Civil War Chicago

Eyewitness to History

Theodore J. Karamanski, Eileen M. McMahon

• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9780821444818
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

The American Civil War was a crucial event in the development of Chicago as the metropolis of the heartland. Not only did Chicagoans play an important role in the politics of the conflict, encouraging emancipation and promoting a "hard war" policy against Southern civilians, but they supported the troops materially through production of military supplies and foodstuffs as well as morally and spiritually through patriotic publications and songs. The Civil War transformed Chicago from a mere commercial center to an industrial power as well as the nation's railroad hub and busiest port. The war also divided Chicago, however, between Lincoln supporters and Copperheads, whites and blacks, workers and owners, natives and newcomers.

The city played a key role in elevating Abraham Lincoln to the Republican presidential nomination in 1860, yet only four years later a Chicago politician' s influence was key in declaring the war a failure and promoting a platform of peace with the Confederacy. Using seldom seen or newly uncovered sources, this book tells the story of the Civil War through the eyes of those who lived that history. Photographs throughout the book effectively convey the geography of events in this pivotal period of Chicago's history, and the editors have provided a useful driving guide to Civil War sites in and around the city.

FIVE

The Politics of War

HIGHLY PARTISAN RHETORIC has always been a hallmark of the rough-and-tumble American democratic process, and the issues that led to the Civil War and the subsequent events of that conflict witnessed highly charged political battles that would put present-day partisanship to shame. The Chicago Tribune, owned by Joseph Medill, was an ardent supporter of Lincoln beginning with the Republican Convention of 1860. Medill was further heartened by Lincoln’s emergence in 1862 as a champion of slave emancipation. From the vantage point of human rights, history, hindsight, the saving of the Union, and the end of slavery put the Tribune on the right side of history. However, for those who were caught in the immediacy of the debate or were asked to pay history’s high price, the legacy for future generations of the right or wrong of war policy was less than clear. Republican Party political and military tactics often violated cherished values of the republic, such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right to habeas corpus, and freedom from government compulsion to perform military service. For immigrants in particular, the latter brought back unhappy associations with the autocratic militaristic states many had fled, as did the Republican Party’s sometimes strident assertion of Anglo-Protestant values.¹

The cultural and religious divisions in Chicago that had been laid bare by 1862 were exacerbated in the succeeding years of the war by increasing class tension. Resentments grew as it became clear that some safe behind the battle lines economically benefitted from the wartime economy while others faced the horrors of battle and even paid the ultimate price with their lives. War weariness prompted some to seek a peaceful compromise to end the war—even if that meant letting the Southern states leave the Union. The racist rhetoric and policies of the Democratic Party in the decades leading up to the Civil War preconditioned its adherents to accept the justice of a war to save the Union but not one that advanced racial equality. Chicago Republicans, like their counterparts across the North, convinced that theirs was a “heavenly cause,” branded their opponents as enemies of the nation rather than as rivals in the political arena. Democrats who did not fuse into a coalition with the Lincoln administration were termed “copperheads,” after the poisonous snake that would strike from the grass where it lay concealed.²

The issue of emancipation more than any other shattered the bipartisan unity that Stephen Douglas had forged in his 1861 “patriots or traitors” speech to Chicago. For many Democrats, federal action against slavery threatened “the Union as it was” and any hope of a negotiated end to the sectional conflict. At the same time, many men and women engaged in putting down the rebellion sought a means to both punish traitors and crush the rebellion. For them, striking at the root of Southern society—its slave system—seemed a moral and military necessity. Chicago’s soldiers and civilians were divided over the issue.

Initially, Wilbur F. Storey, owner and editor of the Chicago Times, was inspired by Stephen Douglas’s warning that there were only “patriots—or traitors” and tried to support Lincoln’s cause to save the Union. Defeat at Bull Run in 1861 and inaction in the West discouraged and angered many in Lincoln’s Republican Party. The abolitionist minority in the party began to build support to change the war from one intended only to save the Union to one that would also end slavery. This agitation drove many former Douglas Democrats into opposition to the war. The Emancipation Proclamation, announced in preliminary form in September 1862, proved a turning point. In its wake, Storey and the Chicago Times never said a good word about Lincoln, and Chicago became increasingly divided over support for his leadership of the war effort.³

Storey was a brilliant journalist, a forerunner to the colorful and aggressive newspaper tycoons of the late nineteenth century, and a founder of the “no-holds-barred” school of journalism that would later be made famous in Chicago. Storey, however, was no friend to African Americans. To him emancipation was a death sentence for the white race in America and Lincoln had “nothing but nigger on the brain.” He scornfully referred to Lincoln as “foolish, lank, nerveless, almost brainless,” “an old joker,” and “Czar Abraham.” Lincoln’s administration was a “piratical crew” and the country was a “hopeless wreck”—and that was when the war was going fairly well. When the Army of the Potomac was repulsed at Fredericksburg on the eve of the Emancipation Proclamation becoming the law, Storey’s Times lamented “the most stupendous homicide of modern times,” which left Lincoln’s hands “dripping with gore.”⁴

The Emancipation Proclamation came at a time in the war when the Union army clearly needed more men than could be obtained simply by a call for volunteers. While Chicago was not subjected to a draft until later in the war, many parts of the Midwest first faced conscription in 1862. To administration opponents, the draft together with the periodic suspension of the right of habeas corpus and emancipation made the war seem like a fight to give rights to the black man and take them away from the white. After a succession of Republican political successes in Chicago and in Illinois, the Democrats reversed their fortunes in the fall of 1862 by winning not only the state legislature but also the Chicago City Council and mayor’s office. Storey’s Times became the official organ of city hall, while in disgust Lincoln’s supporters in the business community refused to allow the sale of the newspaper at the Board of Trade, railroad stations, and even the Young Men’s Christian Association reading rooms.

