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The Dream of a Northwestern 
 Confederacy 
 
 By William C. Cochran 
 
 J AIM 2^ 
 
 The State Historical Society of Wisconsin 
 
 Separate No. 175 
 
 From the Proceedings of the Society for 1916 
 
 Ibl'j 
 
The Dream of a Northwestern 
 Confederacy 
 
 By William C. Cochran 
 
 The State Historical Society of WisconsinI 
 
 Separate No. 175 
 
 From the Proceedings of the Society for 1916 
 
 Q^ 
 
 A I ^- 
 

The Dream of a Northwestern Confederacy 
 
 By William C. Cochran 
 
 On the fourth day of February, 1861, "Deputies of the 
 Sovereign and Independent States of South Carolina, 
 Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana," 
 as they styled themselves, met in the state capitol at 
 Montgomery, Alabama, and proceeded to organize a 
 "Provisional Government of the Confederate States of 
 America." The work was all cut and dried, and in four 
 days a complete Constitution was adopted, and on the 
 fifth day Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was elected 
 president, and Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, vice- 
 president, of the Confederate States of America. There 
 was little travail about the birth of this nation. Its legiti- 
 macy was questioned by none present, and it was more 
 than two months before the doubts of the northern por- 
 tion of the United States found expression in ofTicial 
 action. The leaders rejoiced in the fact that there was 
 little debate and no serious opposition to any measure 
 proposed. It is true that the work of constitution making 
 was much facilitated by their having before them the 
 Constitution of the United States, which needed amend- 
 ment in only a few particulars fully to satisfy the assem- 
 bled "Deputies." 
 
 It is not necessary to describe these amendments par- 
 ticularly, for, on March 11, 1861 a permanent Constitu- 
 tion for the Confederate States of America was adopted 
 
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Wisconsin Historical Society 
 
 at Montgomery, which superseded the provisional con- 
 stitution. This followed the Constitution of the United 
 States so closely that the amendments, like colored 
 patches on a plain garment, were very prominent and 
 disclosed to all the world the real causes for the attempted 
 separation of the slave-holding states from their sister 
 states in the Union. 
 
 The preamble recites that: 
 
 "We, the people of the Confederate States, each State 
 acting in its sovereign and independent character * * * do 
 ordain and establish this Constitution * * *." 
 
 Article I, Section 8, provides: 
 
 "* * * 770 bounties shall be granted from the Treasury; 
 
 nor shall any duties or taxes on importations from foreign 
 
 nations be laid to promote or foster any branch of industry 
 * * * " 
 
 Article I, Section 9, provides that: 
 
 "The importation of negroes of the African race, from 
 any foreign country other than the slaveholding States or 
 Territories of the United States of America, is hereby for- 
 bidden * * *. 
 
 "Congress shall also have power to prohibit the introduc- 
 tion of slaves from any State not a member of, or Territory 
 not belonging to, this Confederacy. * * *" 
 
 "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or 
 impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be 
 passed.'' 
 
 Article I, Section 10, provides: 
 
 "No State shall, without the consent of Congress, lay 
 any duty on tonnage, except on sea-going vessels for the 
 improvement of its rivers and harbors navigated by the said 
 vessels * * *." But when any river divides or flows through 
 two or more States, they may enter into compacts with each 
 other to improve the navigation thereof.'' 
 
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Dream of a Northwestern Confederacy 
 
 Article IV, Section 2, provides: 
 
 "The citizens of each State * * * shall have the right of 
 transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with 
 their slaves and other property; and the right of property in 
 said slaves shall not be thereby impaired.'" 
 
 Article IV, Section 3, provides: 
 
 "The Confederate States may acquire new territory * * *. 
 In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery, as it 
 now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and 
 protected by Congress, and by the territorial government; and 
 the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Terri- 
 tories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves 
 lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of 
 the Confederate States."" 
 
 In brief, the new Constitution differed from the old, 
 chiefly, in two particulars: 
 
 1. No manufacturing industry was to be promoted, 
 or sustained, by subsidies or a protective tariff. 
 
 2. The institution of negro slavery was to be main- 
 tained, unimpaired, throughout all the states and terri- 
 tories of the Confederacy, and extended to any new terri- 
 tory which Congress might acquire.^ 
 
 Before their "deputies" were appointed, the several 
 states named had passed ordinances of secession, by which, 
 so far as they had power to do so, they had severed their 
 relations with the United States of America.- The govern- 
 
 1 Statutes at Large of the Confederate States of America (Richmond, Va., 1864). 
 The Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the Confederate 
 States of America are printed in parallel columns in Jefferson Davis, Rise and 
 Fall of the Confederate Government (New York, 1881), I, app. K, 648-73, and 
 the words found in one and not in the other are italicized so that they can be 
 readily distinguished. The italics in the passages quoted above are Davis'. 
 
 2 South Carolina, Dec. 20, 1860; Mississippi, Jan. 9, 1861; Florida, Jan. 10, 
 1861; Alabama, Jan. 11, 1861; Georgia, Jan. 19, 1861; Louisiana, Jan. 26, 1861. 
 Texas adopted an ordinance of secession, Feb. 1, 1861, but its delegates did not 
 arrive in Montgomery in time to take part in the formation of the provisional 
 
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Wisconsin Historical Society 
 
 ment which they now proceeded to establish and to which 
 they transferred their allegiance was foreign to that of 
 the United States and its claim of sovereignty over the 
 territory occupied by such states necessarily contradicted 
 that of the United States. 
 
 Two of these states, South Carolina and Georgia, might 
 plausibly claim to have been "sovereign and independent 
 states" before the Constitution of the United States was 
 adopted and they gave in their adhesion to the Union. 
 When they came into the Union they brought with them 
 their territory and, if allowed to secede, they would sub- 
 tract from the territory of the United States only such 
 portion as had been theirs before the Union was formed. 
 The others had no such standing. They were not organ- 
 ized states at all, much less "sovereign and independent 
 states," and they made no contribution to the territory of 
 the United States when they were admitted. They were 
 organized as states of the Union, under and by virtue of 
 the Constitution and laws of the United States, and on 
 territory which had been acquired, by purchase or con- 
 quest, by the United States long before their existence 
 as states began. 
 
 The United States effected the purchase of the Louisi- 
 ana Territory, at an expense totaling, with interest and 
 other charges, over $27,000,000,^ in order to secure for 
 
 government. It was formally admitted as a member of the Confederate States 
 of America, Mar. 3, 1861, and its delegates participated in the formation of the 
 final constitution of the Confederate Sta:tes of America. The primary authori- 
 ties for these facts are, of course, the constitutions, ordinances, and statutes of 
 the several states. 
 
 1 The price paid for the Louisiana Territory is commonly stated, in round 
 numbers, as $15,000,000, but this does not include the sums paid, under the 
 terms of the treaty, to settle the spoliation claims of American citizens against 
 France on account of various seizures and depredations to American commerce 
 since the year 1800. John B. McMaster in his History of the People of the United 
 States * * * (New York, 1883-1913), II, 630, has figured the total cost as $27,- 
 
 [2161 
 
Dream of a Northwestern Confederacy 
 
 the whole West and Northwest free navigation of the 
 Mississippi River and an outlet to the sea. The treaty 
 with France, ceding this territory to the United States, 
 was ratified by the Senate by a vote of twenty-four to 
 seven. Most of the opposition came from the New Eng- 
 land and the North Atlantic states, which saw no neces- 
 sity for such navigation and outlet, so long as they held 
 ports on the Atlantic Ocean. Jefferson received, however, 
 the almost unanimous support of the southern states and 
 of all states west of the Alleghanies. In fact, if the United 
 States had not acquired such territory by purchase, the 
 feeling was so strong among all dwellers in the Mississippi 
 Valley that, sooner or later, armed expeditions would 
 have set out from Kentucky, Tennessee, and the North- 
 ern states bordering on the Ohio River and taken forcible 
 possession of the mouth of the Mississippi and all the 
 territory along its banks. ^ 
 
 267,621. The Encyclopxdia Britannica adopts these figures as correct; see 
 article "Louisiana Purchase," XVII, 62. 
 
