Ohio History Journal

4                                                    OHIO HISTORY

1837. Shortly after the Mexican War began, at the personal request of

Ulysses S. Grant, who was then a lieutenant with the army at Matamoras

and whom Lowe had known well before his appointment to West Point in

1839,3 the lawyer took a captain's commission with the Second Ohio In-

fantry, left his family, and sailed for Mexico. There his service was honor-

able but routine, and, on his return to Batavia within a year after his

departure, he again took up his legal practice.

Looking to the intellectual nourishment of his son, he sent the lad to

Farmers' College near Cincinnati in 1851. Then in its heydey but only

ostensibly an agricultural college, Farmers', through its emphasis on student

debates on all manner of moral and political issues, formalized in the youth

the spirit of controversy he had first acquired at home.⁴ Compensating for

a constant round of schoolboy pranks and social activities with some intense

study of Livy and other ancients, the lad achieved a good academic record

but left the college in 1854 without a diploma because of his father's

financial stringency.5

In the meantime, his father had moved to Dayton, where the son joined

him after a brief stay in Cincinnati, but he soon hastened to Nashville,

Tennessee, to take employment as a clerk with the W. B. Shepherd banking

firm. Remaining but a few months in Nashville, he next went to Lebanon,

Tennessee, again accepting a position as a bank clerk, this time with the

Bank of Middle Tennessee.⁶ The callow, impulsive youth spent about two

years in Nashville and Lebanon, moving all the while in a rough patrician

society, and when he returned to Dayton in 1857 his social and political

notions had gravitated, not surprisingly, to southern ideals: he admired

the stratified class structure he discerned in Tennessee, believed that slavery

was socially and morally justified, and asserted that the South was becoming

a political lackey of the North.⁷

In the years immediately following his return to Dayton, Tom had little

occasion to reveal his southern complex. He was employed as a cashier

with the banking firm of Harshman and Winters and was preparing himself

for the legal profession, gaining admission to the bar in 1859. In late

1857 he married Martha Harshman, a daughter of Jonathan Harshman,

one of the proprietors of Harshman and Winters. Not until the presidential

election of 1860 did he broach his southern beliefs. In that election he

actively supported John Bell and Edward Everett, the Constitutional Union

candidates. In a speech never delivered but committed to his journal under

the title, "A Political Speech for John Bell and Edward Everett," Tom re-

counted his hostility to the commercial spirit of the North and its bondage

of the factory worker, justified slavery by appeals to the Bible, rejected

6                                                   OHIO HISTORY

istration should be rejected by the voters, and feared that a northern mili-

tary success would mean the destruction of states' rights and the beginning

of a military despotism.¹⁰

That Tom was gravitating toward Vallandigham early in the war is evi-

denced by his correspondence with "Johnnie" Wallace, a resident of Nash-

ville who had once lived in Dayton. In the summer of 1861 Wallace wrote

to Tom requesting a vignette of Vallandigham, and Tom readily responded.

Though there was much in Vallandigham that he disliked, Tom wrote, he

admired him for his perseverance in his course despite the daily persecu-

tion he faced in Dayton at the hands of the fanatical Republicans.11 Though

one could hardly in safety speak a word in his defense in Dayton, the

cowards there never molested "Val" himself because of the power of his

brave soul, before which they melted away. When Tom had asked him how

he could tolerate abuse, Vallandigham answered that he could not help his

convictions and thus deserved no more praise or blame for his political

beliefs than he did for living. As to his political future, Vallandigham had

no qualms. If the Union was restored by compromise, as he hoped it would

be, millions in the South would not forget him; and if it was dissolved in

the wake of internecine strife, the North would say that Vallandigham was

not far from wrong in arguing that northern coercion was futile.12

In addition to delineating the Vallandigham personality, Tom gave his

own thoughts on the coercive war to preserve the Union and on the means

for ending hostilities. "I am," he told Wallace, "in favor of preserving

the Union, if it can be done. If it can't then I am in favor of the next best

thing, and in my opinion war is not the second[,] third or thousandth best

thing."13 But his means to peace were war-like: "If our folks can only

whip yours in the next great battle then I will look for peace and a recogni-

tion of the Southern Confederacy. To stop now, would fill your gasconading

fire-eaters so full of vanity and contempt for Northern prowess, that an-

other war would begin in a very short time to make them respect us suf-

ficiently to let us live along side them in peace."14

To his younger brother Will, a lieutenant with the Nineteenth United

States Infantry, a unit in Brigadier General Lowell H. Rousseau's First

Brigade of the Army of the Ohio, Tom also expressed the need for a battle-

field victory as a guarantee of peace: "With all my hatred for Yankees and

Abolitionists, I can't say I would like the war to end until Bull Run is

'wiped out.' We must whip the Southerners now, or we won't be able to

live on the same continent with them when we do conclude to make peace."15

He insisted that the only justifiable object of coercion was the restoration

of the Union as it was before the war, when North and South were united

A YOUNG COPPERHEAD                                              7

in hearts and hands; but such an object could never be realized, argued

Tom, by force of arms. The means could not be subordinate to the ends.

Thus, though he believed the South to be constitutionally wrong in secession,

he was willing to end the war by recognizing southern independence.¹6

His letters to Will, written regularly throughout the war, were filled with

Copperhead ideas and activities. Though seldom evoking his brother's

sympathy, Tom persisted in presenting his point of view to him.

It was also not long before he turned on the abolitionists. He found his

man in Dr. Thomas E. Thomas, the minister of the First Presbyterian

Church, where Tom was an active member. Thomas had a long record of

abolitionism and unceasingly had urged his anti-slavery views on his con-

gregation. Incensed by his minister's use of the pulpit, Tom sought his

removal on the ground that he prayed that "this war may never cease until

this iniquity (slavery) is destroyed."17 "Whenever you preach aboli-

tionism," he wrote Thomas, "you give me the greatest pain."18 Since the

constitution did not forbid slavery, the clergyman was in opposition to the

law of the land just as the secessionist was, argued Tom, and hence his

religious labors could not be blessed of God any longer. The deacons of

the church did not agree with Tom, and Dr. Thomas continued his labors,

whether blessed or not.

But complaints against an abolitionist minister and counsels for a soldier-

brother could hardly satisfy a young man on the political make. The bank-

ing business being dull, Tom determined on the career his father had wanted

for him.¹⁹ Declaring the legal practice to be his predestined profession,

Tom rented an office, began to read his Blackstone again, and waited for

clients to rush to him. Either because his practice flourished or because it

languished, he now found time to enter the political arena.

Dayton offered ample opportunities to politicians to exhibit their abilities.

