,
1862.
20. The newspapers said nothing as to
why Brown was carrying a pistol. Later, at
Brown's trial, testimony had it that
Brown carried it because his shop had recently been
burglarized.
21. "The Coroner's Inquest
Testimony," DJ, November 5, 1862.
22. DJ, November 4, 1862. The anonymous
contributor was the young Copperhead,
Thomas Lowe. He made his charges in
"The Assassination of J. F. Bollmeyer," DE,
November 3, 1862.
23. "Persistent
Misrepresentations," DJ, November 5, 1862.
36 OHIO HISTORY
jail. According to the Journal, the
police who were at the jail knew the
identity of the rioters; and many
civilians could be found who would
furnish the police with the affidavits
necessary for arrests. Yet the
authorities had not taken the action
that strict justice required.24 In
fact, the Journal hinted, city
officials with sinister purposes may have
invited the mob to defiance of the law.
As the newspapers quarreled,
Brown awaited trial, which because of
various legal steps was delayed
until September of 1863.
Though intense, the debate engendered by
Bollmeyer's death lost its
pulsating force only a few weeks after
its inception, cast aside by new
events and new issues. Through late 1862
and early 1863, the failure of
Union armies in Virginia, the
Emancipation Proclamation, conscrip-
tion legislation, and new tax and
banking laws moved the Dayton
editors to bitter editorial exchanges.
Their rhetoric had a counterpart in
the community, the political struggle
there coursing its virulent way
into virtually every vein of life.
Indeed, the community was becoming
a "Natchez under the hill,"
infected with distrust and contention. It
split church brethren into warring
factions.25 It became the touchstone
by which Copperheads and Republicans
came to decisions on whether
or not to offer or accept invitations to
social affairs. It differentiated
goods in the marketplace as good
Republicans patronized only mer-
chants of the faith and as Copperheads
similarly judged men and their
wares. It led to scuffling among
Republicans and Copperheads in
saloons, which soon became identified as
sanctuaries for like-minded
men. In all these avenues of life, the
personality of Vallandigham
intruded. Returning in March from
Congress, where as a "lame duck"
he had made a notorious speech in
January demanding an armistice
with the South, he had been accorded a
tremendous reception by
Copperheads, one that heightened
bitterness in the city.
Determined to check the Copperheads and
to give unity to the
community, the editors of the Journal
took steps that intensified strife.
In March of 1863, they issued a call to
all "loyal" citizens to join a
Union League that they were forming.26
Ostensibly patriotic organiza-
tions cutting across party lines, Union
Leagues or clubs were, in fact,
auxiliary units of the Republican party
dedicated to support of the war
24. "Law and Order," DJ,
November 6, 1862.
25. At the First Presbyterian Church,
one member told a Democrat that he "could not
understand how a man could be a Democrat
and pray!" Thomas Lowe to William R.
Lowe, August 2, 1862, in Lowe
Manuscripts Collection, in Dayton and Montgomery
County Public Library.
26. DJ, March 13, 1863.
Newspapers in Battle 37
effort.27 Marot and Rouzer
soon enough enrolled several hundred
members, and the League prepared for a
crusade against heresy.28
League militancy first expressed itself
in an educational setting. For
months the public schools, especially
the high school, had been the
scene of fist-fighting and rock-throwing
between Republican and
Copperhead boys. Such incidents,
however, had been sporadic and
spontaneous in origin.29 The
League, organized as it was in the name
of loyalty, introduced an element of
purpose as youngsters could now
equate their acts with patriotism. Only
a week after the formation of
the League, its imprint appeared on a
fracas between Unionists and
Copperheads at the Central High School.
There a group of Republicans
had "adopted" the Union League
badge, merely an eagle button taken
from an army uniform. The Copperhead
students were wearing the
Butternut charm, a cross-section cut
from the nut of the white walnut
tree emblematizing Copperhead values.
Certain of their patriotism, the
militant Unionists set out to drive the
Butternut charm from academe.30
As the Journal reporter
chronicled the event, unionist scholars,
"annoyed" with boys who
persisted in sporting Butternut breast-pins,
demanded removal of the offending
emblems within a "certain length
of time." When the time had expired
without compliance, they
attempted a forcible removal. A fight
ensued in which the Unionists
"severely handled" the
Copperheads before teachers intervened.31
The young assailants were arrested on
assault and battery charges and
bound over to the mayor's court for a
hearing. Predictably outraged,
Logan of the Empire alleged that the
unionist youths had attacked a
boy simply because he wore an ornament
on a watch chain that they
"denominated a Copperhead."32
Logan went on to accuse the Journal
of encouraging violence against
Democrats by a tacit approval of the
attack.
