Disunion follows the Civil War as it unfolded.Near dawn on March 24, 1863, Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside stepped off a train in Cincinnati. The tall, bald, magnificently bewhiskered soldier arrived from Washington to take command of the Army’s Department of the Ohio, an enormous command that encompassed Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois and most of Kentucky. His orders from the War Department were to collect troops and prepare to lead an invasion of eastern Tennessee. In the meantime, though, he also had to deal with the roiling antiwar politics of the Ohio Valley.
Burnside’s new billet offered redemption after failure at the head of the Army of the Potomac during the winter. The general had led the disastrous assaults on entrenched Confederate troops at Fredericksburg, Va., in December. Later, the “Mud March” fiasco, a failed attempt at a winter campaign, prompted feuding among the Army of the Potomac’s top commanders. President Abraham Lincoln finally removed him in late January 1863. But Lincoln liked the unassuming and sincere Indiana native and wanted him to have an active command. This new assignment was another chance to serve his country.
Library of Congress Gen. Ambrose BurnsideBurnside replaced Brig. Gen. Horatio G. Wright, who had commanded the Department of the Ohio since its formation in August 1862. Wright remained in Cincinnati for several days to ease the new man into command and teach him the lay of the land. The threat of a springtime Confederate invasion of Kentucky loomed, and the defense of the commonwealth took priority over offensive plans. More to the point, the restive states north of the Ohio River had to be quieted. Burnside learned from Wright that Ohio, Indiana and Illinois were cauldrons of violent resistance to the federal government.
Just as galling to these soldiers, anti-administration speech throughout the region was commonplace. Democratic speakers and newspapers heaped torrents of abuse on Lincoln, his policies and his generals. The Emancipation Proclamation continued to be a lightning rod for protest. The constant abuse, many officers and enlisted men believed, encouraged desertion and seriously weakened the armies in the field.
To put an end to it, Burnside had a solution. Three weeks after arriving in Cincinnati, on April 13, he announced General Orders 38, applying military authority to the regulation of all speech and publication in the department. “It must be distinctly understood,” he declared, “that treason expressed or implied will not be tolerated.”
Burnside’s order reflected the sentiments of many soldiers who blamed partisan — i.e., Democratic — speech for prolonging the war. Days before the order appeared, Brig. Gen. Jacob D. Cox, commander of the District of Ohio, noted in a speech that soldiers believed “that these enemies at home are more dangerous than those they meet in the field.” As Burnside himself publicly explained, his order was a declaration of military superiority over civil government in combatting disloyalty and policing the home front. “I am probably invested with a little more power than the majority of you in suppressing anything like treason, and acts that tend to create dissention.”
Burnside’s military edict against treasonous speech was only the latest military measure to fight the growing problem of resistance to the government in the North. Wright, his predecessor, had created a spy bureau made up of civilian detectives and soldiers detailed to roam the landscape and sniff out disloyalty and conspiracy. His Army detectives spied on groups who aided deserters and vowed resistance to the newly passed Enrollment Act. They also reported on sales of arms and ammunition to groups deemed disloyal and bent on violence. Wright also instituted a department-wide ban on the sale of firearms and ammunition in order to keep guns out of the hands of traitors.
General Orders 38 met with widespread approval from Republicans who dearly wished to muzzle their political foes. Troops applauded the measure, none more so than Brig. Gen. Milo S. Hascall, commander of the District of Indiana, who promulgated (with Burnside’s approval) a similar order specifically for his state. “All newspapers and public speakers that counsel or encourage resistance to the Conscription Act, or any other law of Congress passed as a war measure, or that endeavor to bring the war policy of the Government into disrepute,” would, he warned, be deemed violators of the order.
While Republicans cheered the orders, Democrats scolded the generals for unconstitutional infringements of the freedoms of speech and the press. Several Indiana Democratic editors mockingly wondered what Burnside meant by “implied treason.” In May, Hascall proceeded to arrest editors, shutter several newspapers and threaten others in his state as a demonstration of the term’s meaning. Many Democratic speakers and newspaper editors held their tongues lest they be arrested and imprisoned by the Army.
Democratic indignation soared. Many Democrats soon braved the threat of arrest and boldly criticized Burnside’s military edict. Speakers and editors lambasted the order as tyrannical, unconstitutional and merely the latest Lincoln administration travesty. The order quickly came to have the opposite effect from what Burnside had hoped: far from stifling dissent, Burnside’s order provided a rallying cry for antiwar partisans. Rallies throughout the region brought out thousands of energized Democrats.