Throughout the war, relations there between the Copperheads and the Union

party, a fusion of War Democrats and Republicans, remained at fever

pitch.²⁰ Generally, the Copperheads controlled the local offices, but elections

were spirited and close, sometimes degenerating into physical combat be-

tween rival partisans. The two major newspapers, the Dayton Daily Empire,

a Copperhead organ, and the Dayton Daily Journal, a Republican champion,

battled each other without respite, each finding in trivial incidents evidence

of the perfidy of its opponent.

Officially entering the Democratic party in June 1862, Tom addressed

the party's county convention the same month, and that conclave then

elected him its secretary and a delegate to the coming state convention.21

The Journal was not severely critical of Tom's maiden speech, as was its

8                                                    OHIO HISTORY

custom with Copperheads, noting that his sophomoric style was "compli-

mented by his new political friends."22 Not one to hide his light, Tom

agreed with the Journal, believing, too, that the speech met with the ap-

proval of party leaders. In it he took a position of never-ending warfare

against secessionists and abolitionists, with the army's duty to put down

the former, the Copperheads' the latter.²³ It was the familiar Copperhead

cry, "Bullets for Secesh South, ballots for abolitionists North." A few days

after the county session, he attended the Democratic state convention, which

was dominated by Vallandigham and other Copperheads. Its platform, a

copy of which Tom sent to Will, denounced the abolitionists as a disruptive

force that hindered the war effort through their defamation of Union gen-

erals and attacks on whatever conservative policies Lincoln proposed: it at-

tacked the various congressional projects for confiscation and emancipa-

tion of slaves as feeding the spirit of rebellion in the South; and it gave

particular attention to alleged violations of constitutional rights by the

administration, having in mind the recent arrest and confinement without

trial of a number of Ohio citizens who were charged with encouraging

resistance to the draft.²⁴ With these words at hand, Tom stood ready to lend

his oratorical aid in the fall campaign in Ohio for state and congressional

offices. One candidate for Tom's third congressional district was the in-

cumbent, Vallandigham; his opponent was Brigadier General Robert C.

Schenck.

In the meantime, supported financially by his father-in-law, Tom secured

a $20,000 government contract for supplying horses to the army.²⁵ "This

is one way," he wrote to Will, "I have exhibited my patriotism." And his

political critics might have said the only way. For he snapped up an offer

of one Henry Keller to enroll as his substitute for the draft which was

threatened if Ohio did not meet its quota of volunteers. He offered Will a

justification for his civilian status: "So far . . . I am the only 'Democrat' . . .

to shirk from his duty to his country. I hold any man excusable who has

given his Father and only brother and has Mother, Sister, wife & child

depending on him as I have, but the majority of these cowardly republican

skunks have no better pretext than that their business will suffer if they

leave it."26 Yet a few weeks later he was seeking an appointment as a

major or quartermaster with a new regiment being raised in Dayton, finally

rejecting an offer of a sergeant-major's stripes.²⁷ It was quite important,

he remarked, that he remain in Dayton to help maintain the Copperhead

party organization in order to curb the excesses of the administration.

In August 1862 Tom began a flurry of speeches on behalf of the

Peace Democracy and Vallandigham. Coming under his lash as the

A YOUNG COPPERHEAD                                                9

wicked agitators who caused and prolonged the war were, of course, the

abolitionists. Although the South was guilty of rising against a just, bene-

ficent government, the abolitionists, charged Tom, had prepared minds in

the North for a fanatical war against slavery, an institution sanctioned by

the Bible, and had driven the southern states from the Union for fear of

deprivation of their citizens' property by a party, president, and reorganized

supreme court dominated by abolitionists.²⁸ After precipitating the war,

the abolitionists had divided the North and strengthened the spirit of the

South by trying to use the struggle as a crusade for the freedom of the

Negro rather than for the preservation of the Union; indeed congress was

more concerned, lamented Tom, with bills to confiscate and emancipate

than it was with tax measures to prosecute the war. Even the purpose of

preservation was senseless, though, as a union of hearts and hands could

not be achieved by coercion.²⁹

Summoning the lessons of history, Tom indicted the abolitionists as the

modern-day Jacobins in their suppression of constitutional rights. The

Lincoln administration had arrested men without warrants, imprisoned

them without examination, and suspended the writ of habeas corpus on

the ground that military necessity knew no law--a theory that would justify

the damnable acts of Charles I, Louis XVI, and Philip II. It had become

a crime, he insisted, to remain reasonable; all opposition was now curbed

by the latter-day Jacobins, whose prototypes at least listed the acts for which

the people could be arrested.30 If anyone doubted the validity of this esti-

mate, said Tom, let him simply write to the nation's capital alleging that

Lowe had uttered treasonable sentiments; then would Lowe be swept away

without trial to be punished only because he was a Copperhead. Merely to

identify one's self as a Copperhead was to risk "durance vile."

As for securing peace, it was both necessary and possible. Internecine war

could not restore the blessed union of hearts and hands, and it would be

better to recognize the independence of the South than to hold her by bayo-

nets. War for the purpose of emancipation was palpably contrary to all

law. It was ridiculous, too, considering the strength of the North, for the

North to fear future aggression by an unpunished and unrepentant South.

Thus, since there was no justifiable object for which the war was being

fought, the Copperheads could not cooperate with the Lincoln administration.

What kind of peace program could the Copperheads offer? In one speech.

"Peace," Tom proposed an immediate cessation of hostilities followed by

a negotiated peace.31 In another, he said the war must be continued but not

hopelessly and only to the point where the South would see the impossibility

of winning independence and the desirability of union.³² Once a cessation

10                                                  OHIO HISTORY

of hostilities was effected, congress should call a national convention, where

the peace men of North and South might come to an agreement similar to the

Crittenden compromise.³³ Restoration of the Union as a first condition for

settlement of North-South differences had no place in his plan. If the peace

men used Crittenden's proposals as a guide in their deliberations, the South

would be reconciled, the Union would be preserved as the founding fathers

fashioned it, and the constitution would become, once again, the law of the

land. These counsels of perfection could be realized, so Tom believed, only

through the election of Copperheads to congress, and they had no more

valiant man than Vallandigham. Through the ballot the peace elements in

both sections could unite to suppress abolitionists and fire-eaters wherever

they might be!