The day after the clash of emblems, the
local board of education
moved to maintain peace in the high
school. Robert Steele, chairman of
the board's high school committee,
personally addressed the students
and ordered them to attend school
unadorned by either charms or
27. On the rise of the Union League in
the Middle West, see Klement, Copperheads
in the Middle West, 210; see also E. Bently Hamilton, "The Union
League: Its Origin
and Achievements in the Civil War,"
Transactions of the Illinois State Historical
Society, 1921 (Springfield, 1921), 110-15.
28. DJ, March 23, 1863.
29. Charlotte R. Conover, The Story
of Dayton (Dayton, 1917), 154-55.
30. I have described the conflict
between the charms and badges in "'Disloyalty' and
the Dayton Public Schools," Civil
War History, Xl (1965), 58-68.
31. DJ, April 1, 1863.
32. "An Outrage," DE, April 1,
1863.
38 OHIO HISTORY
badges.33 The students
reluctantly obeyed, and, as one observer put it,
"all was quiet in Warsaw."34
In the meantime, the boyish fray was
taking on a new dimension in the columns
of the Empire and Journal,
where the rival editors engaged in a
dispute about the kind of justice the
unionist lads could expect from a
Copperhead mayor. Marot and
Rouzer sarcastically commended Mayor
Gillespie and his coterie for
their vigorous enforcement of the law, noting
that the mob action of
1862 faded into insignificance alongside
the enormity of the schoolboy
quarrel. Gillespie, they asserted,
threatened before the hearing to visit
his wrath on the boys, who then wisely
waived examination, preferring
to take their cases to the Court of
Common Pleas.35 Foul in sinuations,
cried Logan. The mayor, he said, would
not have bothered about the
affair had no complaint been filed;
moreover, Gillespie had not
condemned the boys before the hearing.
If there were any criminals
deserving condemnation, they were those
who had prompted "insig-
nificant actors" to the use of
force.36
By mid-April of 1863, the conflict had
shifted from the high school to
the elementary schools. Again the Journal
and Empire acted as
reporter-advocates. At the Southeastern
District School, one of five
elementary schools in the city,
Principal Abram B. Leaman, as the
Journal understood it, expelled about twenty boys because their
persistence in wearing Union League
badges had caused "trouble."37
To reduce quarreling and fighting,
Leaman had earlier forbidden the
wearing of any distinctive emblems. But
Copperhead boys, complained
the Journal editors, had flaunted
their emblems in the school weeks
before the Union boys had worn
theirs-but without the slightest
comment from Leaman. If the board would
not protect patriotic boys
from such arbitrary punishment, their
parents should make an appeal
to the courts. Logan saw the incident in
another light. Leaman, acting
out of a "sense of duty," had
ruled wisely in ordering all party symbols
from the school; he had simply become
"annoyed by the fussing"
generated by the emblems.38 Wearing
them would not have been
objectionable, naively observed Logan,
had not violence developed!
Encouragement to brute force had been
"doubtless received from such
33. Thomas Lowe to William Lowe, April
4, 1863, in Lowe Collection.
34. Ibid.
35. DJ, April 3, 1863.
36. DE, April 2, 1863; "The High
School Difficulty and the Mayor," DE, April 13,
1863. Unfortunately, records in the
Montgomery County courthouse do not reveal the
final disposition of the case.
37. DJ, April 16, 1863.
38. "Party Emblems," DE, April
16, 1863.
Newspapers in Battle 39
dangerous lunatics as the fellows of the
Journal." Those blackguards
now promoted further strife and
insubordination in the school by
saying that Leaman should be driven from
his post.39
Leaman's ban soon came under review by
the board of education,
which probably numbered seven
Copperheads and five Republicans.40
Meeting the day after the principal's
action, the board considered a
number of meticulously drawn resolutions
and counterresolutions
before adopting a motion that satisfied
neither Republicans nor Cop-
perheads. Citing the earlier decision of
Robert Steele as a precedent,
the board sustained Leaman's order. It
refused, however, to establish
any general "rule with reference to
wearing badges or emblems.... "41
And it tabled a resolution that would
have permitted the display of
various "national" emblems
such as red, white, and blue ribbons and
the American eagle in the schools. It
did appoint a select committee to
review all aspects of the perplexing and
emotional subject.
Both the Empire and the Journal
attacked the board for its apparent
equivocation. In the Empire's sight,
the board had seemed to say that
Leaman had done "right but was
wrong to continue to do so."42 The
Journal, on the other hand, censured the board for not adopting
the
resolution permitting the display of
"national" emblems. It only
remained now, lamented the Journal duet,
for the board to vote the
stars and stripes a party emblem; then
even Old Glory would have to
be removed from the schools to preserve
peace.43
While the board and select committee
deliberated, Dayton citizens
"communicated" their views to
the newspapers, particularly to the
Journal. Their language often revealed the malevolent spirit
that
underwrote irrational character attacks.
