River, Reaper, Rail by Timothy Thoresen

Author:Timothy Thoresen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Akron Press

17.

Making Sense of Civil War

The Civil War caught everyone and no one by surprise. Because Champaign County’s political heritage included both the Northwest Ordinance ban on slavery north of the Ohio River as well as a high proportion of immigrants and ancestors from south of that river, county residents had long felt the national slavery debate with some passion. Mechanicsburg and portions of Goshen Township and neighboring Rush Township were “Yankee.” In 1853, “J. H. W.” was proud to celebrate Mechanicsburg as “a grand Depot of the Under-ground Railroad.” At the opposite both politically and geographically, Mad River Township was sympathetically Southern and “Butternut.” The narrowly successful 1857 re-election bid by Ohio’s abolitionist Republican Governor Salmon P. Chase was thus a portentous indicator. With a few exceptions, most of the local antagonism was expressed through nonviolent political assemblies and sometimes virulent newspaper diatribes. Partisan following of the news, rumor, misinformation, confusion, and concern about the 1859 raid of “Old Brown” at Harpers Ferry was intense. With the election of Abraham Lincoln, Urbana’s Republicans celebrated “the dawn of a new era in the progress of civilization,” despite the uneven distribution of Lincoln’s 2,325 votes. Goshen voted lopsidedly four-to-one in favor of Lincoln, while the 1,810 Douglas votes represented majorities in Adams, Jackson, Johnson, and Mad River Townships, the latter two at a ratio of three-to-one over Lincoln. The aging Colonel John H. James was among the public figures who perhaps most embodied the conflicted ambivalence felt by many. Slavery was abominable but constitutionally legal, and by the same standard, insurrection and secession were illegal and needed to be suppressed but only “within the law.” A real war among the states was unthinkable.1

The remarkable—precisely because it was not unusual—Champaign County response to “the rebellion” was fourfold. First, and initially testing everyone’s political integrity, were the public meetings and rallies with speeches and resolutions that collectively groped toward social consensus. Many of the rallies were announced as “Union” meetings, partisan gatherings that served to channel expressions of patriotism and concern—as happened in several locations on 16, 18, and 20 April 1861 with the news about Fort Sumter. A parallel, rather special exception for Democratic partisans was the “Citizen’s Meeting” held at the Urbana Court House on 4 June 1861 in “Tribute to the Memory of Hon. Stephen A. Douglas.” Agricultural Society leaders were among the principal speakers at all similar events.2

Secondly, just as throughout most of the North and certainly throughout most of Ohio, President Lincoln’s call for ninety-day volunteers was met with local patriotic rallies, with much foolish optimism and confusion, and with quite personal and political machinations for rank and office. A “Volunteer” en route from Washington toward Baltimore by train reported in a letter dated 29 May 1861 that “The boys were in high glee.”3

Then, and thirdly, when the war extended beyond everyone’s early expectations, conflict was a constant topic, always as near as the soldiers’ letters printed in the newspapers and the more painfully near presence of furloughed, discharged, and sometimes AWOL wounded men.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.