In addition to making political speeches in the campaign of 1862, Tom

engaged in a public controversy involving the Empire, the Clermont Sun, and

the Clermont Courier. Angered by an uncle--perhaps either John or William

Fishback, sons of Owen Fishback--who had evidently questioned the sin-

cerity of his political views in some public way, Tom retaliated with a

communication to the Empire entitled "An Apostate's Vindication" and

signed "Nephew."³⁴ Denying his ability to change his convictions, Tom

reiterated his contention that slavery was not an evil warranting suppressive

legislative measures and that war could not achieve substantive restoration

of the Union. In response to the uncle's implication that he was willing to

see the nation rent in two, Tom could argue that the government had the

right to meet secession with arms. Did he not have as much interest in

preserving the Union as did his uncle? After all, he had lost one near and

dear in its defense. The Clermont Sun, a Democratic organ in Batavia, re-

printed the article,³⁵ and the opposition newspaper, the Clermont Courier,

rebutted Tom's arguments and barbed him with the accusation of having

thrust private griefs on the community.³⁶ In his retort to the Courier, Tom

denied this imputation, asserting that his original letter to the Empire was

published anonymously, thus making the private grief criticism unjust.³⁷

Tom also labored throughout the controversy to demonstrate his independ-

ence of Vallandigham. Vallandigham's opinions on the ethical aspects of

slavery were unknown to him, he insisted, as he cited his inbred slavery

views.

Even Tom's brothers in religion became disturbed by his activities,

particularly because he openly played host to the former pastor of the First

Presbyterian Church in Dayton, James Brooks of St. Louis. Some suspected

his association with this pro-southerner was evidence of a conspiracy to

furnish information to the Confederacy. One member, "Old Charlie Pat-

A YOUNG COPPERHEAD                                              11

terson," he wrote Will, "grieved over me . . . and he said he 'could not

understand how a man could be a Democrat and pray!' Bless his fanatical

old soul!"38

Despite Tom's efforts for Vallandigham from the stump and in the news-

papers and despite Democratic successes on the state ticket and in fourteen

of nineteen congressional districts, Vallandigham lost his seat to Schenck, a

Republican-contrived gerrymander contributing largely to his defeat.

With the fall elections of 1862 over, the spirit of bitter political con-

troversy between Republicans and Copperheads in Dayton did not subside.

Shortly after the election, J. F. Bollmeyer, co-editor of the Empire, was

shot down by one Henry Brown, a Republican. The Journal regarded the

murder as simply a personal affair,³⁹ while Tom expressed the Empire's

view with the accusation that the Republicans had contributed to the act by

constantly labeling Bollmeyer a traitor whose existence in the community

could not be tolerated.⁴⁰ For Tom, this barbarous killing was the "first

dropping of a coming storm which will destroy every vestige of our

freedom."

Tom's fears did not deter him in his support of Vallandigham and the

Peace Democracy. Representing a group of young ladies at a "Butternut"

party in late November 1862, he presented Vallandigham with a gold-headed

cane. At the ceremony Tom praised the great man as a model for men who

wished to find an honorable way to end the war and as a statesman whose

principles time would surely vindicate.⁴¹

Political animosities spilled into social intercourse and into the public

schools. According to Tom, the Republicans had adopted a ridiculous atti-

tude of social proscription against Copperheads in their "you shan't slide

on our cellar door anymore" posture.42 Rows broke out in the high school

among young bucks wearing the badge of the Union League and those wear-

ing butternut charms. Finally, to restore peace, the display of all badges

in the high school was forbidden.⁴3

All the while, Tom continued to justify his position to his brother Will

and to communicate Copperhead views to the local newspapers. Obviously

under less restraint in his correspondence with Will than in his political

speeches, Tom urged him to resign from the objectless slaughter.⁴⁴ He por-

trayed the administration as an engine of persecution dedicated to the extir-

pation of political opposition in the North, citing as evidence the arrest and

confinement of Copperheads without trial and the suspension of the habeas

corpus privilege by the administration. Civil insurrection eventually had to

result from such suppression, predicted Tom. Even now, Dayton, reflecting

the spirit of persecution, had become a "Natchez under the hill," full of

12                                                  OHIO HISTORY

murder, contemptuous of the law, and oblivious to the rights of the majority

party there, the Copperheads.⁴⁵ The destruction of Samuel Medary's news-

paper in Columbus by a mob of Republicans was a portent of things to come

in Dayton. But Republican outrages in Dayton would be met, Tom warned,

by an uprising of Copperheads in defense of their constitutional rights. If

he believed that the rulers in Washington wished to establish a monarchy

with the help of the army, as some said, he would urge the people to "rise

now, while they are busy with the rebels."46 The army, he admonished his

brother, must obey only lawful orders of the president; otherwise it would

be as much an enemy of the constitution as Jefferson Davis.

If Tom doubted the truth of his own observations, association with leading

Copperheads convinced him that the beginning of a ruthless despotism was

imminent. At a meeting of the Peace Democracy in Hamilton, attended by

Vallandigham, Daniel W. Voorhees, and George H. Pendleton, among

others, he heard fears expressed about the loss of free speech and the ballot

box to critics of the administration.⁴⁷

The offenses of the Republicans were so heinous, feared Tom, that they

could not permit the Copperheads to control the national administration lest

the Copperheads would then try the Republicans in the courts for their un-

constitutional actions. "I expect them therefore to say this fall as their

political associations are saying now . . . that no man who is not an

unconditional supporter of the Administration will be permitted to be a

candidate anywhere in the North." Even now, Tom reported, the Republicans

were inciting mob violence against Jeffersonian newspapers in Dayton and

throughout the nation in order to induce the army to put down men whose

only crime was the refusal to submit to enslavement. Raging at a state of

affairs in which the minority party of 1862 denounced the majority party

of 1862 as traitors, Tom insisted on the right of Copperheads to stand on

their constitutional guarantees. If in order to suppress a rebellion, the ad-

ministration had to destroy human freedoms, wrote Tom to the Empire, then

let that rebellion succeed before another one erupted. Was the southern

rebellion so easily quelled that the Republicans desired a civil cataclysm in

New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Kentucky,

and Maryland?48

The month of May saw Tom's fears of suppression of the Copperheads

and attendant civil revolt nearly realized in Dayton. There, on May 5, in

the wake of Burnside's celebrated dead-of-night arrest of Vallandigham, a

wave of mob rioting erupted, in which Vallandigham supporters put the

Journal building to the torch. Vallandigham felt the military hand because

he had in a speech delivered at Mt. Vernon a few days earlier flouted Burn-

14                                                  OHIO HISTORY

next day, martial law having been declared, a number of rioters and the

editor of the Empire were arrested by the army. Tom found himself in

danger of arrest, too, but was not alarmed because, so he assured Will, he

had done nothing wrong. He did admit that the Republicans were denounc-

ing him as an instigator of the rioters; but he believed they singled him out

for attack because of the absence of other party leaders, who had gone to

see Vallandigham in Cincinnati, where he lay in jail.

