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BULLETINof the

Historical and Philosophical Society of OhioCINCINNATI

October, 1961 CINCINNATI Vol. 19 No. 4

The Genesis of a Copperheadby CARL M. BECKER

As the Civil War took its painful course, it generated in theOld Northwest a threat to the integrity of American nationality.There, elements of the Democratic party, calling themselvesPeace Democrats but bearing the popular epithet "Copper-head," insisted that the use of coercion to preserve the Unionwas not only unconstitutional but futile, arguing that only a"union of hearts and hands" could endure. In their passion forpeace — their idee fixe — they opposed Lincoln's war policies,encouraged young men to desert and evade draft calls, and urgedthe public not to subscribe to government bond issues; some evenproposed, as a means to end the war, the formation of a North-western Confederacy which might ally with the South and leaveNew England adrift. The Copperheads presented a conservativeface in their social and economic complex, too. They were oftenIrish-Americans and German-Americans who crowded the lowerrungs of the social and economic ladder. Largely dependentlaborers in industry, they feared the possible competition of freeNegro labor. Transplanted Southerners, subsisting on smallfarms in lower Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, were often Copperheads

236 The Bulletin

who blanched at the thought of emancipation. These hyphenateand native Americans — the former trapped by an iron law ofwages and the latter weltering in debt on marginal farms —could both inveigh against an emerging corporate capitalismdominated by Republicans whose New England heritage was alltoo evident to inferiors.

As must be the fate of political and social phenomena thatcome under the Argus eye of the scholarly community, theCopperhead persuasion has been studied mainly in the contextof its great adherents — Clement L. Vallandigham, DanielVoorhees and Samuel Medary, among others — and the ethnicand social groups that embraced it.L Since these adherents, whowere usually older generation Americans, gave Copperheadismits inner support and direction, younger, lesser-known Copperheadpersonalities have received little attention from scholars. Andthough general classifications of Copperheads by their ethnicand social status are significant in revealing the anatomy of apolitical and social organism, they permit but limited insight intothe individual personality as it moved to the Copperhead ration-ale. An inquiry into the formation of a psyche in its progressionto Copperheadism may, on the other hand, reveal some of thepersonal attributes and peculiarities which impelled men to thefaith and which endowed that faith with its distinctive charac-teristics.

One lad who brought the energy and passion of youth to theCopperhead cause was Thomas Owen Lowe. Molded by unusualforces in his formative years, young Lowe was possessed of acompulsive contentiousness that determined his political course;an amalgam of family pride and circumstance, college days, astrange sojourn in Southern climes, and the fortunes of warswept him inexorably into Copperhead ranks. As his life movedto this political deviation, it touched on the lives of the great andnear-great in the Republic in unusual and indeed bizarre ways.

Born in the village of Batavia, Clermont County, Ohio, in1838, Tom Lowe was nurtured in an atmosphere of legalism andlitigation and was early impelled to a vaulting ambition. Hisfather, John William Lowe, issue of Scotch-Huguenot stock in1809 at New Brunswick, New Jersey, came to Ohio in 1833 after

^ee, for example, Wood Gray, The Hidden Civil War (New York, 1942)and Frank L. Klement, The Copperheads in the Middle West (Chicago, 1960).

The Genesis of a Copperhead 237

having helped support for a number of years two sisters and abrother left indigent by their father's death in 1820.2 Settlingin Batavia, he studied law with Thomas Hamer, the eminentattorney and Congressman who secured Sam Grant's appoint-ment to West Point. In 1837, Lowe married Manorah Fishback,a daughter of Owen T. Fishback, one of the outstanding lawyersand politicians of Clermont County in the 1820's, 1830's and1840's.3 Despite this affinity and occupational tie, it appears thatLowe practiced his profession alone — and unprofitably — inBatavia and Bethel in the 1840's. His son's life was pleasantenough, though, in households abounding with lawyers whoseidiom was of court and legislative hall. Constantly in front of theboy were the words of men of law; from such a surrounding couldemerge a man consumed with a legalistic respect for the law andestablished institutions.