 1 The right of free navigation of the Mississippi River was secured to citizens 
 of the United States by the treaty of 1783 between England and Spain and the 
 United States, but those engaged in river commerce had been subjected to so 
 many annoyances and exactions as to excite a dangerous and growing feeling 
 that the "Dons" must be driven from New Orleans and the banks of the Mis- 
 sissippi at all hazards. The excitement culminated when the Spanish governor 
 at New Orleans withdrew their right to deposit their merchandise and effects 
 in New Orleans pending shipment to foreign ports. Impatient demands were 
 made upon President Jefferson to abate the Spanish nuisance at the mouth of 
 the river. Clubs and militia companies were organized, especially in Ken- 
 tucky, with the avowed purpose of driving out the Spaniards. The House of 
 Representatives called on the President for information, Dec. 17, 1802, and on 
 December 22 he transmitted the required information, with a statement that 
 he "was led by the regard due to the rights and interest of the United States and 
 to the just sensibility of the portion of our fellow-citizens more immediately 
 affected by the irregular proceeding at New Orleans to lose not a moment in 
 causing every step to be taken which the occasion claimed from me, being equally 
 aware of the obligation to maintain in all cases the rights of the nation * * *." 
 On December 30 he transmitted a long letter from the governor-general of the 
 Province of Louisiana to Governor Claiborne of Mississippi Territory, dated 
 Nov. 15, 1802, which undertakes to give the reasons for suspending the treaty 
 
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Wisconsin Historical Society 
 
 Florida and all of Alabama and Mississippi south of 
 32°28' north latitude were purchased from Spain by the 
 United States for $5,000,000, partly to settle a boundary 
 dispute between Spain and the state of Georgia and to 
 give Georgia free access to the Gulf of Mexico, but chiefly 
 to rid the continent of the presence and influence of a 
 foreign government which might, at any time, become 
 hostile to the United States. 
 
 The United States purchased from Georgia, herself, 
 all claim to territory lying west of her present state 
 
 right of deposit and promises some relief. The letter closes delightfully with 
 the expression, "I kiss your Excellency's hands. Your most affectionate ser- 
 vant. * * *" 
 
 In a special message to the Senate, Jan. 11, 1803, Jefferson called attention 
 to a new complication. He said : "The cession of the Spanish Province of Louisi- 
 ana to France, and perhaps of the Floridas, and the late suspension of our right of 
 deposit at New Orleans are events of primary interest to the United States;" 
 and he nominated Robert R. Livingston as minister to France, Charles Pinckney 
 as minister to Spain, and James Monroe to be "Minister extraordinary and 
 plenipotentiary" to both governments, "for the purpose of enlarging and more 
 effectually securing our rights and interests in the river Mississippi and in the 
 Territories eastward thereof." 
 
 In his annual message, Oct. 17, 1803, he apologized for calling Congress 
 together at an earlier date than usual on account of "matters of great public 
 concernment," and among other things said: "Congress witnessed at their late 
 session the extraordinary agitation produced in the public mind by the sus- 
 pension of our right of deposit at the port of New Orleans. * * * They were 
 sensible that the continuance of that privation would be more injurious to our 
 nation than any consequences which could flow from any mode of redress." 
 He submitted for their approval the convention with France for the cession 
 of Louisiana, and summed up its advantages as follows: "Whilst the property 
 and sovereignty of the Mississippi and its waters secure an independent outlet 
 for the produce of the Western States and an uncontrolled navigation through 
 their whole course, free from collision with other powers and the dangers to 
 our peace from that source, the fertility of the country, its climate and extent, 
 promise in due season important aids to our Treasury, an ample provision for 
 our posterity and a wide spread for the blessings of freedom and equal laws." 
 James D. Richardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presi- 
 dents, 1789-1897 (Washington, 1896-99), I, 346, 348, 350, 358. See also let- 
 ter from Jefferson to Livingston, April 18, 1802, H. A. Washington (ed.), 
 Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Washington, 1854), IV, 431; Albert Phelps, 
 Louisiana, a Record of Expansion (Boston, 1905), 155-58. 
 
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Dream of a Northwestern Confederacy 
 
 boundary, paying her therefor $1,250,000 and agreeing, 
 as part of the consideration, to extinguish the claims of 
 various Indian tribes to lands in the state of Georgia 
 which was done later at an expense to the United States 
 of over $4,000,000.1 
 
 The funds used and the power exercised in making these 
 various purchases and in extinguishing adverse titles were 
 national. The acquisition of such territory was urged and 
 justified as a measure to promote the national welfare and 
 the prosperity of all the States and particularly those of 
 the great central West and Northwest. ^ The claim that 
 the United States, by providing for the formation of 
 states in such territory and their admission to the Union, 
 deprived itself of sovereignty over such territory except 
 at the pleasure of the states it had created, seemed, to 
 most people at the North, too absurd for argument. What 
 was bought for all and paid for by all should remain a part 
 of the national domain, no matter what form of govern- 
 ment was established upon it, or what subdivision into 
 counties and states might be made for the convenient 
 administration of local government. 
 
 The resolutions adopted by national parties prior to 
 1844 related to the character and achievements and execu- 
 tive capacity of candidates, rather than to any principles 
 which might be said to differentiate one party from an- 
 
 1 Article on "Georgia" in Encyclopxdia Britannica, XI, 756; Horace Greeley, 
 The American Conflict, A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of 
 America * * * (Hartford, 1864), I, 103. 
 
 2 In his third annual message to Congress, Dec. 4, 1827, Pres. John Quincy 
 Adams said : "The acquisition of them, made at the expense of the whole Union, 
 not only in treasure but in blood, marks a right of property in them equally 
 extensive. By the report and statements from the General Land Office now 
 communicated it appears that under the present Government of the United 
 States a sum little short of $33,000,000 has been paid from the common Treas- 
 ury for that portion of this property which has been purchased from France 
 and Spain, and for the extinction of the aboriginal titles." Richardson, Mes- 
 sages, II, 391. 
 
 f219 1 
 
Wisconsin Historical Society 
 
 other. A good candidate needed no platform on which to 
 stand. But the Democratic national convention, which 
 met at Baltimore in May, 1844 and nominated James K. 
 Polk, adopted a long series of resolutions, the thirteenth 
 of which was as follows: "13. Resolved, That the proceeds 
 of the public lands ought to be sacredly applied to the 
 national objects specified in the Constitution, and that we 
 are opposed to the laws lately adopted, and to any law, 
 for the distribution of such proceeds among the states, 
 as alike inexpedient in policy and repugnant to the Con- 
 stitution."^ 
 
 This plank was inserted without material change in the 
 platforms adopted by the Democratic national conven- 
 tions held at Baltimore in May, 1848,^ and in June, 
 1852,^ and at Cincinnati in June, 1856.^ It remained 
 good Democratic doctrine down to the break-up of that 
 party just before the Civil War. The Cincinnati conven- 
 tion, which nominated James Buchanan for president, 
 also "Resolved, That the Democratic party will expect 
 of the next administration [Mr. Buchanan's] that every 
 proper effort will be made to insure our ascendancy in the 
 Gulf of Mexico, and to maintain a permanent protection 
 to the great outlets through which are emptied into its waters 
 the products raised out of the soil and the commodities 
 created by the industry of the people of our Western valleys 
 and the Union at large."^ 
 
 As soon as the ordinances of secession were passed — in 
 many instances before — the several states seized the forts 
 
 ^ Thomas Hudson McKee, National Conventions and Platforms of all Political 
 Parties * * * (3d ed., Baltimore, 1900), 48-49. The italics are not in the 
 original. 
 
 2 Ibid., 60. 
 
 3 Ibid., 76. 
 * Ibid., 89. 
 
 ^ Ibid., 93. The italics are not in the original. 
 
 [2201 
 
Dream of a Northwestern Confederacy 
 
 and arsenals within their borders, with the exception of 
 Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor and Fort Pickens and 
 Key West in Florida, and took possession of all the arms 
 and ammunition belonging to the United States, con- 
 veniently stored therein by a southern secretary of war. 
 The officers of the United States army in charge of such 
 forts and arsenals were either in full sympathy with the 
 seceding states, or yielded to a mere show of force. ^ 
 
 South Carolina seceded on December 20, 1860, seized 
 Fort Moultrie, Castle Pinckney, and the United States 
 revenue cutter, William Aiken, on the twenty-seventh, 
 the United States arsenal at Charleston on the thirtieth, 
 and Fort Johnson on the second of January, 1861. The 
 United States steamer. Star of the West, conveying sup- 
 plies to the garrison of Fort Sumter, was fired on by the 
 state artillery at the entrance to the harbor and forced 
 to return without accomplishing its errand, January 9.^ 
 
 Mississippi seceded on January 9, and on the twelfth 
 planted a battery on the bluff at Vicksburg, thus as- 
 serting control over the navigation of the Mississippi 
 River, and a few days later made good the assertion by 
 firing on the steamer, A. 0. Tyler, from Cincinnati — 
 compelling her to stop and submit to examination by 
 state officials. There were no forts of any importance and 
 no United States arsenals within the state, but the gover- 
 nor of Louisiana, having taken possession of a well- 
 stocked United States arsenal at Baton Rouge on the 
 
 1 An accurate summary of the various steps taken by the seceding states is 
 given under the title of "Prehminary Events," in Robert U. Johnson and C. C. 
 Buel (eds.), Battles and Leaders of the Civil War (New York, 1884-87), I. 
 
 2 Davis, Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, I, 213-14, 217-18; Edward 
 A. Pollard, Southern History of the War: First Year of the War (New York, 1863), 
 36; James F. Rhodes, History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 
 (New York, 1893-1906), III, 198, 218, 221-22; Statutes at Large of the Provisional 
 Government of the Confederate States of America * * * (Richmond, 1864), 
 163. 
 
