Ohio History Journal


    PICTURE OF A YOUNG

    COPPERHEAD

    by CARL M. BECKER

    As he pursued his contentious course during the Civil War, the great

    Copperhead, Clement Laird Vallandigham, drew around himself in Dayton,

    Ohio, a circle of political supporters and personal admirers. Local politicians

    and newspaper editors followed in his wake, and nameless men identified

    themselves as votaries of "Val." These supporters often embraced Copper-

    headism out of conviction, but no doubt the strength and firmness of their

    faith were tinctured by the magnetic appeal of Vallandigham. Among the

    youngest of these faithful was Thomas Owen Lowe, whose Copperhead

    beliefs, though owing nothing in their origin to Vallandigham, found their

    fruition in the Vallandigham light. Well-known among the Vallandigham

    coterie and one of its most persistent spokesmen in Dayton, Lowe has re-

    ceived little attention from scholars. Yet, in many respects, his words and

    deeds reveal in detail a Copperhead in a typically aggressive posture.

    Born in 1838 in Batavia, the county seat of Clermont County, Ohio,

    young Lowe on the eve of the Civil War had already felt in some degree

    the way of the world. His father, John William Lowe, had come to Batavia

    in 1833 from New Jersey.1 After studying law in the office of the eminent

    congressman Thomas Hamer, he opened his own office; his clients were few,

    though he could boast a relationship with one of the county's leading at-

    torneys, Owen T. Fishback,2 whose daughter, Manorah, Lowe married in

    NOTES ARE ON PAGES 76-78