During his youth in the East, John Lowe had served with aNew York City cadet company, and when the Mexican War beganhis martial memories were revived. Shortly after the beginning ofthat war, he received a letter from an old friend, U. S. Grant,then a lieutenant at Matamoras, saying that he would like to haveLowe in Mexico as a commander of a volunteer company.4 Grantfollowed with letters vividly describing the Mexican country andbattles there.5 His martial spirit stirred by this siren call, Lowe,though opposed to the Polk administration, joined the SecondOhio Infantry Regiment with a captain's commission and inSeptember of 1847 left for Mexico. Had he expected a tour ofexhilarating duty, great must have been Captain Lowe's dis-appointment. He found that the Mexican War, like most wars,took from its soldiery many more hours of routine duty than itgave them in moments of exulting combat. On the long river andgulf voyage to Mexico, he spent much of his time attendingenlisted men ill with dysentery and malarial attacks, though sickhimself. As he put it, "the blue above and the blue below, and

2Biographical notes on John W. Lowe by Thomas Lowe, Lowe ManuscriptsCollection, in Dayton, Ohio, Public Library; all Lowe documents cited hereinare in this collection. Xenia Torchlight, September 18, 1861.3J. L. Rockey, History of Clermont County, Ohio (Philadelphia, 1880), 137.4Grant to John Lowe, June 26, 1846. The original letter is not in the LoweMSS. But the copy in that collection, according to the pencilled notes of ThomasLowe, was made from the original in the possession of his son, William. Thecopy is identical with the copy published by Hamlin Garland in "Grant in theMexican War," McClure's Magazine, No. 4, 8 (February, 1897), 366-380.5Lloyd Lewis, Captain Sam Grant (Boston, 1950), 129, 134-135.

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the sicker I get the further we go."6 In Mexico, despite miles ofmarching, seldom did Captain Lowe face the enemy, and thenonly from afar. Often on court-martial duty, he faced insteadcowed American officers and men charged with rather trivialoffenses. Not surprisingly, he bitterly regretted his decision toleave the banks of the Ohio for the sunny shores of Mexico.Confiding to his diary homesickness for his wife and children, helamented that "their father has acted unwisely and now mustsuffer the consequences. Accursed be the hour he left home."His return to the family bosom within a year perhaps softenedthe pain of frustrated valor.

On his return to Batavia, Lowe again opened his law office.He also dabbled in politics, becoming mayor of the village in 1853,but still his practice did not flourish. In the meantime, his son'scuriosity about the issues that moved men to anger and violencemust have been quickening. Tom had seen his father leave hometo fight for a cause that men in Batavia could at best call "mani-fest destiny." The very nature of his father's and grandfather'sprofession brought home the debate over the extension of slaveryinto newly-acquired territories. And an alert boy in ClermontCounty might hear of, or even see, runaway slaves on their wayto freedom in Canada via the underground railroad. In a naturaldeference to his father's view, one which opposed slavery on theground that it was both a social and political evil threateningthe political integrity of the nation, the boy was forming anantipathy toward slavery, too. But the paternal influence didnot carry the spirit of a Garrison, and how long a boy could clingto his father's belief in the face of other forces had yet to bedetermined.

A formalized shaping of the young mind began in 1851 whenthe elder Lowe, looking to the intellectual development of his son,enrolled him in Farmers' College near Cincinnati. Tom's uncles,George and William Fishback, sons of Owen Fishback, were thenin attendance at Farmers'; and their accounts of activities thereand the avuncular protection they could afford Tom in the hallsof the college probably inclined Lowe to his academic selectionfor the boy.

Farmers' College was an outgrowth of Pleasant Hill Academy,an academy founded in 1833 by Freeman Cary two years after his

"Diary of John Lowe, October 4, 1847.

The Genesis of a Copperhead 239

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graduation from Miami University and popularly known asCary's Academy.7 Chartered in 1846, the college in the early1850's, with Cary as president, was enjoying its fairest days.It was maintaining a degree of financial stability. The facultywas of undoubted ability, its patriarch and guiding spirit beingDr. Robert H. Bishop, first president of Miami University. Carywas embarking on a new farm program that promised to realizethe pretensions of the agrarian appellation, which previously hadsignified things hoped for rather than attained.8 Enrollment wason the rise, with over three hundred boys in attendance in 1852and 1854. And most important of all, the college was attractingsome outstanding students to its halls. In attendance from 1848to 1851 were Murat Halstead and Benjamin Harrison, Halsteadgraduating in 1851 and Harrison removing himself to Miami inthe same year to complete his college work — and to woo thedaughter of Professor John Scott, former faculty member atFarmers'. William Fishback, a partner-in-law with Harrisonduring the Civil War, adorned the class of 1853. His brother,George, was also in attendance then; his glory came as editor ofthe St. Louis Democrat. Jonathan and Valentine Winters,merchant-princes in Dayton in the 1860's and 1870's, were atthe college in 1850.