To one contributor, who
disguised himself as "Brown
Street," Leaman was an outright traitor.
The principal, alleged the anonymous
writer, had been motivated by
partisan considerations.44 Why,
he asked, as he echoed the position of
the Journal, had Leaman's
"sense of duty" been directed at political
emblems only after the Union League
badge had appeared in the
school? Why had not this sense of duty
asserted itself at the earlier
39. Ibid. Logan pointed out that Leaman
was the principal of the Southeastern
District, "not the South West, as
the chronic ignoramus of the Journal has it."
40. Because board candidates were not
identified by party labels until the election of
1862, when only a portion of the board
was up for election, the exact political
composition of the board is impossible
to determine.
41. Meeting of April 16, 1863,
"Minutes of the Board of Education, City of Dayton,
April 8, 1858, to December 11,
1873."
42. DE, April 17, 1863.
43. DJ, April 17, 1863.
44. Ibid.
40 OHIO HISTORY
appearance of the Butternut charm? Even
more reprehensible was
Leaman's prohibition against the singing
of the "Star Spangled
Banner"; now children would have to
give up reverence for national
symbols for fear of offending their
principal. Equally vehement was a
writer signing himself as
"Action," who asserted that Leaman's
punishment of patriotic boys was treason
writ large.45 True to his
name, "Action" called for the
principal's arrest.
Leaman emerged in a different light in a
communication by "Union."
Writing as though he had been close to
the scene, "Union" depicted a
panorama of anarchy at the school.46
It was not true, he reported, that
Leaman had singled out Union League
students for retribution long
after Butternut charms had appeared in
the school. Indeed, for six
weeks Leaman had endured daily fist
fights between youths embla-
zoned with charms and badges. Finding
that punishment of individual
combatants did not stop the fighting, he
finally resorted to the methods
successfully used at the high school.
But the parents, forming a
conspiracy intended to destroy Leaman,
challenged his authority. They
counseled their children to defy him and
his rules. Cued by their
agitative rhetoric, boys roamed through
the school building shouting
obscenities at him. Then fathers and
mothers, acting directly, invaded
the school "scolding" teachers
reputed to be Copperheads. One man
burst into a classroom "swearing
and raving" at a teacher.
Leaman himself entered into the
dialogue, explaining that he had not
intended to take his case to the Journal
but that he could not continue
to ignore unjust and unfounded
accusations.47 He had not, he insisted,
acted out of partisan motives; he had
not harbored ill feelings toward
unionist students. He had no desire to
degrade Union emblems, and he
had not prohibited the singing of the
"Star Spangled Banner." He had
not expelled any student for wearing any
emblem. He had not refused,
as one report had it, to fly the flag;
he had only forbidden a boy to raise
it on a broken staff because he feared
for the boy's safety. He had not
protected Copperheads as charged. He had
only followed the high
school precedent after weeks of trouble.
He had, in short, been a
prudent man whose great shortcoming had
been moderation.
The Journal editors, who had
invited the aggrieved Leaman to put
himself "right" in their
columns, now were ready to reassess the
principal-but not as a result of his
statements. They had learned from
one of Leaman's old and intimate friends
that the educator was a
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid.
47. Ibid., April 18, 1863.
Newspapers in Battle 41
"whole-souled" Union man who
had voted for Schenck in 1862.48 It
was indeed unfortunate, they admitted,
for a patriotic man to occupy a
position that gave ground for doubting
his loyalty. Seeking to exculpate
themselves, the editors recalled that
their original criticism of Leaman
had been based on remarks of
"honorable persons." Besides, Mr.
Leaman should not object to errant
denunciation by the press when
corrective public opinion could find its
way into newspapers!
Another educator subjected to an ordeal
by press was John Hall,
principal of the high school. His
heinous crime, as the Journal reported
it, was his insistence that two girls remove
red, white, and blue rosettes
from their blouses.49 Hall
denied the report. In conformance with the
policy enunciated by the board for the
high school, he had, he
explained, simply instructed a teacher
"to quietly ask" a girl to take off
her Union League badge.50 Like
Leaman, he felt no sympathy for
doctrines of secession and thus had not
suppressed the Union League
badge out of political bias. Still, the Journal
was not totally satisfied,
sulkingly asserting that it had been
furnished with the names of the
"ladies" involved.51
But the newspaper did not furnish the names to
the public, and Hall escaped further
criticism.
