Opposing Lincoln: Clement L. Vallandigham, Presidential Power, and the Legal Battle over Dissent in Wartime by Thomas C. Mackey

Abstract

Reviewed by: Opposing Lincoln: Clement L. Vallandigham, Presidential Power, and the Legal Battle over Dissent in Wartime by Thomas C. Mackey Jonathan W. White (bio) Opposing Lincoln: Clement L. Vallandigham, Presidential Power, and the Legal Battle over Dissent in Wartime. By Thomas C. Mackey. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2020. Pp. 200. Cloth, $55.00; paper, $24.95.) In his masterful study of party politics in the Civil War era, The Union Divided, historian Mark E. Neely Jr. observes that the "loyal opposition in the North during the Civil War remains to this day in crying need of analysis."1 In the last two decades, a number of scholarly works on the Civil War–era Democrats have appeared, including Neely's own Lincoln and the Democrats: The Politics of Opposition in the Civil War (2017) and J. Matthew Gallman's The Cacophony of Politics: Northern Democrats and the American Civil War (2021). Several excellent works on disloyalty, antiwar dissent, and civil liberties during the Civil War have also appeared, most notably William A. Blair's With Malice toward Some: Treason and Loyalty in the Civil War Era (2014) and Stephen E. Towne's Surveillance and Spies in the Civil War: Exposing Confederate Conspiracies in America's Heartland (2015). Now, with Thomas C. Mackey's Opposing Lincoln, we have an account of the military commission trial of Clement L. Vallandigham. Vallandigham is notorious today as the most prominent antiwar Democrat in the North during the Civil War. In May 1863, the former congressman was arrested by the Union military and charged with disloyal speech. Following a quick military trial, he was sentenced to imprisonment at hard labor for the duration of the war; however, Lincoln instead chose to banish the "wiley agitator" to the Confederacy. From there, Vallandigham escaped to Canada, where he ran for governor of Ohio in absentia. He lost in a landslide. Vallandigham's story is one that every student of the Civil War should know, and it is ably told by Mackey. In several places, Mackey exhibits great storytelling skill, such as the scene when Vallandigham is turned over to Confederate soldiers in Tennessee. Mackey also deftly explains the constitutional and legal issues facing the Lincoln administration during the war years, helping readers understand Lincoln's thinking on these controversial issues. Indeed, Mackey takes constitutionalism seriously, which is essential for understanding the causes and consequences of the Civil War. The heart of Opposing Lincoln is Vallandigham's military trial, as well as discussion of Lincoln's public letters defending his civil liberties policies. Still, Mackey's slender volume touches on several important historiographical debates, including the adequacy of the Constitution to meet the [End Page 579] crisis of the Civil War, whether the Copperheads posed a real threat to the Union, and the extent to which Lincoln's policies violated the Constitution. In the opening two chapters, Mackey places Vallandigham within his historical context, tracing the politics of the 1850s into the war years. Drawing from the flourishing recent literature on the Midwest in the mid-nineteenth century, Mackey rightly describes Vallandigham as a westerner, rather than simply as a northerner. In explaining Lincoln's view of free speech in wartime, Mackey appropriately describes Lincoln "as a man and lawyer of his times and historical context." After quoting one of Lincoln's arguments, Mackey states, "After reading this statement some moderns will raise the issue of the potential 'chilling effect' on speech and press this policy suggests; but those sensitivities lay in a future that Lincoln could not know" (131). This is sound historical analysis. We ought to strive to understand historical figures within the context of their times. And yet there were strong arguments being made during the war years for more robust protection of free speech, free press, and the right to trial by jury. Mackey analyzes a series of public letters that passed between Lincoln and two groups of Democrats (one in Ohio, and one in New York). He presents Lincoln's arguments in great detail, but the Democrats appear only as foils for Lincoln, rather than as constitutional thinkers in their own right. This is a missed opportunity, for the Democrats' arguments anticipated...