The young scholar began his studies in the fall of 1851. In thenext three years, his life was one of lucubrations over Livy,Euclidian planes and Founding Fathers; juror scribendi for "oldDr." Bishop; shrill forensics over moral and political issues; and,of course, schoolboy pranks. His academic record was evidentlyquite good; at least in June of 1853, President Cary praised himas a scholar who had achieved the "maximum standing" in hisclasses.9 Not one to hide his light, Tom had anticipated Cary,having assured his father a month earlier that he was second to

7Freeman Cary, Early Annals — Autobiography, [1885?], MS. in Libraryof Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio; Alexander B. Huston, HistoricalSketch of Farmers' College (Cincinnati, 1902), 19.

8In 1854, the college announced the opening of the Department for In-struction in Scientific and Practical Agriculture — "THE FIRST COMPLETEINSTITUTION OF THE KIND ORGANIZED ON THE CONTINENTOF AMERICA," Annual and Triennial Catalogue of Farmers' College, 185^-1855(Cincinnati, 1854), 22. Despite sanguine hopes of establishing an institutionof agricultural education, the college evidently failed to develop an adequatecurriculum to achieve its goal, for by 1858, as one observer put it, the collegehad "subsided into a respectable Academy for instruction in the commonbranches of learning." Ohio Cultivator, No. 2, 14 (January 15, 1858), 25.

9Freeman Cary to John Lowe, June 23, 1853.

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none in all of his classes.10 In this youthful personality, a streakof confidence, self-assurance, egoism — call it what one will —appears in juxtaposition with a Calvinistic sense of unworthiness.Despite his impressive academic success, Tom left the college in1854 without a diploma. His decision was prompted by hisfather's financial stringencies.

As a shaping force, Farmers' College had an indirect impresson young Lowe, but one which facilitated his entry into thepolitical arena and one which characterized his adult politicalbehavior. Like many college students of the period, the studentsat Farmers' energetically supported their literary societies ingiving innumerable hours to society elections, debates andspeeches. To his father, Tom sent a steady stream of reports onthe activities agitating him and his fellow scholars in the BurrittHall Literary Society. His father read letters about a hotly-contested election in which the son took a leading part.11 Thepatriarch commiserated with his son on a pressing dilemma:should the boy speak on "Great Men" or "The Millennium,Is It Near?" during the Exhibition at Christmas?12 "Great Men"was finally chosen. He read, perhaps with some consternation,that his son was discussing with his comrades the merits ofUniversalism and Swedenborgianism.13 The lawyer in Bataviaread missives of his son's assumption of the negative in a debateon whether more territory should be acquired by the nation andthe justice of the Mexican War, a debate followed by Tom'sthreatened use of force to gain an apology from a heckler.14

Lending social approval to and ingeminating the householdlegalism of Batavia, these voluble exercises further developed inTom an argumentative and clamorous approach to all humanproblems; and these attributes were the stuff on which a party ofpolitical and economic doctrinairism could feed.

Though an age of causes was sending gusts of reform swirlingaround American colleges, Farmers' College did not imbue itsstudents with any reforming zeal. Given his paternal injunctionson slavery, Tom Lowe could have passionately embraced aboli-

10Thomas Lowe to John Lowe, May 29, 1853; hereafter all letters from theson to his father will be cited as "T. L. to J. L."

nT. L. to J. L., October 2, 1853.12T. L. to J. L., October 9, 1853.13T. L. to J. L., October 16, 1853.14T. L. to J. L., October 30, 1853; November 20, 1853.

242 The Bulletin

tionism had two men he admired, Dr. Bishop, a man of knownanti-slavery views, and Professor George Ormsby, an intenseabolitionist, inculcated the student body with their personalbeliefs on the "peculiar institution."15 But if they sought toinculcate, they failed.

After leaving Farmers', Tom was employed briefly as a clerkwith the banking house of Ellis & Sturges in Cincinnati. Fromthere he went to Dayton to join his father, who had shaken thedust of Batavia off his feet in a determination to offer his talentsto a wider world. His shingle hung but momentarily in Dayton;in 1855 he moved his practice again, this time to Xenia in GreeneCounty, where he remained until the Civil War began. Evenbefore his father moved to Xenia, Tom had abruptly departed forNashville, Tennessee, in mid-1855 to take a position as a clerkwith the W. B. Shepherd banking firm. Why he sought Southernclimes is not known. Certainly his decision to leave Dayton andhis departure were hasty; at the news of his journey, his motherexpressed surprise and complained that his father had not evenknown of his decision.16 Tom himself admitted to his father thathe had indeed left his friends and home unceremoniously.17

Whatever the reasons for a Tennessee excursion, it could nothelp but leave an impress on a callow, impulsive youth removedfrom the family cocoon. Nashville, the largest city south of theOhio River with the exception of New Orleans, was passingthrough a decade of bustling economic and social growth as itengaged in the turbulent debate over popular sovereignty, theKansas-Nebraska Act, and the many other wedges of separation."It was," as a contemporary English novelist was then writingof the French Revolution, "the best of times, it was the worstof times." New political and new social stimuli pervaded the city,and they were certain to evoke new responses in the boy; theymight not bring forth a better boy or man — but they had per-force to produce a changed being.

