Ohio History Journal

THE MOBBING OF THE CRISIS

by EUGENE H. ROSEBOOM

Professor of History, Ohio State University

On the night of March 5, 1863, in the midst of the Civil

War, the capital city of Ohio was the scene of a species of violence

that had more than local significance. The office of Samuel

Medary's Crisis, a weekly newspaper that had won both national

acclaim and condemnation for its opposition to the war, was

wrecked by a crowd of armed men. Some writers have attributed

the act to soldiers, others to soldiers and civilians; nearly all

explain it as the work of a mob. A bit of contemporary evidence

has come to light which reveals clearly who the participants were

and which raises doubts as to the accuracy of the use of the word

"mob" in describing the attack.

To understand the significance of the episode a few salient

facts about Samuel Medary and the Copperhead movement should

be given first.¹ For many years editor of the state organ of the

Democratic party, the Ohio Statesman, Medary had acquired a

large following and had aroused bitter enmities, even in his own

party. Abandoning journalism for a time in the 1850's, he was

successively governor of Minnesota Territory, postmaster at Co-

lumbus, and governor of Kansas Territory under President

Buchanan. At the outbreak of the Civil War he returned to Co-

lumbus to establish the Crisis, a party newspaper that was bitterly

critical of the Lincoln administration and presently an open advo-

cate of peace. Blaming abolitionism for the war, he urged that

the Black Republicans be defeated at the polls and that the Union

be restored by peaceful negotiation and compromise. His reputa-

tion and his vigorous style of journalism made him a leader of

the middlewestern Copperheads, Public Enemy Number Two, in

the eyes of all good Unionists, as Clement L. Vallandigham rated

first place.

1 For a summary of Medary's life, see the Dictionary of American Biography,

XII, 490-491.

150

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The Mobbing of the Crisis               151

Military arrests of allegedly disloyal editors and the more

illegal destruction of their presses in the years 1862-64 were

practices that became far too common in a nation that had prided

itself on the complete freedom of its press.² The stresses of a

great civil war loosed passions Americans had never felt before,

and the term "Copperhead" became synonymous with "Confed-

erate" to those who believed that the Union could be saved only

by victory on the field of battle. The soldiers in particular were

incensed at the peace advocates. They blamed Copperheadism

for prolonging the war by encouraging the belief in the South

that the North was divided and that an armed uprising might

occur which would bring about the overthrow of the Lincoln

administration and make possible a Confederate victory.

The attack on Medary's paper was apparently the work of

men in uniform who assembled in a blinding snowstorm, broke

into the office of the Crisis, and did a thorough job of destruc-

tion. The men then proceeded up Gay Street to dispose of the

printing press of the Ohio Statesman, where the Crisis was

printed, as Medary had no press, but the arrival of army officers

and police caused the attackers to disperse. Medary was away

at the time, but a large crowd of friends greeted him at the rail-

way station on his return to extend their sympathy and support.

A mass meeting on the following Saturday passed resolutions

condemning the outrage, and newspapers all over the country

expressed disapproval of such acts of violence.

The contemporary newspaper accounts of the affair are not

in entire agreement as to who composed the mob.³ The Ohio State

Journal's version, apparently written by an eyewitness, is in part

as follows:

Sam Medary's editorial rooms in the Crisis building were completely

"cleaned out" by a mob of soldiers last night amounting to two hundred

in number. . . . The gang of soldiers crept softly along on the snow till

they came to the office, which is situated on the corner of High and Gay

 

2 Henry C. Hubbart, The Older Middle West (New York, 1936), 203-206,

discusses attacks on the press.

3 The Crisis, March 11, 1863, not only gives Medary's version of the incident

but includes verbatim accounts from other Columbus papers.

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152 Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

streets. They circled around the door with fixed bayonets and declared

death on the man that interrupted.

The Journal added that there were "but three or four citizens

in the crowd." The Ohio Statesman began its story as follows:

On Thursday night about 10 o'clock, some fifty to seventy-five men,

representing themselves as soldiers from Camp Chase, and armed with

swords, and revolvers, forcibly entered the editor's rooms of The

Crisis and destroyed whatever they could lay their hands on.