 [ 221 1 
 
Wisconsin Historical Society 
 
 tenth, generously forwarded to the governor of Mississippi 
 8,000 muskets, 1,000 rifles, six 24-pounder guns, and a 
 quantity of ammunition out of the stores captured by him.^ 
 
 Florida did not secede until January 10, 1861, but the 
 state authorities seized the United States arsenal at 
 Apalachicola on the sixth, and Fort Marion at St. Augus- 
 tine on the seventh. They seized Barrancas Barracks, 
 Fort Barrancas and Fort McRee, and the navy yard at 
 Pensacola, and demanded the surrender of Fort Pickens 
 on the twelfth, and repeated the demand for the sur- 
 render on the fifteenth and the eighteenth. Its com- 
 mander thought, with Major Anderson, that he owed 
 fealty to the government the uniform of which he wore 
 and which had entrusted this fort to his keeping, and it 
 was kept. 2 
 
 Alabama did not secede until January 11, but the state 
 authorities seized the United States arsenal at Mount 
 Vernon on the fourth, and Forts Morgan and Gaines 
 on Mobile Bay on the fifth. ^ 
 
 Georgia did not secede until January 19, but the 
 state authorities seized Fort Pulaski on the third, and 
 appeared with a force of about 800 militia and some 
 cannon before the United States arsenal at Augusta and 
 demanded its surrender on the twenty-fourth.^ 
 
 1 Davis, Rise and fall of the Confederate Government, I, 220-21 (suppresses the 
 incident of the battery at Vicksburg); Pollard, First Year of the War, 37; Rhodes, 
 History of the United States, III, 258-59; James W. Garner, Reconstruction in 
 Mississippi * * * (New York, 1901), 8-9. 
 
 2 Davis, Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, I, 220; Pollard, First 
 Year of the War, 37, 40; Rhodes, History of the United States, III, 259, 280-81. 
 
 3 Davis, Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, 1,220-21; Pollard, First 
 Year of the War, 37, 40; Walter L. Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in 
 Alabama (New York, 1905), 37, 47-48. 
 
 * Davis, Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, I, 220; Pollard, First 
 Year of the War, 37, 40; Rhodes, History of the United States, III, 272-74; Isaac 
 W. Avery, History of the State of Georgia from 1850 to 1881 * * * (New York, 
 1881), 155, 161-64. 
 
 f 222 1 
 
Dream of a Northwestern Confederacy 
 
 Louisiana did not secede until January 26, but the 
 state authorities seized the United States barracks and 
 arsenal, with large quantities of cannon, small arms, and 
 ammunition, at Baton Rouge on the tenth. Forts Jackson 
 and St. PhiUp on the Mississippi, and the United States 
 marine hospital below New Orleans on the eleventh, Fort 
 Pike on the fourteenth, and the United States Mint and cus- 
 tomhouse, with a large amount of specie, on February 1.^ 
 
 This series of aggressive acts, every one of which would 
 have been instantly recognized as an act of war if per- 
 petrated by any foreign power, made peaceable separation 
 an impossibility; though the supineness of the adminis- 
 tration and its failure to defend, or to take any steps to 
 recover, any of its property misled the people of the 
 South who still retained Union sentiments. They in- 
 ferred that the right of secession was conceded, or that, 
 at any rate, the North would not fight to preserve the 
 Union. The unionists, who were undoubtedly in the ma- 
 jority in the states of Virginia, North Carolina, and Ten- 
 nessee down to the winter of 1861, were so weakened in 
 their attachment to, and their respect for, the national 
 government that, when forced to choose — as it was 
 adroitly presented — between North and South, by the 
 firing on Sumter and the President's proclamation calling 
 for 75,000 men to suppress insurrection, they sided with 
 their southern brethren.^ 
 
 ^ Davis, Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, I, 220; Pollard, First 
 Year of the War, 37, 40; Rhodes, Historij of the United States, III, 272-73, 280, 
 322; Phelps, Louisiana, 305-6; Garner Reconstruction in Mississippi, 8-9; 
 Statutes at Large of the Provisional Government of the Confederate States, 43-44, 
 62-63, 94-95, 154; John C. Schwab, Confederate States of America 1861-1865 
 * * * (New York, 1904), 6, 9, 43, 85. 
 
 2 In a carefully written address at Raleigh, N. C, July 4, 1865, S. F. Phillips, 
 a lawyer of great ability, afterwards speaker of the North Carolina House of 
 Representatives and solicitor-general of the United States, said: "If there had 
 been a purpose to facilitate the formation of a Southern Confederacy, the con- 
 
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Wisconsin Historical Society 
 
 Lincoln failed to estimate correctly the gravity of the 
 crisis, the grim determination of the cotton states to 
 effect a final separation, the preparations they had al- 
 ready made for war, and the spontaneous uprising of the 
 North, when thus challenged to fight for the Union or 
 yield to forcible secession. 
 
 While there had been, on the part of extreme abolition- 
 ists and peace Democrats, some expressions of willingness 
 to let the slave states go in peace,^ there had been at the 
 North a growing feeling of resentment and wounded 
 national pride during the progress of these events, which 
 did not altogether escape the notice of keen observers in 
 the border states, although its force and intensity were 
 not fully appreciated anywhere, and were not even sus- 
 pected in the Gulf states. ^ 
 
 duct of the Government must have been very much what it actually was before 
 March, 1861. To many who were loyally disposed it seemed that the United 
 States was admitting its career to be at an end, and that thereafter the continent 
 was * * * to be divided between a North and a South. This presented a new 
 question to North Carolina. The State preferred the Union to any new govern- 
 ment whatever, but, as between a North and a South, the most powerful argu- 
 ments and sympathies impelled her to take part with the latter. Her people 
 observed that the United States (so-called) had allowed force to be applied to strip 
 it of its possessions in many places without resistance. * * * I presume that no 
 doubt is entertained now that this supineness upon the part of the Federal 
 Government, among a thousand evil consequences * * * confirmed the im- 
 pression sedulously cultivated by its enemies, that the Government was already 
 among the things of the past." Quoted in Cincinnati Gazette, July 13, 1865. 
 See also Allen Johnson, Stephen A. Douglas: A Study in American Politics (New 
 York, 1908), 441. 
 
 1 New York Tribune, Nov. 9 and 26, Dec. 17, 1860, and Feb. 23, 1861; Albany 
 (N. Y.) Argus, Nov. 10 and 12, 1860; Ashtabula (Ohio) Sentinel, Feb. 6 and 13, 
 1861; Cincinnati Commercial, Jan. 31 (article attributed to Salmon P. Chase) 
 and Feb. 1, 1861; Cincinnati Enquirer, Feb. 8, 1861; Ohio State Journal, Nov. 
 13, 17, and 28, 1860, Mar. 27, 1861. Wendell PhilUps in a speech at Boston, and 
 William Lloyd Garrison, in an editorial in the Liberator, rejoiced in the prospect 
 of the slave states departing and taking their "institution" with them. Thurlow 
 Weed Barnes, Memoir of Thurlow Weed (Boston, 1884), II, 305; Davis, Rise 
 and Fall of the Confederate Government, I, 252-57. 
 
 2 "All of these events had been accomplished without bloodshed. Abolitionism 
 and Fanaticism had not yet lapped blood. But reflecting men saw that the peace 
 
 [2241 
 
Dream of a Northwestern Confederacy 
 
 When Fort Sumter was bombarded and forced to sur- 
 render in order "to fire the Southern heart" and hasten 
 the secession of the border slave states, the match was 
 also touched to the explosive compound of sentiment and 
 wrath at the North. President Lincoln could have se- 
 cured 300,000 volunteers in the spring of 1861 as easily 
 as 75,000.1 It was a grave error to limit his call to a 
 number which excited only ridicule at the South where, 
 already, more than 100,000 men had been enrolled, 
 organized, drilled, and fairly well equipped for the field. ^ 
 Even those men who kept their feelings under the control 
 of reason could see that no lasting peace was possible, 
 even if secession were acquiesced in, so long as such an 
 aggressive, self-willed, military-loving people had any- 
 thing to gain either by force or intrigue. Acquiescence in 
 their secession and accompanying acts would only em- 
 bolden them to make further demands.^ The slave states, 
 if allowed to organize as a separate nation, could not 
 suppress the discussion of slavery in the North, could not 
 recover escaped slaves, and could not extend the bounds 
 
 was deceitful and temporizing; that the temper of the North was impatient 
 and dark; and that, if all history was not a lie, the first incident of bloodshed 
 would be the prelude to a war of monstrous proportions." Pollard, First Year 
 of the War, 40. 
 