Tom's world quickly began to enlarge after his departure fromOhio. On his trip down the Ohio on the packet, Baltimore, heencountered an "old boy" from North Carolina who owned about

15Bishop's opinions on slavery led to his ousting as president of Miami asa sacrifice to pro-slavery elements there. Alfred Thomas, ed., Correspondenceof Thomas E. Thomas (Dayton [?], 1909), 45-46. In one instance, young Lowedescribed Ormsby as a "red-hot" abolitionist. T. L. to J. L., October 9, 1853.16Norah Lowe to Thomas Lowe, July 17, 1855.17T. L. to J. L., July 16, 1855.

The Genesis of a Copperhead 243

one hundred and sixty slaves, fifteen of whom were with him.Tom observed that they were happy, hearty and contented, andfound that his discussion with their owner had expanded hisideas on slavery.18 This event marked the beginning of a strugglebetween old beliefs on slavery and new attitudes engendered bydaily contact with the Negro and his master. The transition tonew concepts was facilitated for Tom by the initial deference withwhich he was received in Nashville and at Shepherd's. He speedilyfound the slavery arguments of his new friends to be of someworth. To his father he was soon revealing his abhorrence ofabolitionist fanaticism and acceptance of the Southern aphorism,"he who would steal a nigger will as readily steal a horse."19

His race, boasted Tom, was superior in every respect to theAfrican, and woe now to the black boy who did not move from hispath on the pavement.

Incensed by Tom's pronouncements, the father rebuked theson for his apparent defection from paternal ideals. And Tomrecanted, assuring his father of allegiance to old patterns: "Youknow that all my life, I have been taught to regard Slavery as anunmitigated curse, and slaveholders as but little better thancriminals of the deepest die."20 His father's severity in describinghim as a Southerner was also unjustified: "I am not yet," Tomwrote, "and I hope I never shall be an apologist for slavery."Convinced of his son's sincerity but alarmed that his views, ifgiven public currency, would give rise to reprisals in Nashvilleagainst the boy, the senior Lowe urged him to repress his anti-slavery sentiments. Now Tom thrust at his father. His principleswere so immutable on the subject of slavery, so he reminded thefather, that he found it difficult to remain quiet when amongfire-eating young Southerners who slurred Northern principlesand Northerners who refused to uphold those principles. Againstsuch whelps his position was clear: "I am exceedingly fearlessupon this point, & reckless of consequences. You certainly didnot mean for me to repudiate my principles.... I will not disavowthem because they are not indigenous in this latitude. It wouldbe glorious to fall a myrter \sic] in the cause of Truth."21 Braveindeed were these words from a seventeen-year-old boy torn by

18T. L. to J. L., July 16, 1855.19T. L. to J. L., September 23, 1855.20T. L. to J. L., October 7, 1855.21T. L. to J. L., January 27, 1856.

244 The Bulletin

conflict between loyalty to his father's ideals and adjustment tonew standards. Assurances of loyalty, notwithstanding, Tom wassubject to an environment that had to alter his gaze on thesable arm.

Another conflict between old and new came in Tom's admira-tion of the patrician class he discerned in Tennessee and hisdistaste for the indolence and dissipation that he saw as a hall-mark of that order; for an acceptance of the Tennessee aristocracyand its value structure signified an abandonment of an ingrainedpuritanic heritage of work and frugality. Tom increasingly sensedthis conflict — this juxtaposition of old with new — when,because of growing friction with his employer, he left Nashvilleto take up the duties of a bank clerk with the Bank of MiddleTennessee in Lebanon. The lessons of Nashville had inculcationin this community. The home of Cumberland University and itslaw school, Lebanon was a small town with a population of about2500, of whom about 1000 were slaves.22 There Tom observedclosely the values of a stratified class society and met young lawstudents from the lower South who vigorously defended thosevalues. Young and interested in the law as he was, Tom naturallygravitated to the law students and came to accept much of theirsocial philosophy. During part of his year's residence in Lebanon,he roomed with a senior law student, Will McQuiston, son of awealthy Mississippi planter. McQuiston and his fellow studentsinvited Tom to their parties and academic ceremonies, theircordiality convincing him that these "chivalrous gentlemen" hadaccepted him in complete brotherhood.23 He did feel disdain forthe gentlemen during the heat of summer; their only activitiesthen, so he lamented, consisted of playing backgammon andcards all day, attending the ladies all night, and drinking whiskeyall the time.

