February 1863–Was the Danville North Star a Copperhead?

By Gary Far­row, Danville His­tor­i­cal Society

The North Star was not abo­li­tion­ist. Dur­ing the War, polit­i­cal posi­tions arose along a con­tin­u­um. On one end of the spec­trum were Rad­i­cal Abo­li­tion­ists, who saw slav­ery as a moral imper­a­tive that must tri­umph at all costs; on the oth­er were the Peace Democ­rats or Cop­per­heads, who want­ed peace with the Con­fed­er­ates at any price. In between were the War Democ­rats, who reject­ed the Cop­per­heads fac­tion that con­trolled the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. These War Democ­rats joined with the Repub­li­cans to sup­port the war effort against the South. Lincoln’s Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion, which freed slaves in all rebel states, had just tak­en effect in Jan­u­ary. Now in Feb­ru­ary, the North Star became more explic­it about where it stood.

February 21,1863 North Star, What is Radicalism?

Wen­dell Phillips defined Rad­i­cal­ism in a late speech at Ply­mouth Church, when he said: -“Now, I would accept any­thing on an anti­slav­ery basis. I would accept sep­a­ra­tion. I would accept com­pro­mise. I would accept peace, and pay the whole Con­fed­er­ate debt at par on an anti­slav­ery basis. On that basis, I have touched the hard path of Nation­al exis­tence. I have reached the gran­ite stra­ta, and may begin to build agrar­i­an peace. And until I reach that no chi­canery of par­ties, no inge­nu­ity of com­pro­mise, no man­ner of sep­a­ra­tion can make any dif­fer­ence. We are in for the war.”

To which the N.Y. Times (Repub­li­can) says : — “We thank him for the clear­ness of the state­ment. It expos­es the very pith of the doc­trine of his school. Let what­ev­er else may be, the destruc­tion of slav­ery shall be. This revealed to us to be the first, great, absolute prin­ci­ple — the all engross­ing pur­pose, the all deter­min­ing stan­dard, the all com­pelling end.

“Every man can appre­hend that exact­ly: if he be a true Union man, can take sharp issue upon it. It is a ques­tion of suprema­cy of high­est claim, of first right between Nation­al­i­ty and Abo­li­tion. The pure Union man says that the Union must be main­tained, whether slav­ery be destroyed or not. The pure Abo­li­tion­ist says that the Union be destroyed or not. The one would secure the nation’s life at any price: the oth­er, slavery’s death at any price. The true name of the for­mer is his prime object; and the true name of the lat­ter is destruc­tive, because destruc­tion is his prime object.”

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New Hampshire

There is a very ani­mat­ed polit­i­cal con­test going on in our neigh­bor­ing State of New Hamp­shire. Par­ty lines are pret­ty sharply drawn between the Democ­rats and Con­ser­v­a­tives and the Admin­is­tra­tion par­ti­sans and Rad­i­cals. The for­mer take the broad ground of sus­tain­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion and Union as it was; and the Gov­ern­ment for these ends. They oppose all the rad­i­cal mea­sures of the imme­di­ate, whole­sale abo­li­tion­ists, who are mak­ing that issue the main object and pur­pose of our present unhap­py sec­tion­al strife. They oppose the cor­rup­tion, profli­ga­cy, and mis­man­age­ment which has seem­ing­ly char­ac­ter­ized many of those lead­ers who have con­trol of war move­ments. They are loy­al to the Union and the Con­sti­tu­tion, and for the pur­pose of sus­tain­ing them, and putting down armed seces­sion, they have fin­ished thou­sands of sol­diers for the Union Army. Their plat­form is a good one, if it can only be sus­tained against the still defi­ant action of Seces­sion lead­ers of the South, who per­sis­tent­ly pro­claim that their vio­lent course must cease noth­ing short of actu­al sep­a­ra­tion and inde­pen­dence — a pol­i­cy in which these lead­ers have been great­ly strength­ened by the recent abo­li­tion course of the Administration.

Thus it would seem that the two extremes, vio­lent Abso­lu­tion and vio­lent Seces­sion, have met with a prospect, we fear, of leav­ing the old Union and Con­sti­tu­tion, under which our whole coun­try has been high­ly pros­pered to be utter­ly destroyed. And yet we believe if peo­ple could be assured that the war would cease, with the suprema­cy of the Con­sti­tu­tion and the Union re-estab­lished over all the States, a large major­i­ty of them would hail the result with accla­ma­tion, leav­ing the ultra ele­ments in this ter­ri­ble strife to their mer­it­ed fate. But we are not san­guine that such a result can be brought about …

Are we not aft at, upon an unknown sea with­out chart or com­pass? Would it not require the wis­est and most har­mo­nious coun­sels to recon­struct the Union on any sat­is­fac­to­ry and per­ma­nent basis? ….

May Heav­en grant that the head of rad­i­cal North­ern extremes, and that of unjus­ti­fi­able vio­lent South­ern Seces­sion and rebel­lion may be crushed — the lat­ter, if it can­not be any oth­er means, then by a con­tin­ued and most vig­or­ous pros­e­cu­tion of the war — the for­mer, by the peace­ful, legit­i­mate, con­sti­tu­tion­al exer­cise of the Freeman’s ballot.

This priv­i­lege the peo­ple or vot­ers of New Hamp­shire are soon to avail them­selves of… The Democ­rats and the Con­ser­v­a­tives are appar­ent­ly strong in num­bers and influ­ence… not with­stand­ing some of their rad­i­cal oppo­nents, in a par­ti­san spir­it and for par­ty ends denounce them as “trai­tors” as “cop­per­heads”… But at the same time they [Democ­rats and Con­ser­v­a­tives] dis­like, and oppose the extreme, destruc­tive pol­i­cy of North­ern par­ti­sans which tends to dis­union and sep­a­ra­tion. … The elec­tion takes place the 11th of March. What the result will be, we do not pre­dict; but it looks now as if the Democ­rats would make large gains, if in fact they do not car­ry the State. Time will tell.

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The answer to the ques­tion: Was the North Star a “Cop­per­head?” is no. In pre­vi­ous edi­tions, the paper lament­ed the Pandora’s Box that free­ing the slaves would open. So in the final analy­sis, the North Star was a War Demo­c­rat that endorsed restora­tion of the Union.

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We have no impor­tant war news this week. There have been no great bat­tles or even skir­mish­es. The Army of the Potomac is inac­tive, and must be for some weeks owing to the mud­dy state of the roads. In the mean­time, the army is being re-orga­nized under Gen. Hook­er. May “fight­ing Joe” give the rebels decid­ed­ly suc­cess­ful bat­tle, he next meets them.

With the stakes get­ting high­er and total war on the hori­zon, the win­ter gave each per­son in the nation at least a par­tial respite to fig­ure out what should be done next.