 1 In Ohio, volunteers enough to fill twenty-six regiments, in addition to the 
 thirteen called for, offered their services and the governor was authorized by 
 the state legislature to accept them in anticipation of further calls. Laws of 
 Ohio, LVIII, 107, 126-27, 132. Other northern states were not far behind. 
 
 2 Pollard, First Year of the War, 48, 59; Schwab, Confederate States of America. 
 Robert Toombs, secretary of state of the southern Confederacy, in a letter 
 to Commissioners Yancey, Rost, and Mann, dated Mar. IG, 1861, stated that 
 the Confederate States were then ready to bring 100,000 in to the field. James 
 D. Richardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Confederacy 
 
 * * * (Nashville, 1905), II, 6. This number was doubled before September, 
 ibid., 31. 
 
 3 The New Orleans Bee, March 10, 1861, said: "The Black Republicans are 
 a cowardly set after all. They have not the courage of their own convictions 
 
 * * *. Appearances indicate their disposition even to forego the exquisite de- 
 light of sending armies and fleets to make war on the Confederate States." 
 
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Wisconsin Historical Society 
 
 of slavery on the American continent any better than 
 they could while states of the Union, unless they resorted 
 to force. An aristocracy in the South supported by slave 
 labor, fond of martial exercises and display, contemptuous 
 of the supposed craven spirit of the North that would 
 submit to any insult rather than fight, would have been 
 a constant menace to the peace and prosperity of the 
 North. The coolest felt that the time had come to assert 
 the national power and meet force with force. 
 
 In the great states of the interior, fear that they would 
 be deprived of all the advantages secured to them by the 
 Louisiana Purchase, as well as national pride, operated 
 to unite the people against the secessionists, and of this 
 apprehension the southern leaders in Congress were fully 
 advised. Leading Democrats, as well as Republicans, from 
 states bordering on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, 
 sounded the alarm as soon as the intention of the Gulf 
 states to secede became apparent. The thought that the 
 mouths of the Mississippi and the great Gulf ports were 
 again to pass into the hands of a foreign power, and a 
 power which had already shown its disposition to use 
 force for the accomplishment of its purposes, was intoler- 
 able to all who had the interests of that section at heart. 
 If the Gulf states could secede and block navigation on 
 the Mississippi and access to their ports, except on such 
 terms as they might prescribe, it followed as a matter of 
 course that the Atlantic states could do likewise and the 
 great interior would be at their mercy. ^ 
 
 1 Oliver P. Morton, (Republican), then lieutenant governor-elect of Indiana, 
 soon to be governor and afterwards United States senator, said in a gr^at 
 speech, Nov. 22, 1860: "If South Carolina may secede peaceably, so may New 
 York, Massachusetts, Maryland and Louisiana, cutting off our commerce and 
 destroying our right of way to the ocean. We should thus be shut up in the 
 interior of a continent, surrounded by independent, perhaps hostile nations, 
 through whose territories we could obtain egress to the seaboard only upon 
 
 [226 1 
 
Dream of a Northwestern Confederacy 
 
 So far from deterring them, this knowledge of the 
 fears entertained by the people of the Northwest only 
 encouraged the southern leaders to pursue their plans. 
 They had embodied in their constitution a threat which 
 they thought would force the border slave states to join 
 them, by giving Congress the power "to prohibit the in- 
 troduction of slaves from any State not a member of 
 * * * this Confederacy." They now counted on their 
 ability to force the states, the waters of which were tribu- 
 tary to t he Mississippi, either to join the Confederacy, or 
 
 such terms as might be agreed to by treaty." William D. Foulke, Life of Oliver 
 P. Morton, Including His Important Speeches (Indianapolis, 1899), I, 90. 
 
 Senator Doolittle (Republican) of Wisconsin, in a letter to the Republicans 
 of Milwaukee, said: "We have not purchased Florida to protect our entrance 
 into the Gulf of Mexico, nor Louisiana to control the outlet of the Mississippi 
 valley, nor annexed Texas, and defended her against Mexico at the expense 
 of forty thousand lives, and $100,000,000 to suffer them now to pass under a 
 foreign and hostile jurisdiction." This letter was read and commented on in the 
 U. S. Senate, Dec. 5, 1860, 36 Cong., 2 sess.. Congressional Globe, pt. 1, 9. 
 
 Senator Grimes (Republican) of Iowa wrote to an assembly of the citizens 
 of Burlington, Iowa, which he had been invited to address: "Our position in 
 the centre of the continent, without foreign commerce, dependent upon other 
 States for our markets and for our means for transportation to reach them, 
 would soon, if the right to destroy the Union by secession of the States be con- 
 ceded, place us in the character of a dependent and conquered province. We 
 need, and must have, at whatever cost, a permanent government and unre- 
 stricted access to the Atlantic Ocean and to the Gulf of Mexico. There must be 
 no foreign soil between us and our markets." William Salter, Life of James 
 W. Grimes * * * (New York, 1876), 148. 
 
 Vallandigham (Democrat) of Ohio, who had not yet wholly adjusted his eyes 
 to southern spectacles, said in the House of Representatives, Dec. 10, 1860: 
 "Sir, we of the Northwest have a deeper interest in the preservation of this 
 Government in its present form, than any other section of the Union. Hemmed 
 in, isolated, cut off from the sea-board upon every side; a thousand miles and 
 more from the mouth of the Mississippi, the free navigation of which under the 
 law of nations, we demand, and will have at every cost; with nothing else but our 
 other great inland seas, the lakes— and their outlet, too, through a foreign coun- 
 try—what is to be our destiny? * * * Where is to be our outlet? * * * We are 
 seven States now, with fourteen Senators and fifty-one Representatives, and 
 a population of nine millions. * * * W' e do not mean to be a dependency or 
 province either of the East or of the South; * * * and if we cannot secure a 
 maritime boundary upon other terms, we will cleave our way to the seacoast 
 with the sword." 36 Cong., 2 sess., Cong. Globe, pt. 1, 38. 
 
 [227 1 
 
Wisconsin Historical Society 
 
 to break away from New England and the Atlantic states 
 and form a northwestern confederacy, which would, for 
 its own interest, ally itself by treaty with the southern 
 Confederacy. Some used threats, others made promises — 
 all calculated to induce the Northwest to acquiesce in 
 secession and ultimately to join the southern Confederacy.^ 
 
 McClernand (Democrat) of Illinois, afterwards major general of United 
 States volunteers, said on the same day: "Peaceable secession, in my judg- 
 ment, is a fatal, a deadly illusion. * * * " 
 
 "What, too, would be the fate of the youthful but giant Northwest, in the 
 event of a separation of the slaveholding from the non-slaveholding States? 
 Cut off from the main Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico on one hand, or from 
 the eastern Atlantic ports on the other, she would gradually sink into a pastoral 
 State, and to a standard of national inferiority. This the hardy and adventurous 
 millions of the Northwest would be unwilling to consent to. * * * No power 
 on earth could restrain them from freely and unconditionally communicating 
 with the Gulf and the great mart of New York." Ibid., 39. 
 
 Senator Andrew Johnson (Democrat) of Tennessee, afterwards president of 
 the United States, said, Dec. 19, 1860; "Again : take the case of Louisiana. What 
 did we pay for her in 1803, and for what was she wanted? * * * W^as it not to 
 secure the free navigation of the Mississippi river, the mouth of which was then 
 in possession of France, shortly before, of Spain * * * Simply for Louisiana? 
 No, but for all the States. * * * And now, after all this; after the money has 
 been paid, after the free navigation of the river has been obtained * * * 
 Louisiana says to the other States, 'We will go out of this Confederacy * * * 
 if we think proper, and constitute ourselves an independent Power, and bid 
 defiance to the other States.' It is an absurdity * * * " Ibid., 137. 
 
 Senator Douglas of Illinois, the Democrat who had received a larger vote for 
 president than all others opposed to Lincoln and who might therefore be con- 
 sidered the representative of northern Democracy, wrote to his friend, C. H. 
 Lanphier, Dec. 25, 1860: "The prospects are gloomy, but I do not yet despair of 
 the Union. We can never acknowledge the right of a State to secede and cut us off 
 from the Ocean and the world, without our consent." Johnson, Stephen A. Douglas, 
 447. 
 
 Governor Magoffin (Democrat) of Kentucky, in an address to the people of 
 Kentucky after the election of Lincoln, said; "To South Carolina and such other 
 States as may wish to secede from the Union, I would say: 'The geography of 
 this country will not admit of a division; the mouth and sources of the Mississippi 
 river cannot be separated without the horrors of civil war. We cannot sustain 
 you in this movement merely on account of the election of Lincoln.' " Greeley, 
 American Conflict, I, 340-41. 
 