Probably the most stimulating aspect of Tom's Tennesseeresidence was his observation of the 1856 political campaign inmiddle Tennessee. This experience whetted his political appetiteand accentuated his contentious spirit. When Tom moved tothe Bank of Middle Tennessee, he came under the politicaltutelage of one of Tennessee's leading public figures, William B.

22T7ie Statistics of the Population of the United States, Ninth Census (Wash-ington, 1872). In 1860 the population of Lebanon was 1523 whites and 1075Negroes.

23T. L. to J. L., June 22, 1856.

The Genesis of a Copperhead 245

Campbell, one of the proprietors of the bank. Former attorney-general and Whig governor of Tennessee, representative toCongress, and Mexican War veteran, Campbell deigned to givehis young clerk the benefit of his political experience.24 A supporterof compromise between North and South but wedded to themaintenance of slavery, he urged on Tom the validity of theprinciples of the American party, in an effort, as Tom believed,to secure his vote for the vice-presidential nomination on theAmerican ticket.

Tom evidently so ingratiated himself with Campbell that thelatter assumed a paternal air over him, and Tom happily acquiesedin his protection. On one occasion, Campbell covertly revealedto his young confidant the contents of a letter from John Bell,the long-time Whig who would become the presidential nomineeof the Constitutional Union party in 1860, in which Bell impliedthat if the Republicans nominated John McLean of Ohio for thepresidency in 1856, he would swing his support to McLean.According to Tom, Bell wrote, "I fear they [the Republicans] willnot be wise & patriotic enough to nominate him but if they do,I regard his election as certain."25 Such attention on Tom wasnot wasted. He believed Campbell to be devoted to union-savingprinciples and compromise that could prevent a recourse to armsor secession without sacrificing essential interests of either Northor South. With this kind of influence on him, it is not surprisingthat Tom gave his support to the American party in the campaignof 1856. He attended numerous party functions and heard suchorators as Colonel J. G. Pickett and General William F. Haskells,for whom he shouted until hoarse, though he knew they were bothreputed to be drunkards.26 The din of politics, he reported to hisfather, was fascinating. Campbell's largess had social benefits,too; on May-day 1856 Tom was invited to the Hermitage byMiss Rachel Donelson, daughter of Andrew Jackson Donelson,the American party nominee for vice president.27

His social and political comity with a Southern elite and theclass structure he found in Lebanon soon generated in Tom anattitude of contempt for those men he regarded as his socialinferiors; and his words clearly disclosed the contrasts between

^Dictionary of American Biography (New York, 1929), III , 466.25T. L. to J. L., June 8, 1856.26T. L. to J. L., August 10, 1856; October 5, 1856; October 12, 1856.27T. L. to J. L., May 1, 1856.

246 The Bulletin

old and new worlds, between bustle and inertia. The Northerner,he wrote to his father, was energetic, intelligent and law-abiding,but the Yankee head was cultivated at the expense of the heart.28

The Northerner was luke-warm in his friendships and enmities;the Southerner, though gentle, courteous and kind, could loveand hate with a passion. The North had its aristocratic shoe-makers and soap-boilers; the South was graced with unassumingtradesmen who did not seek to thrust themselves up the socialscale. The veneer of the upstart Northern cooper was far inferiorto the Southern lawyer's polish of inherited wealth, and life wasmore pleasant where the bootmaker and tailor did not elbow theirway into the race for social honors. Thank God there was nonecessity for Chartist meetings nor room for Alton Lockes in theSouth! "I grow prouder, haughtier, everday," Tom proclaimed,"& it grinds me to think that if I ever wish to obtain politicaleminence I must seek the votes of these confounded plebians."His political phrases ought not be ad captandum vulgusl It wasnot from his new social connections that these aristocratic feelingsflowed, Tom believed; rather, he attributed them somehow to theinfluence of his father, whose natural aristocratic mien wouldhave well-fitted him for the practice of law in the South, wherethe lawyer could stave off the familiar advances of the low sortwithout damaging his practice.29 The boy did lament that thesordid and indolent side of patrician life lessened his inclinationto live permanently in the South; he failed to recognize thatperhaps these unbecoming attributes of the Southern gentilitythat he admired were inherent where social and economic affluencerested upon the labor of inferiors.

For nearly two years, this impressionable youth beheldSouthern ideals, and this new vision wrought fundamental changesin him as it replaced old concepts with new ones. For Tom,despite his protestations of adherence to the paternal view onslavery, the Negro was chattel property, whose continued en-slavement was necessary to the political and social stability ofthe South. For him, the stratified class structure of the South —dominated by the patrician order — was an ideal compared withwhich the egalitarian spirit of Yankeeland was repugnant. Forhim, the political campaign of 1856 stimulated contentiousness

28T. L. to J. L., August 24, 1856.29T. L. to J. L., September 7, 1856.

