The
Northern Democratic opposition during the war believed that “if the
Republicans continued in power they would ultimately destroy every shred
of democratic choice and free behavior in the name of their conception
of the right.” Ohio political leader Clement Vallandigham said “nothing
but convulsion can come of this despotism,” and if Lincoln were
reelected, “our Republican government is gone, gone, gone, and ere it is
again revived we must pass through anarchy in its worst form.”
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
Expelling Unworthy Members of the House
“[Clement
Vallandigham of Ohio received support] from leading Democrats of the
North, not only in his own State but from such men as Governor Seymour
and Samuel J. Tilden of New York. We have referred to the plank of the
Democratic platform adopted in 1864, which declared the war a failure,
and it must be added that the convention was run, and the platform
written and adopted, and the nomination made practically at the order of
Vallandigham and his sympathizers.
To
these instances must be added sentiments such as were uttered by
Alexander Long, the Representative of the Second District of Ohio, in
the Thirty-eighth Congress, who boldly defended the cause of the
Confederacy as follows:
“I
now believe that there are but two alternatives, and they are either an
acknowledgement of the independence of the South as an independent
nation, or their complete subjugation and extermination as a people; and
of these alternatives I prefer the former.”
A
resolution was offered for the expulsion of Long, declaring that by his
speech he had given “aid, countenance and encouragement to persons
engaged in armed hostility to the United States.” The debate upon the
resolution was opened by Mr. [James] Garfield of Ohio, then sitting in
the House . . . for his first term [and] fresh from the battlefield of
Chickamauga . . .
In
answering Mr. Garfield, Benjamin G. Harris, of Maryland, said: “The
South asks you to leave them in peace, but now you say you will bring
them into subjection. That is not done yet, and God Almighty grant it
may never be!”
This
was followed by the offering of a resolution for the expulsion of Mr.
Harris [and he subsequently] was declared to be an unworthy member of
the House by a vote of 93 to 18. Fernando Wood, George H. Pendleton,
the candidate for Vice President on the Democratic ticket of 1864, and
Samuel J. Randall, afterwards Democratic Speaker of the House, were
among those who voted in the negative. A resolution was also adopted
declaring Mr. Long an unworthy member of the House.
[The
Thirteenth Amendment prohibiting slavery] had been adopted in the
Senate on April 8, 1864, by a vote of 38 to 6. These six votes were cast
by the two Democratic Senators from Kentucky, the two from Delaware,
and by Mr. McDougall of California, and Mr. Hendricks of Indiana . . .
Every Republican [in the House] without exception voted in the
affirmative [119 to 56], together with sixteen Democrats.
Among
the opposition we find the names of William S. Holman of Indiana, S.S.
Cox, Alexander Long, whose treasonable words had been censured, and
George H. Pendleton of Ohio, W.R. Morrison of Illinois, Samuel J.
Randall of Pennsylvania, and others who afterwards became leaders of the
Democratic party.”
(The Republican Party, A History of Its First Fifty Years, Francis Curtis, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904, pp. 464-467)