 1 Senator Wigf all (Democrat) of Texas said, Dec. 12, 1860: "Ohio and Indiana 
 and Illinois may see that the grain, and the meat, and the hemp, and the horses, 
 and the mules, which they now furnish to us, may be bought in Kentucky and 
 
 [228 1 
 
Dream of a Northwestern Confederacy 
 
 As confidently expected by the Gulf states, all the slave 
 states united with the Confederacy when the issue was 
 joined, except Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and 
 Missouri. They fully expected Missouri and Kentucky to 
 join, also, but sentiment was so divided in these states 
 that nothing but internecine warfare resulted until the 
 United States occupied both states in force. 
 
 in Missouri and in Tennessee; and they may leave you [addressing the New 
 England Senators] in the cold and come to us." 36 Cong., 2 sess., Cong. Globe, 
 pt. 1, 74. 
 
 We have noticed (see ante, 221) the act of Mississippi in firing on a steamer 
 navigating the Mississippi and compelling it to stop and be searched by an 
 officer of the state. A few days later Louisiana adopted a resolution recognizing 
 "the right of the free navigation of the Mississippi River and its tributaries by 
 all friendly States bordering thereon," and also "the right of egress and ingress 
 of the mouths of the Mississippi by all friendly States and powers." John G. 
 Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln (New York, 1890), III, 192-93. If 
 the northwestern states adhered to the South there would be no interruption 
 of trade; if they adhered to the Union they could not be classed as "friendly." 
 The Provisional Congress of the Confederate States provided, by act approved 
 Feb. 25, 1861, that the free navigation of the Mississippi River should be ex- 
 tended "to the citizens of the States upon its borders or upon the borders of its 
 navigable tributaries." Statutes at Large, chap, xiv, 36-38. This might be con- 
 strued as referring only to states coming under the Constitution of the Confed- 
 erate States. 
 
 Senator Slidell of Louisiana said in answer to Senator Johnson's remarks 
 (ante, 228) that they proposed to extend the free navigation of the Mississippi 
 to every citizen of the Northwest. Johnson replied, "That may all be very true 
 * * * It is a power that I am not willing to concede to be exercised at the dis- 
 cretion of any authority outside of this Government." 36 Cong., 2 sess., Cong. 
 Globe, pt. I, 137. 
 
 Alexander H. Stephens, the newly elected vice-president of the Confederate 
 States, said in a speech at Savannah, Ga., Mar. 21, 1861: "Looking to the 
 distant future, — and perhaps not very distant either — it is not beyond the range 
 of possibility, and even probability, that all the great States of the Northwest 
 shall gravitate this way, as well as Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, 
 etc." Henry Wilson, Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America (Boston, 
 1872-84), III, 125. 
 
 Just four years later, Lewis Hanes of North Carolina said in a bold speech 
 at Newbern, N. C. : "The only hope I have ever seen of success in this struggle 
 was that the Northwestern States might be induced to join our Confederacy. 
 The manner in which those States voted in the late Presidential election has 
 dispelled that hope forever, and, in my judgment, has sealed the fate of the Con- 
 federacy." Cincinnati Daily Gazette, Feb. 23, 1865. 
 
 [229 1 
 
Wisconsin Historical Society 
 
 There were substantial grounds for hoping that the 
 Northwest, also, would join the Confederacy. The prin- 
 cipal trade of all these states had been with the South. 
 As indicated in the discussions preceding secession, the 
 Mississippi Valley was the natural outlet for the live 
 stock, produce, and manufactures of the states west of 
 the Alleghanies. Large fleets of steamboats were employed 
 in carrying such products from the valleys of the Ohio, 
 Missouri, and upper Mississippi to western Tennessee, 
 Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, and such parts of 
 Texas as were watered by the Red River and its tribu- 
 taries. They returned laden with cotton, sugar, molasses, 
 and tropical fruits, which were distributed throughout 
 the Northwest. When Cincinnati was deprived of its 
 southern trade by the war and the reconstruction troubles 
 it almost ceased to grow. Every year before the war, 
 thousands of flatboats were rudely constructed, filled 
 with bacon, flour, cornmeal, potatoes, apples, dried 
 fruits, and other products, which were peddled out on the 
 lower Mississippi, and the boats themselves were sold for 
 lumber. Why should the Northwest sacrifice this lucra- 
 tive trade? 
 
 With the exception of eastern Ohio, the Northwest was 
 chiefly an agricultural country and the natural inclination 
 of the people was toward free trade, modified only by the 
 necessity for a national revenue. The high tariff, it was 
 argued, benefited only New England, and the Northwest 
 must, in its own interest, emancipate itself from the 
 domination of eastern manufacturers and importers and 
 ally itself with the southern states, with which it had 
 always enjoyed close business relations. There might 
 be a "foolish prejudice" against slavery on the part of 
 some people in northern Ohio, northern Illinois, Michigan, 
 Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, but there was little or 
 
 [2301 
 
Dream of a Northwestern Confederacy 
 
 no such sentiment in the territory bordering oh the Ohio 
 River and Missouri. What little there was might be 
 expected to disappear in the face of the material advan- 
 tages of a southern alliance. 
 
 The United States census of 1860 showed that 274,146* 
 of the people of Missouri, 179,426 of the people of Illinois, 
 161,213 of the people of Indiana, 134,210 of the people 
 of Ohio, and 54,781 of the people of Iowa, were born in 
 slave states.^ The percentage of such persons living in 
 the above-named states varied from 5.74 per cent in 
 Ohio to 24 per cent in Missouri. The men of southern 
 birth were among the earliest settlers of Ohio, Indiana, 
 and Illinois. They dominated the Democratic party and, 
 through it, practically controlled those states until the 
 formation of the Republican party. Their sympathies 
 were naturally with the South. Some of them took their 
 slaves with them into Indiana and Illinois, and the rest, 
 if not actually proslavery, saw no particular harm in the 
 "institution. "2 
 
 1 The infusion of southern blood in other states of the Northwest was a 
 negligible quantity. The following table shows the derivation of the persons 
 born in slave states and residing in the above-named states. 
 
 State 
 
 Del. 
 
 Md. 
 
 Va. 
 
 Ky. 
 
 N. C. 
 
 Tenn. 
 
 All 
 others 
 
 Illinois 
 
 Indiana 
 
 Iowa 
 
 1,888 
 
 2 ,301 
 
 850 
 
 747 
 
 3,045 
 
 10,476 
 9 ,673 
 4,663 
 6,015 
 
 28 ,680 
 
 32,978 
 36 ,848 
 17 ,994 
 53 ,957 
 75 ,874 
 
 60,193 
 68,588 
 13 ,204 
 99,814 
 15,074 
 
 13,597 
 26 ,942 
 
 4,690 
 20 ,259 
 
 4,701 
 
 39 ,012 
 10,356 
 
 5 ,773 
 73 ,594 
 
 2,006 
 
 21 ,282 
 6,505 
 7,607 
 
 Missouri 
 
 Ohio . . . 
 
 *19,760 
 4,830 
 
 
 
 Total 
 
 8,831 
 
 59 ,507 
 
 217,651 
 
 256 ,873 
 
 70,189 
 
 130,741 
 
 59 ,984 
 
 * This does not include children born in Missouri; but such children, living in 
 the other states named, are included under the head of "All others." 
 
 2 "The feelings of the people of Indiana were not unfriendly to the South nor 
 to her 'peculiar institution.' The State was considered one of the 'outlying pro- 
 vinces of the empire of slavery.' " Foulke, Life of Morton, I, 35. 
 
 231 
 
Wisconsin Historical Society 
 
 From 1789 to 1807 there had been a continuous struggle 
 on the part of the Legislative Council and House of Rep- 
 resentatives of Indiana Territory — then comprising all 
 of the Northwest Territory except the state of Ohio — 
 to secure a suspension of the sixth article of the Ordinance 
 of 1787, so as to permit the introduction of slaves into 
 the Territory. In December, 1805 a petition was presented 
 to Congress praying for such suspension, and February 
 14, 1806 the committee to which the petition was referred 
 reported favorably, saying: "The suspension of this 
 Article is an object almost universally desired in that 
 Territory." No final action having been taken on the 
 subject before the adjournment of Congress, on January 
 20, 1807 the speaker laid before the House of Repre- 
 sentatives a letter from Wilham Henry Harrison, gover- 
 nor of the Territory and afterwards president of the 
 United States, transmitting certain resolutions which he 
 said had been unanimously adopted by the Territorial 
 Council and House of Representatives in favor of sus- 
 
 "The Illinois Senators had voted for the admission of Missouri as a slave 
 State. * * * Many people who had land and farms to sell, looked upon the good 
 fortune of Missouri with envy; whilst the lordly immigrant, as he passed along 
 with his money and droves of negroes, took a malicious pleasure in increasing it 
 by pretending to regret the short-sighted policy of Illinois, which exclude 
 him from settlement, and from purchasing and holding lands. In this mode 
 a desire to make Illinois a Slave State became quite prevalent." Shelby M. 
 Cullom, Fifty Years of Public Service * * * (Chicago, 1911), 17. It was not 
 until 1823 that "the question of making Illinois permanently a Slave State 
 was put to rest by a majority of about two thousand votes. The census of 
 1850 was the first that enumerated no slaves in our State." Ibid., 19. 
 