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and induced a love of politics that had eventually to seek theirlevel in an expression of new attitudes. Legalistic respect forproperty rights and visions of a social and economic order fixedin determent in its structure were proper credentials for admissionto the Copperhead order, and Tom's dossier, as a result of theTennessee experience, enabled the lad to subscribe in good con-science to the articles of faith.

The Southern sojourn ended in July of 1857 when Tomreturned to Dayton, again taking up employment with a bank,this time as a cashier with the banking firm of Harshman andWinters'. One of the proprietors of the bank was JonathanHarshman, father of Martha Harshman, whose sweet call evi-dently hastened Tom's return to the north; he married her inNovember of 1857. Domesticity and an alien environment may

From Henry Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio

DAYTON, OHIO, 1846Montgomery County Court House on left

have bridled his urge to broach his new beliefs publicly, for now —and for the next three years — he failed to "communicate" withlocal newspapers on social and political problems, as had beenhis wont, even as a sixteen-year-old boy.

But the atmosphere of political contention that pervadedthe nation and Dayton in 1860 had to summon the spirit of debatein the young man, even if it could manifest itself only in intro-spection. Not an active participant in the presidential campaign

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of 1860, Tom did commit to his journal, in an act of self-edifica-tion, an essay entitled, "A Political Speech for John Bell andEdward Everett."30 In the essay, which evidently was neverdelivered as a speech, Tom recounted his hostility for the com-mercial spirit of the North, justified slavery by appeals to theBible, rejected the egalitarian doctrines of the Republicans,subscribed to popular sovereignty, fulminated against politicianswho would sacrifice chattel property of others for demagogicpurposes, and generally inveighed against sin and temporizationwherever they could be found. Tom argued that the only way tocurb dangerous sectional parties and protect the South, whichwas now surrounded by a cordon of hostile states, was to electBell, who would command the respect of all sections and partisansin Congress. Then would wrangling cease and secession andfanaticism melt away.

The outbreak of the Civil War saw no fervor of activity inTom, but the struggle soon presented a catalytic agent thatwakened him from his political hibernation and called forth theheritage of home, college and Southern residency. A few daysafter Fort Sumter received shot and shell, Tom's father beganenrolling volunteers at Xenia. Quickly, John Lowe enlisted twohundred enthusiastic recruits who were ready to move to Dixie.First, however, they went to Columbus as Company A and therewere mustered into service as Company D of the 12th Regiment,Ohio Volunteer Militia, with Lowe elected as colonel of theregiment itself. The regiment then went to Camp Dennison fortraining and there was mustered into federal service for threeyears. Not content with a colonelcy, Lowe tried to secure briga-dier rank, but the bid failed because, so Tom believed, it washardly likely that Lincoln would appoint generals from adjoin-ing counties, Robert C. Schenck of Montgomery County and astrong supporter of Lincoln in the presidential election of 1860having recently received a brigadier's commission.31

By July of 1861, the 12th was in western Virginia near ScareyCreek with Brigadier-General Jacob D. Cox's Kanawha Brigadeof the Department of the Ohio, then under the command ofMajor-General George B. McClellan. With great military events

30Journal of Thomas Lowe.31Thomas Lowe to William Lowe, June 5, 1861; June 14, 1861. Thomas

Lowe to Norah Lowe, May 29, 1861.

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impending two hundred miles to the east at a stream known asBull Run, what happened at the muddy rivulet of Scarey wouldbe unknown or seem unimportant to most of the nation. But tothe men there, Scarey assumed a transcendent importance. ToColonel John Lowe, a clash with Confederate forces would offerhim a chance to achieve some measure of martial renown andpreferment. Yet, ironically, only a few days after a skirmish atScarey with Confederate elements on July 1%, John Lowe facedpublic imputations against his personal and professional capa-bility.