Also coming under the lash of patriotic
Republicans writing to the
Journal was the board of education. The board, protested their
many
letters, had placed loyalty at parity
with treason by expelling Butternut
charms and national emblems alike from
the school.52 The Butternut
charm, a mere party object, was a token
of treason; but army badges
and tricolor ribbons were symbols of
love of country, obedience to law,
and opposition to treason. Editors Marot
and Rouzer joined their
contributors in aiming incendiary
broadsides at the board. Vallandig-
ham, they wrote, sufficed as a
"damning disgrace to Dayton."53 Would
the community further traduce itself?
Would it permit the army eagle to
be driven from the schools? Would the
citizenry permit the emblem of
national grandeur to be dragged down to
the level of an emblem of a
mobocratic party-of sympathizers with
rebellion? The editors be-
lieved that the Copperhead majority on
the board was not sufficiently
"copperbottomed" to adopt
measures that would incur the wrath of
loyal men. They reflected tauntingly on
the action to be expected from
the board:
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid., April 17, 1863.
50. Ibid., April 18, 1863.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid., April 18, 1863; April 24,
1863; April 26, 1863.
53. Ibid., April 24, 1863.
42 OHIO HISTORY
What then will they do? Will they decide
the Eagle and the Stars and Stripes
to be National emblems? We hope they
have the courage equal to such a task;
but we have our doubts on that score. We
hardly think they are prepared to
vote the butternut out of the public
schools, which, being the mere emblem of
a rebel party, has no right either in
the schools or in a loyal community. It is
quite amusing to hear men of the
butternut hue get up in their places in the
School Board and make spread-eagle
speeches eulogizing the Stars and Stripes
and endeavoring to pluck a feather from
the the tail of the proud bird to put in
their caps, but it is too much to expect
them to vote that that same bird is the
Shanghai of the National poultry yard.
Come, ye luminaries of the educational
firmament-ye stars of the copperhead
galaxy-show your hands.54
In their peroration, the editors
demanded that the board move with
celerity in reaching a decisive decision
on the emblems.
As the community awaited the report of
the select committee, the
Journal continued to attack the board and the Copperheads. From
every ground possible-patriotic,
religious, ethical-the irascible edi-
tors developed their case. The Bible
provided the inspiration for an
odious comparison. A redeeming quality
of Cain, their exegesis told
them, was that he seemed ashamed of the
mark placed upon him.55 But
the typical Copperhead, far from being
ashamed of his accursed
emblem, flaunted this "seal of
infamy" before the world. So stained
with the Butternut dye were some board
members that they had lost
sight of what plainly constituted
loyalty. The editors found an ally in
the East also excoriating Dayton Copperheads.
Repeating the Jour-
nal's account of Leaman's expulsion of Union League students,
Henry
Ward Beecher's New York Independent remarked
that it was difficult
to imagine any further advance in
degeneracy unless children reciting
the Lord's prayer should be expelled,
with the remaining students to be
required to "drink whiskey, swear
and chew tobacco two hours
daily."56
Meanwhile, the Empire, which
usually replied to Journal strictures
in kind, maintained a discreet silence
on the emblem question. But
Logan had not abandoned his assault on
the Lincoln administration.
And reflecting his wrath, the political
powder in the community was
ready to explode. In a sense the cap had
already been set. In March of
1863, Major General Ambrose Burnside
received command of the
Department of the Ohio, which included
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
Michigan, and Kentucky. Burnside,
perhaps yet tense over his recent
failure at Fredericksburg, came to his
post with signs of apparent
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid.
56. Quoted in DJ, May 26, 1863.
Newspapers in Battle 43
danger all around him. Democratic
editors in the Middle West,
provoked by a mob's destruction of
Samuel Medary's Copperhead
journal, the Columbus Crisis, were
threatening retaliation. Logan, for
example, declared that "for every
Democratic printing office destroyed
by a mob, let an abolition one be
destroyed in turn."57 From Indiana
governor Oliver Morton, Burnside heard
tales of Copperhead conspir-
acies. But the situation in Dayton above
all exercised him. The city was
resounding with speeches denouncing
Lincoln, and Copperhead rhet-
oric verged, at least for Republican
auditors, toward treason. Believing
that Copperhead speeches and editorials
there and elsewhere encour-
aged the enemy, Burnside issued on April
13 the noted General Order
Number 38, the order that proclaimed
that "the habit of declaring
sympathy for the enemy will not be
allowed in this department."
Vallandigham, bull-like, saw the order
as a red flag. And he charged
it.58 At a Democratic rally
in Mount Vernon, Ohio, on May 1, 1863,
with one of Burnside's agents present
and recording notes in a "little
black book," Vallandigham
fulminated against the order, arguing that
it was a base violation of
constitutional guarantees of freedom of
speech and press.59 His
authority thus challenged, Burnside felt that he
had no other choice than to arrest the
Copperhead. On May 5 he sent
a detail of 150 soldiers to Dayton;
there they took Vallandigham from
his bed at 3:00 in the morning and
escorted him to a Cincinnati jail.