 "When Illinois was admitted to the Union in 1818, all the organized counties 
 lay to the south of the projected national road between Terre Haute and Alton, 
 hence well within the sphere of surrounding Southern influences. The society of 
 Illinois was at this time predominantly Southern in its origin and characteristics. 
 * * * The movement to make Illinois a slave State was motived by the desire 
 to accelerate immigration from the South." Johnson, Stephen A. Douglas, 
 152-53. "When Illinois was admitted as a State, there were over seven hundred 
 negroes held in servitude. In spite of the Ordinance of 1787, Illinois was prac- 
 tically a slave Territory." Ibid., 155. 
 
 [232] 
 
Dream of a Northwestern Confederacy 
 
 pending the obnoxious sixth article. A committee again 
 reported favorably on the resolutions and its report was 
 sustained in the House, but failed in the Senate, and there 
 the matter seems to have dropped, so far as Congressional 
 action was concerned.^ 
 
 There was, of course, considerable intercourse and com- 
 munication between these settlers from the South and 
 their relatives and old neighbors in Virginia, North 
 Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and the mass of the 
 people in those states might be pardoned for believing 
 that the border states of the North would not be disin- 
 clined to unite their fortunes with the South. 
 
 As in most matters of diplomacy and intrigue — espe- 
 cially those which fail of success — the public was not 
 informed of what was going on in secret, and it is only by 
 piecing together bits of information gathered here and 
 there that we can trace the movements for the establish- 
 ment of a northwestern confederacy, which should, at 
 least, be in full sympathy with the South. 
 
 Among the various plans proposed for saving the Union 
 during the winter of 1860-61, attention should be called to 
 that of C. L. Vallandigham, who had shown in his speech of 
 December 10, 1860 that he appreciated the importance to 
 the Northwest of the free navigation of the Mississippi. ^ 
 
 On February 7, 1861 he proposed amendments to the 
 Constitution of the United States, with several whereases, 
 the last two of which read as follows: 
 
 And whereas it concerns the peace and stability of the Federal Union 
 and Government that a division of the States into mere slave-holding 
 
 1 Davis, Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, I, 8-10; McMaster, 
 History of the United States, III, 521-28. One of the interesting facts which 
 McMaster brings out is that just after the Louisiana Purchase the people of 
 Illinois petitioned Congress to be set off from the Indiana Territory and attached 
 to Louisiana. Ibid., 526. 
 
 2 Ante, 227, note. 
 
 [2331 
 
Wisconsin Historical Society 
 
 and non-slaveholding sections, causing hitherto, and from the nature 
 and necessity of the case, inflammatory and disastrous controversies 
 upon the subject of slavery * * * should be forever hereafter 
 ignored; and whereas, this important end is best to be attained by the 
 recognition of other sections without regard to slavery, neither of which 
 sections shall alone be strong enough to oppress or control the others, 
 and each be vested with the power to protect itself from aggressions. 
 Therefore: * * * 
 
 The United States should be divided into four sections 
 instead of two; the first to consist of the New England 
 states, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania; the 
 second to consist of the northwestern states and any new 
 states formed out of territory now held or hereafter ac- 
 quired north of latitude 36° 30' east of the crest of the 
 Rocky Mountains; the third to consist of California, 
 Oregon, and all new states formed out of territory west 
 of the Rocky Mountains and the Rio Grande; and the 
 fourth — by far the largest and strongest of all, as matters 
 then stood — to consist of all the slave states, and all new 
 states which might be formed out of territory south of 
 latitude 36° 30' and east of the Rio Grande. 
 
 No act could be passed except by the concurrence of all 
 four sections; any one section could, therefore, defeat 
 legislation desired by all of the other three. No president 
 or vice-president could be elected except by the concur- 
 rence of a majority of all the electors of each section; a 
 mere majority of the electors in any one section could, 
 therefore, defeat the election of a president desired by all 
 the rest; and, if the election of a president was thrown 
 into the Senate by reason of the opposition of a little more 
 than one-half of one-fourth of all the electors, the sena- 
 tors were to vote by sections and a majority of the sena- 
 tors of any one section could defeat the choice of a presi- 
 dent desired by all the others.^ 
 
 1 36 Cong., 2 sess., Cong. Globe, pt. 1, 794-95. 
 
 [234 1 
 
Dream of a Northwestern Confederacy 
 
 The ship of state was to be kept afloat by dividing the 
 hull into four separate compartments, removing sails and 
 machinery, and preventing any one from taking com- 
 mand. A more effectual scheme for blocking legislation 
 and elections could hardly be devised. 
 
 On February 20, 1861 Vallandigham addressed the 
 House at length, elucidating and advocating his scheme, 
 and trying to give it a philosophical gloss. Majorities 
 were inclined to be despotic and to disregard the rights of 
 minorities; ergo, they must be subjected to the will of the 
 minority. It was dangerous to entrust any man with the 
 disbursement of $80,000,000 a year and the appointment 
 of hundreds of officials; ergo, one-eighth of the people 
 could prevent any man's having such power. Quoting 
 from a letter of Thomas Jefferson to a Mr. Holmes, in 
 1820, "A geographical line coinciding with a marked 
 principle, moral and political, once conceived and held 
 up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated, 
 and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper," 
 and stating that "it is this very coincidence of geograph- 
 ical line with the marked principle, moral and political, 
 of slavery, which I propose to reach and to obliterate in 
 the only way possible; by running other lines, coinciding 
 with other and less dangerous principles, none of them 
 moral." Vallandigham proposed to bound one of the 
 sections by the line between the free and the slave states, 
 adding some unorganized territory to the latter, and then 
 to divide the free states into three sections.^ If he had 
 
 1 Ibid., app., 235-43. On Jan. 11, 1860 the Democratic State Convention of 
 Alabama resolved, among other things, that "all issues and principles" were 
 "inferior in dignity and importance to the great question of slavery." Pollard, 
 First Year of the War, 29-30. So a division of the slave states on any other 
 principle was manifestly out of the question. The political "solidity" of the 
 South has not been broken from that day to this, except in superficial appear- 
 ance during the Reconstruction period. 
 
 [235 1 
 
Wisconsin Historical Society 
 
 intended to make the slave states all powerful and to 
 dissipate the strength of the free states by division, he 
 could not have devised a better scheme. 
 
 "Sunset" Cox has vouched for the patriotism and sin- 
 cerity of Vallandigham^ but Vallandigham had resided 
 and taught school in Maryland and married a daughter 
 of a Maryland planter. He saw slavery at its best and, 
 hke Douglas, felt that the agitation against it was fanat- 
 ical, unreasonable, and destructive. He was a very 
 intense man and had exceptional ability as a public 
 speaker. His vocabulary of vituperation was extensive. 
 But he must have been strangely lacking in a sense of 
 humor and very narrow-minded if he sincerely believed 
 the constitutional establishment of the line between the 
 slave states and the free would obliterate it. 
 
 This idea of making a separate section of the North- 
 west and of ultimately allying it with the southern states 
 took deep root in Vallandigham's mind and thereafter 
 became one of the governing principles of his political 
 life, leading him on to actions and combinations which 
 bordered on treason. ^ 
 
 After the fall of Sumter and the call for volunteers, to 
 which the northwestern states responded enthusiastically, 
 enrolling double their respective quotas under the call, 
 very little was heard for a time of an alliance between 
 
 1 Samuel Sullivan, Three Decades of Federal Legislation (1886), 80-81. 
 
 2 Jacob D. Cox, Military Reminiscences of the Civil War (New York, 1900), 
 I, 459; Emilius O. Randall and Daniel J. Ryan, History of Ohio * * * (New 
 York, 1912-15), IV, 209-10. 
 
 After the secession of Georgia, Jan. 22, 1861, Ranse Wright, commissioner 
 from that state to Maryland, found Governor Hicks of that state uncompromis- 
 ingly opposed to secession, and, if a disruption were made, he favored a central 
 confederacy, including New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Vir- 
 ginia, Missouri, and Ohio, and was then in correspondence with the governor 
 of those states upon the subject. Isaac W. Avery, History of the State of Georgia 
 * * * (New York, 1881), 165. 
 
 [ 236 1 
 
Dream of a Northwestern Confederacy 
 
 the South and the Northwest. The Confederates seized 
 and fortified strong positions on the banks of the Missis- 
 sippi, in Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Mississippi, and 
 Louisiana, and closed the river to navigation from Cairo 
 to the forts below New Orleans. Little mention was made 
 of an alliance with the Northwest in the newspapers, or 
 in the public proceedings of legislative bodies, thereafter, 
 for more than a year; but many persons both in the North 
 and the South had an idea that such a union or alliance 
 might be possible and it found expression in private con- 
 versation and correspondence. 
 
