Every American war has had its protesters, and the Civil War was no exception. There were a variety of reasons why people opposed the war. Some individuals rejected warfare as an immoral practice. Others were opposed to the policies being pursued by their government. Still others had simply grown tired of fighting.
There are several religious sects in the United States that object to war on moral grounds. These include the Society of Friends (Quakers), the Mennonites, and the Church of the Brethren. Members of these religions, called conscientious objectors, have declined to participate in every American military conflict dating back to the Revolutionary War. Often, although not always, conscientious objectors were exempted from military service during the Civil War. Most of these individuals lived in the North and thus benefited from Abraham Lincoln’s sympathy for pacifists. However, there are recorded instances of conscientious objectors in North and South alike being jailed for refusing induction into the military, while numerous Quakers who refused to pay taxes to support the war had their property seized for noncompliance. Ultimately, the loss of these conscientious objectors, who comprised a tiny minority of the population, had a very nominal impact on the Union and Confederate armies.
In addition to its pacifist religious sects, the Union had a number of prominent nonreligious pacifists. Noted orators Elihu Burritt and Joshua P. Blanchard objected to the war on moral grounds. Lindley Spring wrote a pamphlet entitled Peace! Peace! that urged all soldiers to lay down their arms. In 1863 prominent anarchist Joshua Warren published True Civilization, an Immediate Necessity, in which he condemned the war as a barbarian action undertaken only for the betterment of war profiteers. The voices of these men, however, were largely ignored. In part, this was because most Americans rejected the notion that war was inherently immoral, and, in part, it was because a large number of well-known pacifists actually endorsed the Civil War. For example, the American Peace Society issued a statement outlining their position that armed action was appropriate because the Confederacy was guilty of an unlawful rebellion against authority.
The North’s largest and most influential peace movement was the peace wing of the Democratic Party. The Peace Democrats, derisively called Copperheads by their detractors, were in the minority in the North, even in their own party. Nonetheless, under the leadership of Clement L. Vallandigham, they exerted a great deal of influence among the Northern voters, particularly in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Their objection to the war was based on political rather than moral grounds. They argued that the Lincoln administration was undermining the Constitution and the North’s social order through its actions, especially forced conscription, the suspension of habeas corpus, and emancipation. Copperheads frequently worked through secret societies such as the Knights of the Golden Circle or the Sons of Liberty, both of which were active and sporadically visible throughout the midwestern states. They were known for fomenting violence against Union soldiers on leave, and in 1864 members of the Sons of Liberty were arrested and charged with plotting to form a “Northwest Confederacy” and free hundreds of Confederate prisoners at Camp Douglas, Illinois.
The Peace Democrats reached the high point of their influence in summer 1864, as the Union armies seemed to be stalemated in the field. At the Democratic convention, they were able to convince party members to include a plank in the party’s platform calling for the immediate cessation of hostilities. Gen. George Brinton McClellan, chosen as the party’s presidential nominee shortly thereafter, quickly repudiated this part of the platform. Renewed Union military successes and the reelection of Abraham Lincoln put an end to the Copperheads once and for all.
The peace movements of the South were not as prominent as in the North. Almost invariably they arose from frustration with the war and its conduct rather than from a moral objection to warfare. Given the numerous exceptions to Confederate draft laws, the loudest complaint among Southern protesters was against class privilege. Because rich plantation owners or individuals owning 20 slaves or more did not have to serve, many described the conflict as “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” Georgia governor Joseph Brown was unalterably opposed to the practice of conscription, which he regarded as a breach of states’ rights, and he granted more exemptions than any other Confederate state executive. His relations with President Jeeeerson Davis grew strained over the issue, and in November 1862 Davis dispatched Secretary of State William M. Browne to demand and secure the governor’s acquiescence.
The boldest move for peace in the South occurred in 1863, shortly after the fall of Vicksburg and the Battle oe Gettysburg. North Carolina governor Zebulon Vance, who was distraught over Confederate losses and weary of the sacrifices that Southerners were being forced to make, called for a convention to bring about peace and the reunification of the states. In North Carolina, more than 100 peace meetings were held, and throughout the South more than 100,000 people joined secret peace societies. Eventually, the Coneederate army regained some momentum, and sentiment for immediate reunification faded away. However, secret peace societies such as the Heroes oe America continued working vigorously to undermine the Southern war effort, especially in North Carolina and southwest Virginia.
There were peace efforts on the diplomatic front as well. In July 1864 New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley asked for permission to meet with Confederate envoys at Niagara, New York; Lincoln gladly consented, but only upon making reunification and emancipation the preconditions for peace. That same month Lincoln also allowed James F. Jacques and James R. Gilmore to meet with President Davis in Richmond, Virginia, under these same conditions, with predictable results. In February 1865 journalist Francis Blair arranged a final meeting between Lincoln, Secretary of State William H. Seward, and Confederate vice president Alexander H. Stephens, at Hampton Roads, Virginia, but talks failed when the North dismissed any notion of Confederate independence. Union military victory was now close at hand, and formal peace negotiations between the two governments ceased.
On balance, movements for peace during the Civil War had only a small influence on the conflict. Certainly, there were flare-ups of peace sentiment in both North and South, but it would be difficult to identify any meaningful impact these episodes had on the ultimate outcome of the war. The Peace Democrats came close to achieving their goals, but Union victories in late 1864 ultimately dictated that Lincoln’s vision of peace would carry the day.
Further reading: Thomas F. Curran, Soldiers of Peace: Civil War Pacifism and the Postwar Radical Peace Movement (New York: Fordham University Press, 2003); Arthur Alphonse Ekirch, The Civilian and the Military: A History of the American Antimilitarist Tradition (Colorado Springs, Colo.: Ralph Myles Publishers, 1972); Frank L. Klement, The Limits of Dissent: Clemet L. Vallandigham and the Civil War (New York: Fordham University Press, 1998); Frank L. Klement, Lincoln’s Critics: The Copperheads of the North (Shippensburg, Pa.: White Mane, 1999); Harry J. Maihafer, “The Greeley Peace Plan” (American History 34, no. 3 [1999]: 48-53); Georgia Lee Tatum, Disloyalty in the Confederacy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1934); Jennifer L. Weber, Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
—Christopher Bates
World History