When Dayton's Copperheads learned of
their idol's arrest, they
excitedly gathered in small crowds
throughout the community to
consider the course of action to pursue.
Logan had an answer. His
editorial in the afternoon's edition of
the Empire appeared in provoc-
ative font:
VALLANDIGHAM KIDNAPPED
A dastardly Outrage!
Will free men submit?
The hour for action has arrived.60
57. DE, March 14, 1863.
58. As Frank Klement sees it,
Vallandigham challenged Burnside and his order as a
means of becoming a martyr to a cause. The
Limits of Dissent, 152. One might argue,
though, that, given his commitment to
his cause, Vallandigham had no other choice but
to confront Burnside in a dramatic way.
59. For a good description of
Vallandigham's attack on the order and the subsequent
violence, see Klement, The Limits of
Dissent, 152ff; and Frank Klement, "Clement L.
Vallandigham," in Kenneth W.
Wheeler, ed., For the Union: Ohio Leaders in the Civil
War (Columbus, 1968), 3-78.
60. DE, May 5, 1863.
44 OHIO HISTORY
He went on to call Republicans in the
community "cowardly, scoun-
drelly, abolitionists"; and he
exhorted his readers to save their
"endangered liberties" through
"blood and carnage."
Logan's appeal soon moved a mob to the
violent but good work.
After congregating in front of the Empire
office, which stood across the
street from the Journal building,
a crowd of about two hundred angry
men began to shout insults at the Journal
office and then started to
throw stones at the building. A few men
fired pistols at the windows,
and finally several threw flaming balls
of pitch into the office; the balls
ignited some newspapers, and seemingly
in no time the building went
up in flames.61 Burnside,
apprised earlier of impending trouble, had
already dispatched troops of the 115th
Ohio Volunteer Infantry to
Dayton; but by the time they arrived,
the rioters had burned down half
a block of buildings, insuring their
destruction by impeding the fire
department's fire-fighting efforts. The
troops dispersed the mob in
short order, though not before a soldier
killed a rioter cutting a fire
hose. Martial law was declared, and the
city subsided into a sullen
peace.
Now perforce, too, the battle between
the Empire and the Journal
came to a momentary end. The citizenry
generally accused Logan of
deliberately agitating men to riot. Army
officers agreed, arrested him,
and suppressed publication of the Empire.
Though their facilities had
been ruined, Marot and Rouzer were
publishing the Journal within two
days after the riot ended. Offered the
use of the presses of the United
Brethren publishing house, they turned
out a diminutive letter-sheet
edition. "It was," a reader
later recalled, "a cute little four pager,
about 8 inches by 12, and as saucy as
ever, throwing defiance into the
teeth of the Copperhead criminals."62
At the same time, Marot was
organizing a committee of leading
Republicans to raise money for
reestablishing the Journal in new
quarters.63
Probably the Copperheads viewed the turn
of events as a chastened
lot. Their hero languished in a
Cincinnati jail. Their newspaper had
been suppressed. Their leaders were
dealing in recriminations as they
soberly speculated on the civil
uprising.64 And piling Ossa on Pelion,
the select committee of the board of
education, meeting only a few
days after the riot and perhaps
influenced by the violence of the event,
61. On the rioting, see particularly
Klement, The Limits of Dissent, 161ff.
62. DJ, June 21, 1908.
63. Daniel D. Bickham, "The Dayton Journal
History," Typed manuscript in
Bickham Manuscripts Collection, in
Dayton and Montgomery County Public Library.
64. DJ, May 7, 1863; Thomas Lowe to
William Lowe, May 14, 1863, in Lowe
Collection.
Newspapers in Battle 45 |
|
issued a report on the emblem question resulting in large part in a Republican victory. The board accepted the report and by a vote of eleven to one adopted a derivative resolution that, though reversing the ban against the wearing of charms and badges, obviously gave a preferential place to Union emblems:
Resolved, That in the opinion of this Board there is in the Stars and Stripes, the tri-colored ribbon, Red, White and Blue or the American Eagle nothing of a partizan character, but these are all national emblems, common to all parties of which every citizen should be proud, and which every American youth should be taught to honor, but we do not think it advisable to prohibit the wearing by scholars in the Public Schools of any badges, their own taste or that of their parents and guardians may prescribe, requiring of them only attention to their studies, preservation of order and strict obedience to the rule of the schools. We recommend however that the wearing of all badges of a partizan character should be generally discouraged whatever their device may be.65
65. Meeting of May 14, 1863, "Minutes of the Board of Education." |
46 OHIO HISTORY
Though accepting the Republican
statement, the Copperheads protect-
ed their charms in the lamely drawn
words allowing the wearing of any
badge. Moreover, they defeated a
resolution that would have excluded
"all emblems or badges not strictly
national in character."
