CLEMENT L. VALLANDIGHAM

(1820-1871)

HE compilers of a recent 'Dictionary of Names' call Clement L. Vallandigham "an American Democratic politician, leader 25 of the Copperheads during the Civil War." This is intended to be invidious, but it may be accepted as without prejudice to a man who stood for one extreme of principle as emphatically as Wendell Phillips and William Lloyd Garrison did for another. The great Whig leaders of Europe in the eighteenth century, the great Republican and Democratic leaders of America in the first quarter of the nineteenth, taught that the world cannot be forced to become civilized-that coercion in the hope of advancing civilization involves and necessitates reaction, and that every war forced as a mode of propagating ideas supplants progress with reaction as far as its influence goes. They held a theory which afterwards came to be known as "Evolution," - the idea that progress is a mere mode of mind and morals, and that it must come from slow growth,-the patient, charitable, long-suffering propagation of moral ideas with full confidence in their ultimate triumph. As a corollary of this, they taught the nonintervention of one people in the affairs of another and, that each people might be evolved most effectively by pressure from its own "environment," they advocated "local self-government,” the disbandment of standing armies, the disuse of naval armament, and the utmost possible reliance on moral rather than on physical force. Cobden and Bright advocated this theory in England in connection with the agitation for universal free trade. In America the "Copperheads" of the North represented it with an obstinacy often as devoted and daring as that John Brown showed when he invaded Virginia as an exponent of the conflicting idea that it is the highest duty of every brave and manly man to compel his neighbors, at the peril of his life and theirs, to be just, and just at once. The Copperhead of the North, the Abolitionist of the South often represented the highest type of individual courage, standing, the one and the other, isolated in the community, and vindicating each his ideas of right at the risk of liberty and fortune, if not of life itself. Such an individualist was Vallandigham when he made his speech of February 20th, 1861, against Centralization, and, accepting him as "the leader of the Copperheads," it is as such that posterity will judge him.

He was born at New Lisbon, Ohio, July 29th, 1820. In the congressional campaign of 1858, his eloquence made him one of the most prominent Democratic leaders of Ohio, and his lack of caution or his contempt for it, added to his celebrity by making his utterances frequently available as "campaign material" for his opponents. He was elected to Congress in 1857 and served until 1863, when he was banished to the South as "a war measure.» From the South he went to Canada, and in 1863 the "Copperheads" of Ohio nominated him for Governor. He was defeated and was not afterwards prominent in politics. He died at Lebanon, Ohio, June 17th, 1871, from the accidental discharge of a pistol. It was asserted by many at the time that he had committed suicide, but as the prejudices of the Civil War period abate, it becomes evident that there was no just ground for the assertion. As a leader, Vallandigham lacked balance and the faculty of calculation. He was swayed too much by his emotions, and his intellectual powers, which might otherwise have exerted a controlling influence, were too often held in abeyance by the force of his feelings. W. V. B.

CENTRALIZATION AND THE REVOLUTIONARY POWER OF FEDERAL PATRONAGE

(From a Speech on the State of the Union, Delivered in the House of Representatives, February 20th, 1861)

EVOTED as I am to the Union, I have yet no eulogies to pronounce upon it to-day. It needs none. Its highest eulogy is the history of this country for the last seventy years. The triumphs of war and the arts of peace,-science; civilization; wealth; population; commerce; trade; manufacture; literature; education; justice; tranquillity; security to life, to person, to property; material happiness; common defense; national renown; all that is implied in the "blessings of liberty"; these, and more, have been its fruits from the beginning to this hour. These have enshrined it in the hearts of the people; and, before God, I believe they will restore and preserve it. And to-day they demand of us, their embassadors and representatives, to tell them how this great work is to be accomplished.

Sir, it has well been said that it is not to be done by eulogies. Eulogy is for times of peace. Neither is it to be done by lamentations over its decline and fall.

These are for the poet and the

historian, or for the exiled statesman who may chance to sit amid the ruins of desolated cities. Ours is a practical work; and it is the business of the wise and practical statesman to inquire first what the causes are of the evils for which he is required to devise a remedy.

Sir, the subjects of mere partisan controversy which have been chiefly discussed here and in the country, so far, are not the causes, but only the symptoms or developments of the malady which is to be healed. These causes are to be found in the nature of man and in the peculiar nature of our system of governments. Thirst for power and place, or pre-eminence,— in a word, ambition,-is one of the strongest and earliest developed passions of man. It is as discernible in the schoolboy as in the statesman. It belongs alike to the individual and to masses of men, and is exhibited in every gradation of society, from the family up to the highest development of the State. In all voluntary associations of any kind, and in every ecclesiastical organization, also, it is equally manifested. It is the sin by which the angels fell. No form of government is exempt from it; for even the absolute monarch is obliged to execute his authority through the instrumentality of agents; and ambition here courts one master instead of many masters. As between foreign States, it manifests itself in schemes of conquest and territorial aggrandizement. In despotisms, it is shown in intrigues, assassinations, and revolts. In constitutional monarchies and in aristocracies, it exhibits itself in contests among the different orders of society and the several interests of agriculture, trade, commerce, and the professions. In democracies, it is seen everywhere, and in its highest development; for here all the avenues to political place and preferment, and emolument, too, are open to every citizen; and all movements and all interests of society, and every great question, -moral, social, religious, scientific,- no matter what, assumes, at some time or other, a political complexion, and forms a part of the election issues and legislation of the day. Here, when combined with interest, and where the action of the Government may be made a source of wealth, then honor, virtue, patriotism, religion, all perish before it. No restraints and no compacts can bind it.

In a Federal Republic all these evils are found in their amplest proportions, and take the form also of rivalries between the States; or more commonly and finally at least,- especially where