 Gen. J. D. Cox, the Union commander in West Virginia 
 during a large part of the years 1861-62, wrote as follows 
 to Aaron F. Perry of Cincinnati under date of December 
 18, 1862: 
 
 In arguing the general question of disunion we have been so in the 
 habit of talking of the possession of the whole length of the Mississippi 
 as indispensable to the Western States that there is danger of that very 
 argument being used against us, if we should suddenly find disunion a 
 fait accompli. Then, as if in anticipation of something of the sort, the 
 Confederates have constantly made a show of different feeling toward 
 the West from that which they have manifested toward the East. They 
 have professed to have less bitterness, greater appreciation of our brav- 
 ery, greater willingness to be reconciled to us, &c. The extent to 
 which this has been carried can hardly be believed by one who has not 
 ^■een meeting them in the field. ^ 
 
 All correspondence passing through the lines between 
 West Virginia families and their relatives in the southern 
 armies was necessarily scanned pretty closely, and the 
 General had frequent opportunities to discuss matters 
 with prisoners and their families. Boxes and trunks full 
 of letters were captured or brought out of their hiding 
 places, among them the letters, diaries, and other papers 
 
 1 Political Correspondence of Maj. General J. D. Cox. Manuscript. 
 
 [2371 
 
Wisconsin Historical Society 
 
 of General Floyd, and Gen. Alfred Beckley.^ One of the 
 most interesting of these prisoners was Clifton W. Tay- 
 leure, formerly an editor of the Baltimore American and, 
 when captured, a correspondent of the Richmond En- 
 quirer, who might have been shot for a spy if he had fallen 
 into other hands than those of Colonel (afterwards Presi- 
 dent) Hayes and General Cox. They were much inter- 
 ested in what he had to say, and finding him a gentleman 
 and anxious to reach and remain with his family in Balti- 
 more, General Cox allowed him to go there under 
 parole. 2 
 
 On January 8, 1862 Thomas A. Hendricks, afterwards 
 senator from Indiana, governor of Indiana, and Demo- 
 cratic candidate for vice-president in 1876, made a speech, 
 upon taking the chair at a Democratic state convention, 
 in which he revealed an undercurrent of thought then 
 prevailing in his party and especially that portion of it 
 which peopled the southern counties. He said, among 
 other things: 
 
 We are now being so crushed that if we and our children are not to 
 become the hewers of wood and drawers of water for the capitahsts of 
 New England and Pennsylvania, we must look to the interests of our 
 section * * * 'pg encourage and stimulate the people of the South 
 in the production of their peculiar commodities, that they may be large 
 buyers from us, has been, and so long as "grass grows and water runs," 
 will be, the true interest of the Northwest. * * * 
 
 The first and highest interest of the Northwest is in the restoration 
 and preservation of the Union * * * f)ut if the failure and folly 
 and wickedness of the party in power render a Union impossible, then the 
 mighty Northwest must take care of herself and her own interests. She 
 must not allow the arts and finesse of New England to despoil her of her 
 richest commerce and trade * * * _3 
 
 1 Cox, Mililary Reminiscences, I, 153-64; Charles R. Williams, Life of Ruther- 
 ford Birchard Hayes (Boston, 1914), I, 138, 148-51, 154, 159, 161, 163. 
 
 2 Ibid., 166-67. 
 
 ' Foulke, Life of Morton, I 175-76. This is a well-written, accurate, and very 
 informing biography. . 
 
 [2381 
 
Dream of a Northwestern Confederacy 
 
 This "keynote" was almost silenced for a time by the 
 Union victories at Mill Springs, Kentucky, on January 
 20, at Fort Henry on February 6, and at Fort Donelson 
 on February 16. But on the very day that Fort Donelson 
 surrendered the Richmond Enquirer published a tele- 
 graphic dispatch from Mobile, the nature of which is 
 sufficiently indicated by the heading, "Grand Programme 
 For Forming a Northwestern Confederacy." 
 
 There is abundant evidence, some of which has been 
 referred to, that peace advocates and southern sympathiz- 
 ers residing in the North were in correspondence with 
 friends in the South during the years 1862-64, and that 
 the forming of a Northwestern confederacy constituted 
 the staple of many letters. ^ The speeches of Vallandigham 
 of Ohio, Hendricks and Voorhees of Indiana, Richardson 
 of Illinois, and other northern Democrats, advocating a 
 suspension of hostiUties and a reunion between the south- 
 western and the northwestern states, met with a ready 
 response in the shape of communications to southern 
 newspapers and favoring editorials in some of them. 
 
 The northward drive of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston, 
 
 1 In the correspondence of Isham G. Harris, Confederate, Governor of Ten- 
 nessee, were found letters from John D. Riley, dated Belleville, Ala., March 12, 
 1862, and F. W. Pickens, dated Murfreesboro, Tenn., July 24, 1862, urging 
 Harris to arrange a meeting with the Governors of the Northwestern States at 
 Memphis, to consult as to terms of peace, or to negotiate a separate treaty with 
 any of them who might feel so disposed. Pickens said, among other things* 
 "If the subject were properly opened, we might discover a desire in these States 
 to erect themselves into a separate government, or at least to agree upon terms 
 of peace as far as they are concerned. Such a meeting of Governors would give 
 them an opportunity to act independent of the despotic and fanatical govern- 
 ment at Washington. * * * Nothing that we might do must ever be construed 
 as a sanction to any policy calculated to adopt or admit any non-slaveholding 
 State as part of the Confederacy." Harris replied: "While I concur with you 
 in intent and should rejoice in the accomplishment of the object, yet I am per- 
 suaded * * * it is safer and better to leave this matter in the hands of the 
 common government of us all." Letters reprinted in Cincinnati Commercial, 
 Sept. 1, 1865. 
 
 [2391 
 
Wisconsin Historical Society 
 
 resulting in the bloody battle of Shiloh, April 6 and 7, 
 1862, had for its immediate object the recovery of the 
 states of Tennessee and Kentucky and, this being ac- 
 complished, the invasion of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, 
 the overthrow of the loyal governments there, and the 
 establishment of new governments in sympathy with the 
 South.i 
 
 General Bragg invaded Kentucky in the summer of 
 1862, threatened Cincinnati and Louisville, inaugurated 
 a Confederate governor at Frankfort, and after several 
 minor engagements fought the battle of Perryville, 
 October 8, 1862. In this battle he inflicted severe losses on 
 some raw recruits in the northern army and then, despair- 
 ing of any substantial victory over Buell's veteran army 
 which confronted him, made good his retreat. He carried 
 with him into Kentucky 20,000 stand of arms for the re- 
 cruits he had been led to expect there and those he might 
 find with their aid, on crossing the Ohio. But his "ringing 
 proclamation," offering Kentuckians an "opportunity to 
 free themselves from the tyranny of a despotic ruler," 
 brought no response. On October 12 he reported that not 
 only was there no demand for these extra weapons, but 
 that fully one-half the arms left in his hands, by reason 
 of casualties in his command, remained unused. ^ 
 
 The military results of Bragg's movement were small; 
 but one object had been to affect the fall elections in 
 Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and it did so to some extent, 
 for all o f these states returned Democratic majorities. 
 
 1 Davis, Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, II, 61. After deploring 
 the untimely death of Johnston, he says: "With a skillful commander, like 
 Johnston, to lead our troops, the enemy would have sought safety on the north 
 bank of the Ohio; * * * Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri would have been 
 recovered, the Northwest disaffected, and our armies filled with the men of the 
 Southwest, and perhaps of the Northwest also.'' The italics are not in the original. 
 
 2 War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and 
 Confederate Armies, ser. 1, XVI, pt. 1, 1088 and pt. 2, 771, 822. 
 
 [ 240 ] 
 
Dream of a Northwestern Confederacy 
 
 Of course, McClellan's disasters in the Peninsular Cam- 
 paign and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation con- 
 tributed to this result. The Unionists were profoundly 
 discouraged. Governor Morton was furious at Bragg's 
 success — in electioneering — and his subsequent escape, 
 and demanded the removal of General Buell, which soon 
 followed.^ 
 
 On January 1, 1863 the Democracy of Brown County, 
 Indiana, resolved that if the rebellion should be con- 
 summated by the recognition of the southern Confederacy, 
 their interests and inclinations would demand a with- 
 drawal from political associations with New England. ^ 
 
 i Foulke, Life of Morton, I, 197-98. On Oct. 27, 1862 Morton wrote to Presi- 
 dent Lincoln: "The fate of the North is trembling in the balance. The result 
 of the late elections admonishes all who understand its import that not an hour 
 is to be lost. The Democratic politicians of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois assume 
 that the rebellion will not be crushed, and that the independence of the rebel 
 Confederacy will, before many months, be practically acknowledged." Ibid., 
 208. "They ask the question, 'what shall be the destiny of Ohio, Indiana and 
 Illinois? Shall they remain attached to the old government, or shall they secede 
 and form a new one, — a Northwestern Confederacy — as a preparatory step to 
 annexation with the South?' The latter project is the programme, and has 
 been for the last twelve months. During the recent campaign it was the staple 
 of every Democratic speech — that we had no interests or sympathies in common 
 with the people of the Northern and Eastern states; that New England is fat- 
 tening at our expense * * * that geographically these states are a part of the 
 Mississippi Valley, and, in their political associations and destiny, can not be 
 separated from the other States of that valley; * * * that the people of the 
 Northwest can never consent to be separated politically from the people who con- 
 trol the mouth of that river. 
 