Unknown accusers, finding compliant news organs throughoutOhio — the Cincinnati Commercial, the Perrysburg Journal andCleveland newspapers among others — willing to air the charges,alleged that Lowe had committed execrable acts of cowardice atScarey. According to the Commercial, which asserted that itsaccount came from the lips of soldiers recently returned fromScarey, Colonel Lowe had concealed himself behind a house duringthe heat of battle and despite the expostulations of other officershad refused to withdraw from this shelter.32 Using the testimonyof allegedly reputed but unidentified eyewitnesses, the PerrysburgJournal, a partisan of the locally-recruited 21st Ohio VolunteerRegiment, and its commander, Colonel Jesse Norton, chargedthat although Colonel Lowe had received a request from ColonelNorton to come to the aid of his embattled regiment he hadrefused to move himself and his troops into supporting action.33

Within a few days after Scarey, the impugnment of ColonelLowe's honor had spread the breadth of Ohio's teeming cities andhamlets, from Cleveland to Cincinnati, from Perrysburg toBatavia. Against the power of the press, the anguished father,still near Scarey, entreated his son for help.34 Tom had antici-pated his father's plea, having already called on M. D. Potter,publisher of the Commercial, to publish a retraction of the chargesagainst the Colonel. Potter declined, maintaining that ColonelNorton had recently substantiated the charges while in Cin-cinnati.35 Armed with more than a mere demand, Tom thensubmitted to the Commercial copies of the statements of the

32Cincinnati Commercial, July 30, 1861.33Perrysburg Journal, July 22, 1861.34John Lowe to Thomas Lowe, August 1, 1861; August 11, 1861.36M. D. Potter to Thomas Lowe, August 1, 1861.

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eminent geologist, Colonel Charles Whittlesey of the Engineer'sCorps, and Captain Ira Gibbs from General Cox's staff, both ofwhom had witnessed the action at Scarey. Lowe acted honorablythere, declared Whittlesey; Gibbs concurred and added thatwherever he saw Lowe longest, there was the point of hottestfire.36 Still no retractions came from the Commercial. By thistime, a rival of the Commercial, the Cincinnati Ga?ette, had takenup Colonel Lowe's cause and was also demanding retractions, butto no avail. To suppress talk in Dayton, Tom arranged forDayton newspapers to publish exonerative accounts by officersand soldiers who had fought at Scarey. The Dayton Daily Journalcarried in one issue four such statements defending Colonel Lowe;Tom appended a comment pointing out that they proved theCommercial to be an organ of libel.

Lowe's superiors saw no substance in the allegations of coward-ice. General Cox believed the declarations of Whittlesey andGibbs to be sufficient defense for Lowe and urged no furtherpublicity on his behalf because it would "imply consciousness ofthe truth of the charge."37 Though criticizing general officers andtwo colonels, who had amused themselves by undertaking areconnaissance beyond enemy positions, McClellan did not con-demn Lowe in any way in his report on Scarey.38 Yet a fellow-Xenian, Whitelaw Reid, later asserted that the Colonel hadfailed to give support to Norton as requested.39

The father's need for defense, whether for honor or futurepreferment, suddenly ended on September 10, 1861, at CarnifaxFerry, Virginia. There, leading an attack, Colonel John Lowefell with a ball in his forehead, the first field officer of Ohio killedin the Civil War. Now a melancholy poem he had written somemonths earlier bore a tragic meaning for his family:

36Statements of Colonel Charles Whittlesey, August 4, 1861, and CaptainIra Gibbs, August 4, 1861, in Lowe Manuscripts Collection.

"General Jacob D. Cox to Colonel John Lowe, August 15, 1861.38Report of Major-General George B. McClellan, July 19, 1861, The War

of the Rebellion, A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and ConfederateArmies, Series I, II, 288. McClellan was so incensed by the performance of hisgenerals at Scarey that he sent a beseeching invocation to Colonel E. B. Town-send: "In Heaven's name give me some general officers who understand theirprofession. I give orders and find some who cannot execute them unless I standby them." Brigadier-General Henry Wise, commanding Confederate troops,reported that three-fourths of the Union troops panicked under fire at Scarey.

39Whitelaw Reid, Ohio in the War, 2 vols. (Cin., 1868), II, 149.

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My day of life is over,And here I lay me down

In the hot, red field of battleIn the arms of high renown.

By the shaft of death I'm strickenIn my upward flight to fame,

And I give my life to nothingnessTo win a warrior's name.

For the rest of his life, Tom Lowe believed that his father hadboldly and unnecessarily exposed himself to danger in order torefute the allegations of cowardice. The official report of theaction lends some credence to the son's belief; according to hiscommander, Brigadier-General Henry Benham, Colonel Lowemade his death attack in an exposed situation without orders.40

The sacrifice of John Lowe served no great military purposeand did not even quiet talk about his alleged conduct at Scarey.But it did provide Tom with the immediate justification forpublicly venting his beliefs in words and deeds that must havesent the paternal cadaver whirring. Prior to the Carnifax Ferrytragedy, for Tom to oppose the war or the Lincoln administrationwas to oppose his father. Once relieved of his father's restraininghand, he openly clasped the dogmas of Copperheadism andworshipped at the altar of its high priest, Clement Laird Vallandig-ham, whose liturgy spoke volumes for compromise and peace withthe South. Tom's life as a Copperhead is beyond the scope ofthis essay, but in brief, as his formative years presaged, it was oneof bizarre events, acrimonious controversy and bitter frustration.In his militant exertions on behalf of the Copperhead movement,no man in Dayton — Vallandigham included — equalled him.