One Democratic politician appears to have used his party’s reaction to Burnside’s edict to revive his political fortunes. Former Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham of Dayton, Ohio, defeated in his 1862 congressional race, had plans to run for governor in the fall of 1863. He tapped Democratic anger and attacked General Orders 38 in public speeches. Army officers dressed in civilian clothes recorded one of his speeches. Shortly afterward, troops surrounded Vallandigham’s Dayton house and battered down his door; they arrested him and hauled him away to headquarters in Cincinnati. Burnside promptly tried him by military commission for violation of the order. While Dayton dissolved in riot and half its downtown burned, the tribunal found Vallandigham guilty and sentenced him to military imprisonment, which Lincoln changed to exile in the Confederacy. Vallandigham’s arrest made him a martyr in the eyes of Ohio Democrats, who nominated him as their candidate for governor.
While most Republicans took delight in military punishment for Democratic speech, one important Republican acted behind the scenes to put an end to Burnside’s order. From the outset, Indiana Governor Oliver P. Morton perceived both that enforcing the order was impractical and that Democrats gained more from it politically than Republicans. The month before he had disposed of the dangerous problem raised by the military arrest of a sitting Illinois Democratic judge, Charles H. Constable. The generals by their heavy-handed tactics were again interfering with political matters for which they had little aptitude. He traveled to Washington and lobbied the Lincoln administration to remove both Burnside and Hascall. He failed to have Burnside canned, but the War Department soon replaced Hascall.
Morton’s intervention with national authorities brought an end to Burnside’s policy of military arrests for speech. At the beginning of the military commission trial of a Democratic Indiana state senator arrested for disloyal speech, a messenger from Morton informed Burnside that the president and his cabinet disapproved of Burnside’s arrest of Vallandigham and the Army’s interference in political matters. Rattled by this startling news, Burnside telegraphed the president to offer his resignation, which Lincoln tersely declined, saying that the arrest had been foolish but the Cabinet would back him. The general promptly ended the policy of arrests and trials for disloyal speech, even freeing the Indiana state senator after the commission found him guilty.
While he discontinued arrests for speech, Burnside still aimed to silence critics. On June 1, he ordered the shutdown of The Chicago Times, the leading antiwar Democratic newspaper in the West. Reacting to Democratic clamor and protests from prominent Republicans, Lincoln initially ordered Burnside to rescind the order. But other Republicans who approved of Burnside’s move intervened, prompting Lincoln to waffle. He flip-flopped and ordered Burnside to keep the paper under lock and key. His message arrived too late. Burnside had already lifted the suppression order. While the general did not rescind General Orders 38, the suppression of The Chicago Times was to be his last major attempt to curb Democratic opposition in the Department of the Ohio.
Burnside blamed Governor Morton for the demise of his program for rigorous military intervention into civil affairs, one of the most notorious efforts to suppress speech and press freedoms in American history. “The civil law is too slow,” he groused privately. The general, who saw himself as supreme military governor over five states, greater than a mere state governor, believed the power of the Army should be employed to quell dissent. But the capable Indiana executive prevailed and kept the general at bay. In July, Morton again skillfully deflected Burnside’s efforts to declare martial law in Indiana during an extensive Confederate raid across the region.
In angry frustration, Burnside’s staff officers turned a portrait of the governor that hung in their Cincinnati headquarters upside down. The irony of their symbolic protest appears to have escaped them.
Follow Disunion at twitter.com/NYTcivilwar or join us on Facebook.
Sources: William Marvel, “Burnside”; Craig D. Tenney, “To Suppress or Not to Suppress: Abraham Lincoln and the Chicago Times,” Civil War History 27 (September, 1981); Stephen E. Towne, “Killing the Serpent Speedily: Governor Morton, General Hascall, and the Suppression of the Democratic Press in Indiana, 1863,” Civil War History 52 (March, 2006); Stephen E. Towne, “Worse than Vallandigham: Governor Oliver P. Morton, Lambdin P. Milligan, and the Military Arrest and Trial of Indiana State Senator Alexander J. Douglas during the Civil War,” Indiana Magazine of History 106 (March, 2010).
Stephen E. Towne is an associate university archivist at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and the editor of “A Fierce, Wild Joy: The Civil War Letters of Colonel Edward J. Wood, 48th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment.”