Perhaps there was more truth than imagination and puffing in Tom's

belief that he was of sufficient prominence in his party to merit Republican

strictures. For he was the only Copperhead to explain publicly and promptly

his personal and his party's views on the rioting. On May 7 the Journal

published a communication by Tom entitled "Democracy, not Mobocracy."53

Avowing his party preference and insisting on the need for political parties

in both peacetime and wartime, he stated his beliefs about civil uprisings:

When the people are crushed by despotism and have no other means by

which to secure their just rights, they have a right--nay, a duty--to revolt;

but the present circumstances did not justify revolution, although many cruel

and arbitrary acts had been perpetrated by the administration against its

opposition. The great remedy of the ballot box remained, said Tom, and as

long as that protection against enslavement existed, an appeal to arms was

a crime against God and humanity. He further told his fellow Copperheads

that mobs meant military despotism, as he eschewed any personal or party

approval of the recent mob action. W. D. Bickham, the caustic editor of the

Journal, had permitted the use of his columns by Tom only because publi-

cation of the Empire had been suspended by the military authorities. Now

he curtly dismissed his article as an "eleventh hour" repentance which did

not renounce his connection with a party that was hostile to the government.

Why denounce mob rule when it is a logical consequence of the teaching of

resistance? asked Bickham.⁵⁴

Tom wrote the article at the behest of Colonel Charles Anderson,55 who

said it would demonstrate to the Republicans that the sober men of the

Peace Democracy disapproved of civil riot and would show Copperheads

who wanted further incendiary action that party leaders could not sanction

it. But the Republicans still charged Tom with inciting the mob. And some

Copperheads now criticized him for denouncing mobs but for whose presence

all prominent Democrats in Dayton would have been arrested, while others

said he deserved his present embarrassment for having communicated with

the hated Journal.56 Perhaps Tom agreed that the article was a political error

on his part, for one may see in his scrapbook above a copy of the article a

penciled notation in his handwriting saying, "great blunder."

A YOUNG COPPERHEAD                                              15

The next day one contributor to the Journal accused Tom of justifying

southern secession and countenancing and perhaps instigating the Dayton

eruption. This attack had to elicit another contribution from Tom to the

Journal.⁵⁷ Denying the right of secession to the South, he went on to record

his activities on the day of violence. He said that he had been with his sick

wife during the afternoon and evening of that day. Far from giving his

approbation to the rioters, he would have appealed to them for forbearance

had he known their purpose. In his letter to Will describing his movements,

Tom did not mention his wife's sickness calling him home from the office;

rather he suggested that he was ensconced in his office during much of the

day. His declarations did not satisfy Journal readers. One of its contribu-

tors, in an article entitled "Coal on the Turtle's Back," ridiculed Tom's claim

that he did not know the intent of the rioters, alleging that they had been at

Tom's door all day and had been supplied with liquor from the house ad-

joining Tom's.⁵⁸ A woman's word was the last heard on the matter. Writing

to the Journal, an unidentified woman saw no reason to question Tom's

actions and sincerity of opinion on mobocracy and recommended no further

comment on the issue because she believed it gave him the notoriety which

he desired.⁵⁹

Not only was Tom under attack in Dayton. Now his brother, who usually

did not question his political beliefs but who was deeply disturbed by events

in Dayton, suggested to Tom that his political opinions were formed in

prejudice and by association with persuasive politicians. To this, Tom re-

plied with a virtual political credo. His convictions, he assured Will, could

not be removed as easily as his hat or coat, as Will implied in his advice to

him to "set up" as a "loyal man."60 Never could his motto be ad captandum

vulgus. If he did arrange his opinions to suit the crowd, he must "denounce

Vallandigham as a disunionist and a traitor. He is neither, as I believe in

my heart." The test for a so-called loyal man was repugnant to Tom. By it

he must hold the South wholly accountable for starting the war, when actually

it was only partially responsible. He must support the emancipation meas-

ures of the administration under the assumption that failure to do so was a

contributing factor behind southern military successes! He must help save

the Union by a quiet acquiescence in the arbitrary arrests of men who were

devoted to the Union and constitutional liberties. He must help muzzle a

party that would rebel rather than give up its duty to the country. He could

not in good conscience meet any of the requirements of this loyalty test.

For Will's edification and as proof that his views on arbitrary rule were

not based on mere political association, Tom called in the lessons of history,

citing De Tocqueville, Henry, and Lieber as men who feared absolute power

16                                                   OHIO HISTORY

wielded by any ruler during time of war. He had learned much from his

studies: "Altho all history and every writer on the Science of gov't tells me,

that a nation's liberties are always in danger, especially in time of war, that

'eternal vigilance is the price of liberty' still to be 'loyal,' I must disregard

all this & the portents of the times and say it is nonsense and criminal folly

to talk so now." Among other portents of the times, Tom dwelt, as was his

wont, on the belief that Lincoln intended to use the army as an instrument

to secure personal despotic power. Using the army, which did not under-

stand the popularity of Vallandigham with the people because it read only

Republican literature, the administration stood ready to suppress Vallandig-

ham and his supporters by force. If Lincoln should decide, as he might, to

put down all Copperhead candidates in the 1863 elections, the army would

quickly come at his call to perform his evil work. The Copperheads could

submit even to this outrage without resistance, if there was any reason to

believe that a republican government could be erected on the ruins of war.

But the Republicans were consumed in their vision of power, and if the Cop-

perheads threatened to win control of the government by the ballot after the

war, Lincoln would send the army to crush them, saying that they wished to

try the Republicans for high treason and other constitutional violations;

the army, accepting without question the abolitionist contention that the

Copperheads were enemies who would destroy the army once in power,

would fly to obey.

Whatever his political beliefs, Tom insisted that his was no intent to dis-

courage his brother's support of the war. Will must help thrash the rebels

for their part in starting the war. If the Copperheads should resist con-

scription by force, Will should shoot them down, too. But if the people rose

in defense of liberty and the purity of the ballot, he must not "draw . . .

[his] sword against them." For they would have truth and God on their

side. Having bared his political soul, Tom beseeched Will to defend his

memory should he fall in defense of civil liberty.