Republicans did not and Copperheads
could not respond vigorously
to the board's decision. In light of the
recent rioting, the problem at the
schools had lost its inflammatory
pulsation. Besides, since the schools
had been dismissed for the year, the
question was temporarily moot.
Their attention to emblems diminished,
the Journal men gave but a
routine endorsement to the resolution.
Copperheads, their newspaper
silenced, had to mutter in privacy or in
the streets and saloons.
At the Journal amid the tumult, a
change of leadership was on the
way. Even before the rioting erupted,
Republican leaders in Dayton
had begun to question the ability of the
Journal editors to meet the
challenge of Copperheadism, especially
of its high priest, Vallandig-
ham. Apparently they found Marot and
Rouzer wanting in the force of
personality, though not in will and
acidity, necessary to counter
Vallandigham's magnetism. They also had
in mind a man who had a
wider experience in the politics of war
and who had a martial bearing.
With the editors' approvals, the
Republicans began a search for a new
proprietor for the Journal.
The man found was William D. Bickham.
City editor of the Cincin-
nati Commercial when the war
began and a staunch Republican,
Bickham had become a war correspondent
in western Virginia and then
achieved some notoriety as a
volunteer-aide-de-camp to Major General
William S. Rosecrans, commanding the
Army of the Cumberland.
Though his devotion to Rosecrans
("Old Rosy," Bickham called him)
bordered on sycophancy, he was an able
reporter, albeit his style was
prolix and garrulous, even when measured
against the standards of an
age given to verbosity.66 When
he left Rosecrans' service in April of
1863, Bickham, evidently aware of the
Dayton Republicans' interest in
another editor, already had his eyes on
the Journal; and the Republi-
cans apparently thought that he could
serve their cause in Dayton.
Only a few days before the turbulence of
May, Murat Halstead, editor
of the Commercial, wrote to him
of the "Dayton matter."67 One could
find in Dayton, Halstead believed,
"the best opening ... in the west for
a Union Daily paper conducted with
energy, courage and capacity. The
Union men there have no organ worth a
curse and are fully sensible of
66. For some contemporary evaluations of
Bickham, see Weisberger, Reporters for
the Union, 238; and Starr, Bohemian Brigade, 257.
67. Murat Halstead to W. D. Bickham,
April 30, 1863, in Bickham Collection.
Newspapers in Battle 47
it." Halstead was certain that the
"leading Union men" in the city
were willing to put the Journal in
Bickham's hands. Rumor later had it
that Lincoln selected Bickham "to
compel Vallandigham to withdraw
from Dayton."68 In any
case, the events of May hastened a decision.
The Republicans offered Bickham a loan
of $6,000 to purchase the
Journal. He accepted the offer and by late in July was publishing
an
enlarged edition of the newspaper.
Making use of the "editoral
papagraph," a short paragraph
infused with caustic wit, he excoriated
the Copperheads day in, day out. His
columns were undistinguished in
style and substance, but they were
persistent in their diatribism.
Whether or not he had come to Dayton at
Lincoln's bidding,
Bickham took up his labor as
Vallandigham was posing a threat to the
administration. Lincoln had exiled
Vallandigham to the Confederacy in
May after a military commmission had
sentenced him to close confine-
ment for the duration of the war. Sent
to the South, he hurriedly took
his way to Halifax in Canada.69 The
Copperhead press depicted him as
a martyr; and playing the role to the
hilt, he easily won the Democratic
nomination in June for the governorship
of Ohio. His ensuing pro-
nouncements issued from Canada,
Vallandigham advocated concilia-
tion and compromise with the South,
though not going so far as to
demand an armistice as he had early in
1863. Many Republicans feared
and many Copperheads hoped that as
governor of Ohio Vallandigham
would mobilize western pressure to
compel the administration to take
measures of compromise; and there were
even rumors that he would
take the lead in forming a Northwest
Confederacy-a nation to consist
of seceding states in the Old
Northwest-if Lincoln would not yield to
his demands.
Fearing dire consequences of a
Copperhead victory, Republican
editors in Ohio gave unswerving support
to Vallandigham's opponent,
John Brough, a former Democrat. Though
stressing Brough's ability,
they focused their attention on
Vallandigham. Bickham took a charac-
teristic position. He viewed the main
issue of the campaign as simply
one of treason versus patriotism. He
portrayed Vallandigham as a
"convicted traitor" whose
sympathy lay with treasonous Southerners.