* * * *Of what substance was Tom Lowe? At least in what respects

was his personality a typical manifestation of the Copperheadcomplex? In its political, social and economic conservatism, hispersonality bore similarities to the dominant complex of theCopperhead body; for that persuasion was legalistic and con-servative in its political, social and economic outlook. Dedicated

40Report of Brigadier-General Henry W. Benham, commanding FirstBrigade, September 12, 1861, The War of the Rebellion, A Compilation of theOfficial Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, V, 134.

252 The Bulletin

to a strict construction of the Constitution that would limit thenational government in social and economic matters, almostatavistic in their devotion to states' rights, opposed to emancipa-tion of the Negro slave, and hostile to the emerging finance andindustrial capitalism of the times, the Copperheads offered anemotional and intellectual sanctuary to Tom Lowe. As a resultof his formative experiences, he had come, on the eve of the CivilWar, to regard the maintenance of slavery as essential to thesocial structure of the South, where the democratic leaven of theindustrial North did not yet infect men — white or black — witha frenzy for equality. With his ingrained legalism, Lowe wouldfind it simple, during the war, to subscribe to the Copperheadcontention that the Constitution denied to the national legis-lature the right to confiscate or emancipate the Negro slave.

When he embraced the Copperhead movement, Tom's com-plex of conservatism — a fait accompli — was typical of that ofhis political accessories; but the experiences and accidental forcesthat shaped the Lowe psyche were atypical. Other Copperheadscould be as legalistic and conservative as Tom Lowe, but few werecast from a similar mold; in its genesis, the Lowe emotional andintellectual context was unique. His very environment had, infact, fashioned an emotional make-up lacking empathy for, andeven hostile to, those Copperhead allies who arose from Irish-American and German-American enclaves. For, according to theLowe understanding, these hyphenate groups — hard working,frugal and "on the make" — carried no self-sacrificing, ennoblingpassion to remain unassuming ciphers who knew their place, asTom's Southern tradesmen did, and as their superiors wouldhave them know it. Grimy, sweaty laboring men might dwell inthe same political realm with Tom Lowe, but their path to Copper-headism was the customary one; Tom Lowe's was a solitary pathunknown to the common sort but one which, nonetheless, ledhim to a political kinship with those from whom he shrank indistaste.

However unusual and inexorable the forces giving rise to thesocial and political attitudes of a man, they do not in themselvesexempt him from accountability for the correctness of his views.Tom himself, sensing that he was a creature of circumstance,explained away his accountability by an appeal to the deter-ministic rationale — or rationalization — held by his preceptor,

The Genesis of a Copperhead 253

Vallandigham. "Val," according to Tom, averred to him that aman could not help his convictions and thus deserved no morepraise or blame for his political beliefs than he did for living.41

Such a tenet could reassure its holder of the wisdom of his con-victions and even justify all kinds of political aberration; such atenet could convince him that he was of the political elect; andsuch a doctrinaire tenet could move a man faced with problemsrequiring the application of systematic and deliberate thoughtto reason reflexively from a limited matrix and to identify personalpredilection as absolute truth. Doctrinaire and litigious in itsdemands, this belief system might, under the onrush of civil war,inflict pain and frustration on Tom Lowe; but he had chosen tobe an easily molded vessel and, like Erisichthon, listened not towise counsels. The "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,"if they came to Tom Lowe, would be of his own making.

41Thomas Lowe to John Wallace, August 24, 1861.

NEWSBOY SAGACITY

A newsboy, anxious to dispose of his stock in hand yesterday,cried lustily, at the corner of Fourth and Vine Streets: " 'Ere'syer mornin' papers — all about Jeff Davis bein' hung — onlythree cents." An individual, who was passing at the time, wasstartled at the announcement made by the ragged youth, andwithout taking time to consider the amount of unpoetic licenseusually taken by the class of merchants he was about to patronize,he invested three cents and got a copy of the Gazette. But failingto discover the news of Jeff's execution, he tried to bring thenewsboy to an account for his misrepresentation, when he wasrepulsed by the following remark: "If Jeff Davis 'd bin hung I'da sold all my papers afore six o'clock this mornin', and yer wouldn'ta got it for three cents nither." The man passed on.

(Cincinnati Daily GazetteWednesday, May 22, 1861)