The events of May gave rise to a new adventure for Tom. His idol,

Vallandigham, was in exile in Dixie. His party organ, the Empire, having

been suppressed, could no longer publish his communications. His passion

for debate was curbed by martial law. His own arbitrary arrest by the

administration seemed possible. And his "mobocracy" letter had diminished

him in the eyes of fellow Copperheads. A few days after the rioting, feeling

much insecurity and apprehension for the future, he began to consider

sheltering his family and himself from danger by removing the household

to Europe.⁶¹ By late May he had nearly resolved to make the journey; the

idea of taking his wife and two children, though, had been abandoned be-

A YOUNG COPPERHEAD                                               17

cause the children were too young for the rigors of ocean travel.⁶² Now

Tom's brother-in-law, George Harshman, a teen-aged boy who evidently was

an epileptic, was to accompany him. George's health was the professed

reason for the journey; not unimportant, Tom believed, were the bene-

fits a European tour would confer upon both travelers. Martha consented to

the separation because it would remove Tom from politics and would enable

him to escape the draft. She reconciled herself to his departure with the

thought that he could not take part in the approaching political campaign in

Ohio--not that she was opposed to his politics, she said, but because he

would face personal danger if he took to the stump.⁶³

Tom must have felt compelling reasons for the journey, for by it he re-

nounced an opportunity to run for the state legislature in the fall.⁶⁴ He

also missed one of the great political campaigns of American history--the

gubernatorial race between Vallandigham and John Brough. Convinced of

the rightness of Copperhead opposition to administration restrictions of

freedom of speech and press, Tom left Ohio certain that such opposition

would be vindicated by Vallandigham's election in the fall, a grand triumph

to be secured by 100,000 Buckeyes ready to escort him by force from

Canada to Columbus for his inauguration.65 Vallandigham, campaigning

from Canada, polled an impressive vote but lost by 100,000 votes to Brough,

whose victory prompted Lincoln to telegraph, "Glory to God in the Highest.

Ohio has saved the Union."

Awaiting departure from Boston in mid-June, Tom found proof there of

the grubbing commercial spirit of New England Yankees. A tour of this

foul nest of abolitionism revealed the disposal of nearly all of Bunker Hill

for building lots and a sign on a clothing store near Faneuil Hall bearing the

inscription, "One country, one flag, one price for clothing here."⁶⁶ And how

these Yankees had perverted the spirit of liberty by incarcerating at Fort

Warren men whose only crime was acting as free men did in 1776.

Leaving Boston in June, Tom toured England, Scotland, France, Germany,

Switzerland, and Italy. He kept the home community apprised of his move-

ments by dispatching almost daily travel accounts to the Empire, from which

he somehow was able to exclude the sound of controversy. His letters to his

wife were less placid. After she wrote to him of the impracticability of her

and the children's joining him in Europe, Tom evidently proposed to remain

in Europe indefinitely. For in a letter filled with whimsical pathos, Martha

assented to his request to "stay" in Europe if he really felt it impossible

to live in the North because of his bitter feelings against the Lincoln ad-

ministration.⁶⁷ If he returned to Dayton, she feared that he would be killed

in civil strife there, and if he lingered in Europe, she feared that he might

18                                                   OHIO HISTORY

be trapped there by a war between the United States and France. She became

so confused and bewildered by his request that she sat on her chair and cried

while her baby screamed and kicked in her lap. Perhaps the European

atmosphere was more receptive to Tom's conservative beliefs than the air

of Dayton; perhaps the Old World respect for social station appealed to him.

At least in England he could hear his views on the Civil War endorsed. Visit-

ing a Charlie Sherbon of Broughton, who "had a delightful painting in his

water-closet," Tom listened to attacks on the Lincoln administration on the

score that its war acts had lost the respect gained abroad by Democratic ad-

ministrations.68

From Dayton, Tom received a steady stream of reports that must have

stirred his vivid imagination: the rebel Morgan exercising the Dayton citi-

zenry with a foray near Hamilton; furloughed soldiers throwing stones at

women returning home from a Democratic picnic; the unpopularity of him

and Martha in Dayton; and Martha's finding "Val's" wife agitated because

she had not received a letter from her husband.⁶⁹ Then there were discus-

sions at home on Tom's political future--discussions candidly reported to

him. Will, at home on furlough, believed his brother's political career ended,

asserting that the Republicans would never have anything to do with him

and that the Democrats would say that he forsook them in their hour of trial,

for which Martha was glad.⁷⁰ If Tom felt that his duty was to adhere to the

Democrats in Dayton, he should have remained with them, commented his

mother, who was certain, however, that his disenchantment with them was

his reason for leaving Dayton. Martha told her, "I thought not."

Although Tom expected to be in Europe for six months and even spoke of

living there indefinitely, he returned to Dayton in October, shortly after the

defeat of Vallandigham and the Peace Democracy in Ohio. Avowing his

intent to be done with politics, he proposed to live quietly and keep out of

the "clutches of Mr. Lincoln."71 He disliked living at the pleasure of men,

rather than under the constitution, but the people had decided to vote in

favor of war and the way in which it was conducted. "The case went to the

jury," he admitted, "& they have rendered their verdict and I am not dis-

posed to move for a new trial."⁷² Still he would be an Ishmael: "Until I can

leave the country with my wife and children forever, I propose to padlock

my lips and submit."73

He did not leave the country again, but he did manage for a few months

to bridle his political temper. In the meantime, he contented himself with

instructing Will as to the manner in which to use the family friendship with

Grant as a means of procuring a place on his staff. By January 1864, how-

ever, he was again demonstrating his ability to appear at storm center.

A YOUNG COPPERHEAD                                              19

Evidently holding no resentment against him for flying to Europe, the Peace

Democrats came to Tom asking permission to put his name before the county

commissioners as a candidate for a vacancy in the auditor's office created by

the death of the incumbent.74 That the party might have had its eye on an

office that could be delivered by Tom's father-in-law, Jonathan Harshman,

who was one of the commissioners, rather than on Tom, seemed to escape

him. He received the appointment, and immediately cries of nepotism arose

from the Journal. Besides the flagrant nepotism it saw, the Journal lamented

that Tom was a disciple of Vallandigham and a member in good standing of

the Copperhead peace party.⁷⁵ Then the Empire took up Tom's cause in a

typically acid attack on the Journal.76 The Journal in turn made a brutal

assault on Tom's character, enumerating manifold examples of his corrupt

nature. His most execrable act--a brazen affront to the community and his

father's memory--was that he had ridden his father's horse through the

streets of Dayton but a few weeks after the colonel's death.77 Tom should

resign, insisted the Journal, but he refused and soon the row subsided.