Storey was the journalistic champion of Chicago Democrats opposed to emancipation. By the summer of 1862, he was locked in a bitter partisan war of words with Joseph Medill’s Chicago Tribune and to a lesser extent the moderate Republican Chicago Daily Journal. Storey relished pushing back against the Tribune’s version of events, and he questioned the integrity and competence of Republican politicos high or low, not excluding the president. For its part, Medill’s Tribune prodded Lincoln to strike against slavery. Because the inner civil war in Chicago was fueled by culture and class as well as war politics, it permeated most public issues from the number of polling places in Bridgeport to which party controlled judgeships to who ran the school board to the racial composition of the students in the classroom.⁵

Bitter partisan wrangling in the North invited military interference in the political arena on the part of General Ambrose E. Burnside. After his mishandling of the Battle of Fredericksburg in late 1862, Burnside was transferred to the Department of the Ohio. Unable to tolerate any criticism of the war effort, Burnside issued his controversial General Order Number 38 criminalizing any form of war opposition. He first used this order against former Ohio congressman and candidate for Ohio governor Clement Vallandigham, who championed the copperhead peace movement; Burnside had him arrested and tried, despite his civilian status, in a military court. The Chicago Times claimed that Vallandigham was a champion of “free speech and peace,” and the Times called this action a “funeral of civil liberty.” Thin-skinned Burnside then turned his attention to the Times when it called him the “Butcher of Fredericksburg,” and he ordered its shutdown. Chicago Republicans were thrilled by this action. Democrats took to the streets, their ranks fortified with burly Irish dockhands; they rallied in the courthouse square to protest this usurpation of constitutional rights and threatened to burn down Joseph Medill’s brand new Tribune building. Storey filed an injunction in the U.S. Circuit Court, and Judge Thomas Drummond issued a restraining order against Burnside’s action until its legality was determined.⁶

Fearful of a full-scale riot, moderates on both sides, such as Democratic mayor Francis Sherman and Republican senator Lyman Trumbull, recognized that this breach of civil liberties did nothing but exacerbate civic divisions. Although Lincoln did not appreciate the Times diatribes against his administration, he agreed that Burnside had overstepped his authority and asked him to repeal the order. A potentially explosive partisan battle in Chicago that threatened to infect the entire North was thus defused. Wilbur Storey, whose newspaper was already highly regarded as a source of up-to-date war news, could now rightly pose to a national audience as a martyr to the cause of endangered democratic freedoms.⁷

The prospect of a draft also divided Chicagoans. In 1862 as the war dragged on and enlistments declined, Congress passed the Militia Act. It empowered the Lincoln administration to call upon state militias and set state quotas. If a state failed to meet its obligations, the federal government was empowered to activate state regulations to conscript men for service. The fact that the draft law allowed wealthy individuals to avoid service by paying a three-hundred-dollar commutation fee heightened class tensions. Later this rule was changed, but the well-heeled were still able to avoid service by providing a substitute to serve in their stead. The threat of a draft was often enough to motivate many to join the military, as they would not get enlistment bonuses if they were forced to join. The bonus system offered positive inducements to patriot service. Although the State of Illinois did not offer a bonus, the City of Chicago and most of the city’s wards did offer cash incentives, which amounted to several hundred dollars—a tidy sum when working men earned a dollar a day for hard physical labor. The bonus led to the emergence of a new wartime occupation: the bounty jumper. Chicago became the Midwest center for men who enlisted to collect a bonus and then immediately deserted. Unlike many other midwestern states, Illinois was able to meet its quotas through volunteers until late 1864.⁸

The draft increased class tensions in Chicago. Historian Lorien Foote has documented that draftees or bonus men (those who enlisted for the cash incentive) were often from the lower classes and were disparaged by soldiers of a more established background who had enlisted in 1861 or 1862. They were subjected to harsher discipline, as they were seen as lacking in self-restraint and prone to disorder. Bounty jumpers in particular were disparaged as the worst example of an urban sporting or criminal class. These notions shaped the way Chicago newspapers described resistance to the draft and shaped postwar class conflict.⁹

However, heavy pressure to meet these quotas compelled local authorities to record the names of potential recruits. As enrollment officers made their rounds in Chicago neighborhoods, some met stiff resistance, especially in the poor, working-class and mostly Irish districts. Antidraft violence in Chicago never approached the horror of the New York City riots of July 1863. This may have been partly because a larger percentage of working people in Chicago were property owners with a stake in their communities. Also, Chicagoans fearful of the draft were smart enough to show their displeasure by attacking the enrollment process and not waiting to have their names pulled out in an actual draft lottery. The most obvious and easy way to do this was to simply lie about one’s identity. This might be done in combination with another frequent tactic: physical intimidation of government agents.

Bridgeport was home to the most serious riot over the draft in Chicago. In one incident, between three hundred and four hundred Irish men, women, and children violently repelled enrollment officers’ attempts to record the names of men eligible for the draft. After the Bridgeport riot, the Tribune took the Irish to task for their resistance to the draft, accusing them of disloyalty to the Union and an unwillingness to follow due process of law. While the Republican organ acknowledged that many Irish had already shown valor on the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Editors’ Note
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• One A Divided City: Chicago and the Crisis of the Union
• Two The War Spirit: Chicagoans and the Call to Arms
• Three Ties between the Home Front and the Battlefield
• Four Confined Confederates: Camp Douglas and Chicago
• Five The Politics of War
• Six The Business and Politics of War
• Seven The War in the Wards
• Eight The Long Shadow of War
• Nine A Guide to Civil War Chicago Sites
• Notes
• Index