68. John C. Hover, ed., et. al.,
Memoirs of the Miami Valley (3 vols., Chicago, 1919),
II, 139. One secondary account, which I
have been unable to substantiate in any primary
sources, says that Rosecrans urged
Lincoln to send Bickham to Dayton. Daniel D.
Bickham, "Tribute to Wm. D.
Bickham, Civil War Editor," The Ohio Newspaper, XVII
(1937), 5-6.
69. One may read of Vallandigham's exile
in Frank L. Klement, "Clement L.
Vallandigham's Exile in the Confederacy,
May 25-June 17, 1863," The Journal of
Southern History, XXXI (1965), 149-63.
48 OHIO HISTORY
He suggested that Vallandigham owed his
nomination to machinations
of the Confederacy. He delighted in the
publication of the couplet,
Hurrah for Brough and Abraham!
And a rope to hang Vallandigham!70
If the Journal could denigrate
Vallandigham, the Empire could
revere him. The Empire, its
suspension lifted, renewed publication in
mid-August, with Logan, released from
jail without charges pressed
against him, as its editor. According to
Logan, who seemed hardly
chastened by recent events,
Vallandigham's election was absolutely
necessary to check the military
despotism in Washington.71 Vallandig-
ham, he said, was a champion of peace
and principles of constitution-
alism. For Logan, he was the man who
would resist the egal-
itarian measures of Negrophiles and the
economic power of eastern
capitalists.
Despite Logan's rhetoric and that of
many other Copperhead editors
in Ohio, Vallandigham lost the election.
Brough, pointing to Union
victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg to
refute Copperhead assertions
that a military victory over the South
was impossible, receiving nearly
the unanimous ballot of soldiers voting
in the field and evidently
drawing an heretofore silent vote, won
by a hundred thousand votes.72
Relieved and elated by the outcome,
Lincoln reputedly telegraphed the
incumbent governor, David Tod,
"Glory to God in the highest; Ohio
has saved the Union."73 Another
kind of victory came to Republicans
in Dayton shortly before the election.
Brown was finally brought to
trial and much to the Journal's satisfaction
was found not guilty.74 The
Empire, its resentment quite evident, ascribed the verdict to
the
largesse of a packed jury that
Republican women showered daily with
bouquets of flowers.75
The gubernatorial election over, the Journal
and the Empire found
other issues to contest. Soon after the
election, however, Logan left the
Empire, handing its editorship over to Thomas and William
Hubbard,
70. DJ, October 2,
1863.
71. DE, August 21,
1863, August 24, 1863, September 3, 1863, September 18, 1863.
72. Altogether, Brough
received 288,826 votes, Vallandigham 187,728. Brough polled
247,216 "home
votes," 41,610 soldiers' votes. Vallandigham tallied respectively 185,464
and 2,264 votes.
73. Many historians
have ascribed this telegram to Lincoln, but no one can prove that
he did send it or one
similar to it. For a brief note on the question, see Klement, The
Limits of Dissent, 252; and "Clement L.
Vallandigham," in For the Union.
74. "Henry M.
Brown is Acquitted," DJ, September 11, 1863; "The Trial of Henry
M. Brown for Killing
J. F. Bollmeyer," DJ, September 14, 1863.
75. "Brown
Acquitted," DE, September 11, 1863.