In the next few months Tom devoted himself largely to his newly acquired

office, though he continued interpreting and justifying Copperhead policies

to his brother, who was still with the army in the South. For Will he labored

over paragraph after paragraph to prove that the Republicans used the

soldiers against the Copperheads. These pandering Republicans were not

satisfied with spreading lies against Copperheads to secure soldiers' votes:

they also plied furloughed soldiers with whiskey to induce them to perpetrate

brutal outrages on peaceful Copperheads. He cited as proof of his assertion

the assault on the Empire office in March 1864 by drunken men of the

Forty-Fourth Ohio Infantry.⁷⁸

Tom also presented a number of opinions to Will on the policy the Demo-

cratic party should follow in the presidential campaign of 1864. He still

believed in the inefficacy of a coercive war for the preservation of the Union;

military success, such as the North was now enjoying, would only make the

attainment of a union of hearts more difficult. To attain that kind of union

Tom proposed several courses for the Democrats to follow in the contest

for the presidency. First, Grant was the man to achieve peace; he would

accept the Democratic presidential nomination on a platform of opposition

to rebellion, but would, if elected, reject predatory abolitionist programs.79

Next, Tom fixed his eye on McClellan as the Democratic standard-bearer; he,

too, would prosecute the war, if necessary, while checking abolitionism.

Though the Kentucky-Virginia resolutionists within the Peace Democracy

would object to a man who might continue the war--since they uncompro-

misingly argued that no human authority could force the states to obey

20                                                     OHIO HISTORY

unconstitutional laws--Tom thought the time for compromise was at hand if

the Democrats wished to win the election. McClellan as a Democratic presi-

dent could offer peace terms to the South; and the South would readily return

to the Union if it could occupy a position of equality in a confederacy and

retain its social institutions as before.80

June saw Tom making predictions before Democrats as to the role Val-

landigham would take in the national convention. Supposedly in Cleveland

on business, he received an unexpected invitation--so the Empire reported--

to address the Democratic district convention in session there.⁸¹ The Cleve-

land Morning Herald, however, deriding Tom, suggested that he had come

particularly to speak for Vallandigham:

Dating conviction back to the beginning of the war, we have believed

Vallandigham to be a traitor, but far from a fool. Yet should he not withdraw

from the field his nuncio, Low, who appeared before the Democratic District

Convention in this city and spoke for his principal, we shall be forced to the

opinion that martyrdom has made Vallandigham daft.⁸²

According to the Herald, Tom indicated that Vallandigham, desiring party

unity and resolved not to press his personal views on the national convention,

would not object to a convention resolution denouncing rebellion, but would

object to any pledge promising continuation of the war after a Democratic

president came to power:

Mr. Low, . . . the ambassador from Vallandigham, is a simple agent, for

whether he truly represents Vallandigham, or draws upon his own invention, no

man having a thimble full of sagacity would expose the silly game he divulged.

He said that Vallandigham was willing that the Chicago Convention should

denounce the origin of the war as it saw fit, only it must not pledge the party to

its continuance. That is the silent trick Vallandigham would play off, and we

expect to see the McClellan Democrats caught in just that trap, even after this fair

warning that it had been set for them.⁸³

When the Empire learned of the Herald report, it assured its readers that

Vallandigham did not speak through ambassadors.⁸⁴ It quoted Tom as saying

that his words at Cleveland represented his own ideas, not Vallandigham's.

The Empire implied that he had conceived independently of Vallandigham

a plan to call on the national convention to draft a peace resolution. The

convention, when it met, did adopt a peace resolution under the aegis of

Vallandigham; possibly the callow youth had played a part in originating

the famous peace plank (or war-failure plank) that handicapped and em-

barrassed McClellan and Democratic speakers throughout the 1864 cam-

paign.

A YOUNG COPPERHEAD                                              21

His Cleveland mission signaled Tom's return to the hustings, and as the

national convention and campaign took their course, he arrayed himself in his

old political trappings. In mid-August he attended a mass rally of Democrats

in Dayton, where Vallandigham and other speakers protested against the

draft and denounced Lincoln's refusal to consider peace negotiations.⁸⁵ In

late August he attended the Democratic national convention at Chicago; there

he expected Franklin Pierce, not McClellan, to win the great accolade. Val-

landigham, he was certain, could win the presidential nomination if he so

desired; but the magnanimous "Val" would not forward his own candidacy

because he did not wish to disrupt the party.86 Tom failed to note that even

then Vallandigham was thrusting the divisive peace plank upon the conven-

tion. In September and October he took to the stump in all his youthful vigor.

His high resolve to be done with politics had been somewhat ephemeral.

Throughout the campaign Tom adverted as usual to the issue of constitu-

tional liberties. And for the first time in his campaigning he leveled personal

attacks on Lincoln, whom he portrayed as a vulgar jester.⁸⁷ He had always

assailed Lincoln for his curtailment of civil rights but had never sunk to

personal raillery. Realizing that he could no longer argue the impractica-

bility of subduing the South while the North enjoyed some measure of

military success, he now resorted to a vague claim that only the Democratic

party could supply the unifying force needed by the American people.⁸⁸ He

said nothing of the peace plank, uttering indeed nothing radical.

As it became apparent that Lincoln would win a smashing victory, Tom

felt in desperation the imminence of a draft call. He asked Will to secure

for him a three year substitute in Tennessee for $400 or less.⁸⁹ Then on

reflecting that Lincoln might revoke the substitute clause without notice, that

all flight to Canada might then be cut off, and that Lincoln's election meant

an increased demand for substitutes, he begged Will to seek out a veteran,

or an alien, or a Negro for $400, or $500, or $600, or $700.90 Any price for

anyone! At Lincoln's election in November, Tom lapsed into absurdity.

Predicting the loss of liberty for the white man in the United States as a

result of Lincoln's success, he decided to exile himself in some foreign land.