The resolutions passed at the Saturday mass meeting de-

scribed the culprits as "a mob of about one hundred persons,

composed of soldiers and citizens disguised as soldiers, armed

with swords and revolvers." Medary supplemented this version

with charges that the Ohio State Journal furnished the rioters

with liquor, that the Journal and the Capital City Fact incited the

attack, and that a secret oath-bound society of Union supporters

was involved, some of them as participants disguised in soldiers'

uniforms.⁴ As to the soldiers themselves, he had this to say:

"The men employed in this work were from the Western Reserve,

John Brown singing masters, some if not all of whom had gradu-

ated in Kansas and Missouri in the 2nd Ohio Cavalry under Col.

Doubleday."

Colonel August V. Kautz, then in command of the 2d Ohio,

and his officers wrote a letter to Medary disclaiming all responsi-

bility for the incident. The colonel admitted his inability to dis-

cover the guilty soldiers but returned four bound volumes of the

Crisis, found at Camp Chase.⁵ No one would admit ownership

or explain how they had arrived at the camp. Medary accepted

his disclaimer and expressed the belief that there were far more

men in soldiers' clothes in the mob than were ever sworn in.

There the matter rested.

The 2d Ohio Cavalry, then stationed at Camp Chase, had

been recruited from the Western Reserve and had seen arduous

service in the trans-Mississippi campaign of 1862 in Missouri,

Kansas, Arkansas, and Indian Territory.⁶ It was being refitted

4 Crisis, March 11, 18, 1863.

5 Letter in the Crisis, March 18, 1863.

6 Whitelaw Reid, Ohio in the War (2 vols., Columbus, 1893), II, 754-761;

Williams & Bro., History of Trumbull and Mahoning Counties (2 vols., Cleveland,

1882), I, 157-161.

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The Mobbing of the Crisis                 153

and reorganized at Camp Chase in the early months of 1863

before being sent to Kentucky for further service. Men from this

regiment were--by strong circumstantial evidence--involved in

the attack on the Crisis.

The quotation from an unpublished letter which concludes

this account verifies Medary's suspicions as to the identity of

the regiment but nowhere suggests that any members of a secret

order of Unionists or any civilians participated. Nor were the

soldiers incited by the Ohio State Journal's liquor. The attack

was planned, organized, and carried out in as orderly a manner

as a lawless act could be. It illustrates the bitter feelings of the

soldiers toward the Copperheads and the simple, direct-and

dangerous--logic of the man in uniform: "It was a secesh paper

. . . and as such should be put down."

Private Samuel C. Trescott, Co. C, 2d Ohio Volunteer

Cavalry, wrote a number of letters to a cousin, Miss Cordelia

Miller of Braceville, Trumbull County, during the years 1861-63.

One dated March 6 but postmarked March 10 and written from

Camp Chase, discusses, among other things, the attack upon the

office of the Crisis. The significant part is as follows, with spelling

and punctuation unchanged:

The other night about 100 of the 2nd 0. went down to Columbus

and destroyed a secesh printing office, one of the worse kind. Now the

Columbus people some of them are trying to kick up a fuss and find out

who it was. They have told a good many lies about [it] in some of the

secesh papers. Now the truth is 100 of the boys went down armed with

revolvers and sabres they went down in order did not drink a drop of

liquor went straite to the office smashed it up and come back home [to

Camp Chase] without noise they expected to have a fight and were ready

for it. they call it a mob but there was nothing like a mob about it.

It was a secesh paper and aided the rebels and as such should be put

down. the secesh have called a meeting to fight the next time such a

thing happens if they had have tried it the other night they would have

been whip but they never said a word, You may asked how I knew so

much about it, I was near enough to see some of it at least but [it] does

not do to say so here.7

 

7 I am indebted to Mr. Morrell A. Miller of Columbus, a former graduate stu-

dent in history at Ohio State University, for permission to use the above unpublished

letter. It is one of a number of Trescott letters in the possession of his family.

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