Newspapers in Battle 49 |
|
two brothers who had been publishing a rural newspaper devoted to the Copperhead cause, the Logan County (Ohio) Gazette.76 Though their language lacked the elan of Logan's, they continued the battle with the Journal. And the columns of the Empire and the Journal, as usual, bristled with debate over national policies; conscription, the use of blacks as soldiers, taxes and other questions all were grist for the mills of editorial controversy. In state and local politics, too, the editors discovered and created numerous subjects to dispute. Throughout January of 1864, for instance, they argued caustically over the propri- ety of the appointment of a Copperhead, one Thomas 0. Lowe, to the office of county auditor by county commissioners. The Copperhead's father-in-law was one of the commissioners, and the Journal saw the appointment as a case of flagrant nepotism.77 The Empire dismissed the Journal's charge as trivial and contemptible politics.78 Then the
76. DE, December 21, 1863. In his farewell editorial, Logan adopted the attitude of "I have fought the good fight ..." and urged Copperheads to support the Hubbard brothers. 77. DJ, January 5, 1864. 78. DE, January 6, 1864. |
50 OHIO HISTORY
Journal discerned serious flaws in the character of Lowe,
noting that
he had ridden his father's horse through
the city only a few weeks after
the father's death!79
In March of 1864 violence returned to
the streets of Dayton, and
again the newspapers were closely tied
to it. A disturbance began when
about twenty drunken soldiers of the
Forty-Fourth Ohio Volunteer
Infantry, home on furlough and
supposedly incited by a Journal
editorial condemning Copperheads,
approached the Empire office. Led
by two or three officers, they broke a
window, entered the office, and
destroyed type and anything else they
could lay their hands on.80 Then
they marched to the courthouse, where they
heard an officer deliver a
harangue against the Copperheads. Some
Democrats jeered the speak-
er, and suddenly a wild melee involving
a hundred men or more
erupted. When the smoke had cleared, one
man lay dead and three or
four seriously injured. According to the
Copperheads, the Journal had
countenanced the affair by saying that
the Copperheads had insulted
soldiers' families and had urged men to
resist the draft.81
Through the last year of the war, the Empire
and Journal fought their
war of words over national issues,
notably the presidential election of
1864; but larger concerns lacked the
particularity of local events, and
the journalists increasingly became
ritualized or routinized in their
exchanges, their language rehearsing
themes of partiotism and treason,
of constitutionalism and despotism.82
The struggle between the Empire and
the Journal was indeed
vitriolic. Their editors could never
find a grain of truth in their rivals'
positions. Their commitment to their
values was at once a source of
strength and weakness. Anchoring their
newspapers in idealogical
concrete, they could sustain them in the
face of adversity and reverses;
but they became the rankest of advocates
who allowed little room for
intellectual freedom or detached
judgment for themselves or their
ments for control of the mind and the
spirit. They gave the test to John
Milton's rhetorical question on freedom
of print: ". .. who ever knew
the Truth put to the worse, in a free
and open encounter?"
79. DJ, January 9, 1864.
80. "More Rioting in Dayton,"
DJ, March 4, 1864; Thomas Lowe to William Lowe,
March 6, 1864, in Lowe Collection.
81. DE, March 7, 1864.
82. During the presidential campaign,
the Journal typically assailed the "peace
plank" of the Democratic platform,
the plank that called for a truce between the North
and the South, and asserted that a
McClellan victory would result in a humiliating peace
that somehow would threaten the liberty
of all Northerners. For the Empire, a McClellan
victory would lead to an honorable peace
and a vindication of states' rights.
CARL M. BECKER
Newspapers in Battle: The Dayton
Empire and the Dayton Journal
During the Civil War
Throughout the Civil War, as Union
armies fought and bled,
Northern newspapers opposing and
supporting the Lincoln adminis-
tration engaged in a war of words that
sometimes triggered violence on
the home front. Especially in the Middle
West the Peace Democrats, or
Copperheads as these ultra-conservative
Democrats came to be known,
employed the press for a continuing
assault on Lincoln and his
policies.1 Damning the administration as
a military despotism that had
illegally used coercion to stay
secession and that was suppressing civil
liberties in the guise of patriotism
were editors of such copperhead
organs as the Chicago Times, the
Detroit Free Press and the Indiana-
polis State Sentinel.2 Calling
the Copperheads traitors and defending
the administration were editors of
numerous Republican journals-the
Chicago Tribune, the Cincinnati Commercial
and the Indianapolis
Carl M. Becker is Professor of History
at Wright State University.
1. Because Republicans believed or
wanted voters to believe that the Peace Demo-
crats were traitors, they began early in
the war to label them as Copperheads to denote
snake-like qualities. Copperheads would
sometimes identify themselves as such by
wearing on their lapel an Indian head
cut from a copper penny. Another term used to
describe Copperheads was
"Butternut." More specifically, it referred to poor farmers in
the border states and in the southern
parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois who colored
their outer garments with the brown dye
of the butternut, the fruit of the white walnut
tree, and who were usually Peace
Democrats. For the origin of the use of "Butternut"
and "Copperhead," see Albert
Matthews, "Origin of Butternut and Copperhead,"
Publications of the Colonial Society
of Massachusetts, XX (1918), 205-37.
2. The best account of the activities of
Copperhead editors in the Middle West and of
the Copperhead movement there is Frank
L. Klement, The Copperheads in the Middle
West (Chicago, 1960). Also useful is Frank L. Klement, The
Limits of Dissent: Clement
L. Vallandigham and the Civil War (Lexington, Kentucky, 1970). For studies of
newspapers and journalists during the
Civil War, see Louis Starr, Bohemian Brigade
(New York, 1954); Bernard Weisberger, Reporters
for the Union (Boston, 1953); and
Robert S. Harper, The Ohio Press in
the Civil War (Columbus, 1961). More general
studies worth consulting are Frank L.
Mott, American Journalism (New York, 1950) and
Edwin Emery, The Press and America (Englewood
Cliffs, 1954).