He would not fight under any circumstances and would not remain to be

beggared by buying substitutes for ten or twenty years. The war must last

many years unless the North recognized southern independence. No longer

could he stand the intolerance and bigotry of the North and those in Dayton

who had sinned flagrantly against him.91

In spite of his fears of an unceasing civil war, a military despotism, the

destruction of civil liberties, and the draft, Tom remained in Dayton. He

continued to be a leading Copperhead spokesman. Appomattox elicited no

A YOUNG COPPERHEAD                                                23

theoretical right of nullification and secession by the sovereign states, deny-

ing that the Civil War had really negated the right.⁹⁴

At the same time, he was taking an active part in local politics. As a

reward for clinging to his principles through four trying years and for his

good part in preserving the party in those years, Democratic party members

in 1865 nominated him as their candidate for prosecuting attorney for

Montgomery County.⁹⁵ To the nominating convention Tom spoke glowingly

of the party's record in the Civil War. All the advantages gained by the

struggle could have been secured, he said, by the use of the conciliatory

program advanced by the Peace Democracy; so there was no reason for

Democrats to deal in recriminations if called traitors now; in fact, believing

as they did, they would have been traitors to themselves not to oppose the

war.96 The Journal stated that Tom had brazenly justified Copperhead re-

sistance to the draft, Copperhead opposition to soldiers' voting, and a multi-

tude of other Copperhead transgressions. His hearty approval of the party's

extreme positions confirmed the report that he was boasting of his ambition

and ability to supplant Vallandigham as leader of the Dayton Democrats, the

Journal said.97 Whatever his political goals were, they were temporarily

set back when he lost his election bid by thirty-three votes in returns giving

victories to about half of the Democratic ticket.⁹⁸

Thenceforth, Tom's political course was less frenetic and more conven-

tional. He did become embroiled in a minor way with the Journal in 1866

over his support of the Copperheads during the war; he still insisted that

their view of the war was nothing to be ashamed of and that he would never

repudiate his support of them.99 In 1870 he was elected to the judgeship of

the Montgomery County Superior Court, after filling an unexpired term,

but he failed to receive the party's endorsement for renomination in 1875.

Returning to his law practice, Tom prepared himself for the ministry

and became an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in 1880. The

years finally wrought a change too in his beliefs about the Civil War. Ad-

dressing a Grand Army of the Republic post in 1885 at Mt. Vernon, Ohio,

fittingly enough the scene of Vallandigham's challenge of General Order No.

38, Pastor Tom Lowe praised graying veterans with godly fervor: "You

fought once to preserve from destruction a beneficent government and to

destroy human slavery. You were on the right side then; on God's side."100

THE AUTHOR: Carl M. Becker is an assistant

professor of history at Sinclair College, Dayton.

His account of the early years of the subject of this

study was published in the Bulletin of the Histori-

cal and Philosophical Society of Ohio for October

1961.

NOTES

PICTURE OF A YOUNG COPPERHEAD

1 Biographical notes on John W. Lowe by Thomas O. Lowe, in Lowe Manuscripts Collection,

Dayton Public Library. All Lowe manuscripts cited hereafter are in this collection. For an account

of John W. Lowe's life, see also the Xenia Torchlight, September 18, 1861.

2 J. L. Rockey, History of Clermont County, Ohio (Philadelphia, 1880), 137. Fishback had some

illustrious sons: George was an editor of the St. Louis Democrat, and William was a law partner

of Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis.

3 U. S. Grant to John W. Lowe, June 26, 1846. The original letter is not in the Lowe Collection,

but the copy in that collection, according to the penciled notes of Thomas Lowe, was made from

the original in the possession of his brother William. The copy is identical with the copy pub-

lished by Hamlin Garland in "Grant in the Mexican War," McClure's Magazine, VIII (1897),

366-380. In his biography of Grant, Captain Sam Grant (Boston, 1950), Lloyd Lewis calls attention

to the friendship between Lowe and Grant while they were living in and around Batavia.

4 Letters to his father of November 20, 1853, and March 12, 1854, contain vivid accounts of

these debates.

5 Freeman Cary to John W. Lowe, June 23, 1853; Thomas O. Lowe to John W. Lowe, March

12, 1854.

6 Thomas O. Lowe to John W. Lowe, December 30, 1855.

7 Thomas O. Lowe to John W. Lowe, August 24, September 7, 1856. A fuller account of Tom

Lowe's youth may be found in Carl M. Becker, "The Genesis of a Copperhead," Historical and

Philosophical Society of Ohio, Bulletin, XIX (1961), 235-253.

8 Journal of Thomas O. Lowe.

9 An excellent definition of the factions in the wartime Democratic party may be found in

William F. Zornow's "Clement L. Vallandigham and the Democratic Party in 1864," Historical and

Philosophical Society of Ohio, Bulletin, XIX (1961), 23.

10 Eugene H. Roseboom and Francis P. Weisenburger, A History of Ohio (Columbus, 1956),

189; Wood Gray, The Hidden Civil War (New York, 1942), 43, 74.

11 Thomas O. Lowe to John Wallace, August 14, 1861.

12 Thomas O. Lowe to John Wallace, August 24, 1861.

13 Ibid.

14 Ibid.

15 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, January 20, 1862.

16 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, January 8, May 16, 1862.

17 Thomas O. Lowe to Members of the Session of the Deacons of the First Presbyterian Church,

October 7, 1861.

18 Thomas O. Lowe to Dr. Thomas E. Thomas, October 22, 1861, in Alfred A. Thomas, ed.,

Correspondence of Thomas E. Thomas ([Dayton?], 1909), 119-120.

19 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, April 27, 1862.

20 The story of political life in Dayton during the war is described in Irving Schwartz, "Dayton,

Ohio, During the Civil War" (unpublished master's thesis, Miami University, 1949).

21 Dayton Daily Journal, June 23, 1862; Dayton Weekly Empire, June 28, 1862.

22 Dayton Daily Journal, June 23, 1862.

23 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, June 28, 1862.

24 George H. Porter, Ohio Politics During the Civil War Period (New York, 1911), 107, 139-140.

25 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, July 12, 21, 1862.

26 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, July 12, 1862.

27 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, August 9, 23, 1862.

28 Speech delivered at Pyrmont, Centerville, Harshmanville, Alexandersville, Miamisburg, and

Dayton. Journal of Thomas O. Lowe. A summary also appeared in the Dayton Daily Empire,

September 26, 1862.

29 "Peace," a speech delivered sometime in October at Hamilton, Germantown, and New

Lebanon. Journal of Thomas O. Lowe.

30 Speech delivered in Dayton, August 2, 1862. Journal of Thomas O. Lowe. See also "Jacobins,"

in the Lowe journal.

31 See footnote 29 above.

NOTES                                                                                  77

32 See footnote 28 above.

33 The main points of Crittenden's plan were these: slavery should be prohibited in national

territory north of the line 36?? 30' but given federal protection south of that line; future states,

north or south of that line, might come into the Union with or without slavery as they wished.

34 Dayton Daily Empire, August 7, 1862.

35 Clermont Sun (Batavia), August 20, 1862. Clipping in Thomas O. Lowe's Political Scrapbook.

36 Clermont Courier (Batavia), August 27, 1862. Clipping in Thomas O. Lowe's Political

Scrapbook.

37 Clermont Courier, August 29, 1862.

38 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, August 2, 1862.

39 Dayton Daily Journal, November 3, 1862.

40 Dayton Daily Empire, November 3, 1862.

41 Ibid., November 21, 1862.

42 "Social Proscription," April 3, 1863. Journal of Thomas O. Lowe.

43 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, March 28, 1863.

44 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, January 23, 1863.

45 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, February 21, 1863.

46 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, March 7, 1863.

47 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, March 23, 1863.

48 Dayton Weekly Empire, February 7, 1863. Tom signed this article as "Hampden."

49 Besides prohibiting the giving of aid and comfort to the enemy, General Order No. 38

announced that "the habit of declaring sympathy for the enemy will not be allowed in this depart-

ment." The order suggested that the department would take a loose construction in judging

whether words were spoken in sympathy with the enemy.

50 See Dayton Daily Empire, May 5, 1863.

51 Dayton Daily Journal, May 6, 1863.

52 This account is based primarily on Tom's letter of May 11 to Will. The letter presents a vivid

description of the violence of the day.

53 Dayton Daily Journal, May 7, 1863.

54 Ibid.

55 Anderson, a resident of Dayton, was the Union party's candidate for lieutenant governor

in 1863.

56 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, May 14, 1863.

57 Dayton Daily Journal, May 8, 1863.

58 Ibid., May 12, 1863.

59 Ibid., May 14, 1863.

60 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, May 27, 1863.

61 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, May 14, 1863.

62 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, May 30, 1863.

63 Martha Lowe to William R. Lowe, June 24, 1863.

64 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, February 7, 1863. At this time Tom fully expected to

receive a nomination from his fellow Peace Democrats.

65 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, June 14, 1863.

66 Thomas O. Lowe to Martha Lowe, June 23, 1863.

67 Martha Lowe to Thomas O. Lowe, August 28, September 8, 1863.

68 Thomas O. Lowe to Martha Lowe, August 3, 1863.

69 Martha Lowe to Thomas O. Lowe, July 14, August 1, 1863.

70 Martha Lowe to Thomas O. Lowe, August 17, 1863.

71 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, October 25, 1863.

72 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, November 8, 1863.

73 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, October 26, 1863.

74 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, January 3, 1864.

75 Dayton Daily Journal, January 5, 1864.

76 Dayton Daily Empire, January 6, 1864.

77 Dayton Daily Journal, January 9, 1864.

78 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, March 6, 1864. See Dayton Daily Journal, March 4,

1864.

79 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, February 6, 1864.

80 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, April 2, 1864.

81 Dayton Weekly Empire, July 2, 1864.

82 Cleveland Morning Herald, June 25, 1864.

78                                                                     OHIO HISTORY

83 Ibid.

84 Dayton Weekly Empire, July 2, 1864.

85 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, August 14, 1864.

86 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, August 25, 1864.

87 Speech delivered in Miamisburg and Wayne School House. Journal of Thomas O. Lowe.

88 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, October 2, 8, 1864.

89 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, October 16, 1864.

90 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, October 29, 1864.

91 Thomas O. Lowe to William R. Lowe, November 11, 1864.

92 Dayton Daily Empire, May 13, 1865.

93 Dayton Daily Journal, September 2, 1865.

94 See Dayton Weekly Empire, September 2, 9, 16, 1865, and Dayton Daily Empire, September

4, 9, 1865.

95 Dayton Daily Empire, September 11, 1865.

96 Ibid., September 12, 1865.

97 Dayton Daily Journal, September 22, 1865.

98 Dayton Daily Journal, November 11, 1865.

99 Dayton Daily Journal, September 27, 1866.

100 Address by Reverend Thomas Lowe, "The Eternal Warfare," given at the Presbyterian Church

of Mt. Vernon, Ohio, May 24, 1885, before the Joe Hooker G.A.R. Post.

JOHN BROWN AND THE MASONIC ORDER

1 Charles C. Cole, Jr., "Finney's Fight Against the Masons," Ohio State Archaeological and

and Historical Quarterly, LIX (1950), 270-286.

2 Ernest C. Miller, John Brown: Pennsylvania Citizen (Warren, Pa., 1952), 10.

3 Kansas City Journal, April 8, 1881.

4 Manuscript note by George B. Gill in the Richard J. Hinton Papers, Kansas State Historical

Society, Topeka.

5 Masonic Beacon (Akron, Ohio), October 7, 1946.

6 Miller, John Brown, 10.

7 Henry L. Kellogg, "How John Brown Left the Lodge," in Christian Cynosure (Chicago),

March 31, 1887. The article is based on an interview with Owen Brown.

8 A good short account of the anti-Masonic crusade is found in Alice F. Tyler, Freedom's Ferment

(Minneapolis, 1944), 351-358.

9 Edward Conrad Smith, Dictionary of American Politics (New York, 1924), 15-16.

10 Milton W. Hamilton, "Anti-Masonic Movements," in James Truslow Adams, ed., Dictionary

of American History (New York, 1940), I, 82.

11 One Hundredth Anniversary of Crawford Lodge No. 234, F&AM (Meadville, Pa., 1948), 4-5.

12 "His Soul Goes Marching On," in Cleveland Press, May 3, 1895, quoted in Oswald Garrison

Villard, John Brown, 1800-1859: A Biography Fifty Years After (Boston, 1910), 26.

13 Kellogg, "How John Brown Left the Lodge."

14 Interview by Katherine Mayo with Sarah Brown, September 16-20, 1908. Villard Papers,

Columbia University Library.

15 Interview by Katherine Mayo with Henry Thompson, September 1, 1908. Villard Papers.

16 Interview by Katherine Mayo with George B. Gill, November 12, 1908. Villard Papers.

17 John Brown to Owen Brown, June 12, 1830. Original letter owned by Dr. Clarence S. Gee,

Lockport, New York.

18 The Crawford Messenger of April 29 and May 20, 1830, reprinted the entire Anderton

pamphlet, titled Masonry the Same All Over the World: Another Masonic Murder. Articles in

subsequent numbers discussed the statement and branded Anderton as a fraud. Several articles in

Volumes I (1830) and II (1831) of the Boston Masonic Mirror offer proof that Anderton was an

impostor and that the incident described could not have occurred.

19 The quotation is taken from the original Brown manuscript as reprinted in the Appendix to

Villard, John Brown, 659-660.

20 Interview by Katherine Mayo with George B. Gill.

21 Salmon Brown to Frank B. Sanborn, November 17, 1911; Salmon Brown to William E. Con-

nelley, May 28, November 16, 1913. These letters are in the author's own collection. See also

Salmon Brown, "John Brown and Sons in Kansas Territory," in Louis Ruchames, John Brown

Reader (London, 1959), 189-197, reprinted from Indiana Magazine of History, XXXI (1935),

142-150.