 ******** 
 
 The South would have the prestige of success; the commerce of the world would 
 be opened to feed and furnish her armies, and she would contend for every foot 
 of land west of the Alleghenies, and in the struggle would be supported by a pow- 
 erful party in these States. * * * The plan which I have to suggest is the com- 
 plete clearing out of all obstacles to the navigation of the Mississippi river and 
 the thorough conquest of the states upon its western bank * * * the creation of 
 a guaranty against the further depreciation of the loyalty of the Northwestern 
 states by the assurance that whatever may be the result of the war, the free 
 navigation and control of the Mississippi river will be secured at all events." 
 Ibid., 209-11. 
 2 Ibid., 213. 
 
 [2411 
 
Wisconsin Historical Society 
 
 Similar resolutions, so like each other as to suggest a 
 common origin, were passed by at least fifteen other 
 counties of Indiana in January, February, and March, 
 1863.^ On the third of January, 1863 Morton telegraphed 
 Secretary Stanton that he was advised that a joint reso- 
 lution would be passed by the legislature acknowledging 
 the Confederacy and urging the Northwest to dissolve all 
 relations with New England; and the Republican senators, 
 believing that some such resolutions would be offered, 
 broke the quorum by absenting themselves. ^ 
 
 Emboldened by the Democratic success at the fall 
 election, although he himself had failed of reelection, 
 Vallandigham made an impassioned speech in the House 
 on January 14, 1863, said to have been "the greatest 
 speech of his whole life of opposition" and to have been 
 "extensively circulated both in this country and Europe." 
 In it he said: "You can never subdue the seceded States. 
 Two years of fearful experience have taught you that. 
 Why carry on this war? If you persist, it can only end in 
 final separation between the North and the South. And, 
 in that case, believe it now, as you did not my former 
 warnings, the whole Northwest will go with the South.'"^ 
 
 After his term expired, he traveled about the state of 
 Ohio, making bitter and vindictive speeches against the 
 administration, advising people not to pay their taxes, 
 and inciting men to resist the draft and the arrest of 
 deserters, by force of arms if necessary. His exhortations 
 were followed by organized and armed resistance to the 
 provost marshals in Noble and Holmes counties. Two 
 companies of the 115th Ohio, with ten days' rations and 
 forty rounds of ammunition, were required to suppress the 
 
 1 Ibid., 382-83. 
 
 2 Ibid., 213-14. 
 
 3 Randall and Ryan, History of Ohio, IV, 209-10. 
 
 [242] 
 
Dream of a Northwestern Confederacy 
 
 uprising in Noble County, and in Holmes County the 
 rioters, 1,000 strong with four howitzers in a fortified 
 camp, resisted a veteran regiment until it was almost on 
 them and several had been seriously wounded.^ 
 
 On April 13, 1863, General Burnside, then commander 
 of the Department of the Ohio, issued General Order No. 
 38, warning all persons against treasonable practices, and 
 particularly against "Acts for the benefit of the enemies 
 of our country," and adding: "The habit of declaring 
 sympathy for the enemy will not be allowed in this de- 
 partment. Persons committing such offenses will be at 
 once arrested, with a view to being tried as above stated, 
 or sent beyond our lines into the lines of their friends."^ 
 
 On May 1, at Mt. Vernon, Ohio, Vallandigham de- 
 nounced Order No. 38, defied the authorities to attempt 
 to execute it, and advised forcible resistance to the draft. 
 He was arrested at Dayton on May 5, tried before a 
 military commission at Cincinnati, convicted, and sen- 
 tenced to close confinement in Fort Warren, Boston 
 Harbor, "there to be kept during the continuance of the 
 war." Yielding to a general protest against the arrest and 
 trial of civilians by a military commission in a loyal state 
 where the courts were open and the course of justice 
 unobstructed, Lincoln commuted the sentence to banish- 
 ment beyond our military lines, and on May 25, Vallan- 
 digham was conveyed within the picket lines of Bragg's 
 army and left there. ^ 
 
 The Unionists were generally appeased by this hu- 
 morous way of making the "punishment fit the crime" 
 
 1 Ibid., 215-27; Cox, Military Reminiscences, I, 245-50; Nicolay and Hay, 
 Abraham Lincoln, VII, 328-54. 
 
 2 Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, ser. 1, XXIII, pt. 2, 237. 
 
 3 Cox, Military Reminiscences, I 458-63; Randall and Ryan, History of Ohio, 
 IV, 215-27; James F. Rhodes, History of the United States * * * (New York, 
 1893-1906), IV, 245-50; Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, VII, 328-54. 
 
 [2431 
 
Wisconsin Historical Society 
 
 which, it appears from Order No. 38, was not original with 
 Lincoln, and forgot or forgave the irregular mode of pros- 
 ecution. Its chief interest in connection with this paper 
 consists in the glimpse which it affords us of what was 
 still in the minds of many southern leaders; and in the new 
 direction which it gave to Vallandigham's activities. 
 General Beauregard wrote to a friend in Mobile, May 26, 
 1863 that "Lee [should] act on the defensive, and send to 
 Bragg 30,000 men for him to take the offensive with at 
 once; let him (or whoever is put in his place) destroy or 
 capture (as it is done in Europe) Rosecrans' army; then 
 march into Kentucky, raise 30,000 men more there and 
 in Tennessee; then get into Ohio, and call upon the friends 
 of Vallandigham to rise for his defense and support; then 
 call upon Indiana, Ilhnois and Missouri to throw off the 
 yoke of the accursed Yankee nation; then upon the whole 
 Northwest to join in the movement, form a Confederacy 
 of their own, and join us by a treaty of alliance, defensive 
 and offensive. What would then become of the Northeast? 
 How long would it take us to bring it back to its senses?"^ 
 Vallandigham was courteously treated by the Con- 
 federate authorities, had a conference with the leading 
 men, the purport of which was not made public at the 
 time,2 and then was assisted in running the blockade and 
 making his way to Canada by way of Bermuda and 
 Halifax. His nomination on June 11 as the Democratic 
 candidate for governor of Ohio gave him additional 
 prestige, and the issue to be fought out in Ohio during the 
 summer and fall of 1863 was of vital importance to the 
 
 1 Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, ser. 1, XIV, 955. 
 
 2 John Jones, Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital (Phila- 
 delphia, 1866), I, 357 says that he "saw the memorandum of Mr. Ould, of the 
 conversation held with Mr. Vallandigham, for file in the archives. He says if 
 we can only hold out this year that the peace party of the North would sweep 
 the Lincoln dynasty out of political existence." 
 
 [2441 
 
Dream of a Northwestern Confederacy 
 
 southern Confederacy. As a conspicuous "victim of 
 miUtary despotism," Vallandigham made an ideal can- 
 didate for opponents of the administration, but every one 
 at all familiar with his record knew that his election meant 
 not only full consent to the secession of the southern 
 states, but also immediate and persistent efforts to de- 
 tach the Northwest from the Union and ally it with the 
 South. The United States was to become but a memory; 
 and the great Northwest was to prefer an alliance with a 
 slave power to one with the merchants and manufac- 
 turers, the wealth and the culture, of the East. It was not 
 a pleasant outlook for those who loved their country. The 
 election was hotly — one might truthfully say fiercely — 
 contested; the ablest speakers on both sides took part in 
 the campaign; the vote was the largest ever polled in Ohio 
 up to that time, and the result most decisive. The fall of 
 Vicksburg and the defeat of Lee, "the invincible," at 
 Gettysburg on July 4, contributed greatly to restore con- 
 fidence in the ultimate success of the Union, and the 
 cavalry raid of John Morgan through southern Ohio 
 brought home to all the danger of allowing so warlike and 
 aggressive a people to establish itself as an independent 
 nation just across the Ohio. Vallandigham received but 
 187,728 votes out of a total of 476,554.^ 
 
 Ohio could not be carried out of the Union by consent 
 of the voters. The crisis was past. The common saying, 
 "As goes Ohio, so goes the Union," received fresh con- 
 firmation. But the efTorts to array the Northwestern 
 states against the East and take them out of the Union 
 did not end with this election. 
 
 Early in 1863, as a result of independent investigations, 
 Governor Morton in Indiana, Governor Yates in Illinois, 
 
 ' This campaign has been treated so fully in all histories of the period that 
 I need not cite any authorities for ray brief statement. 
 
 [245 1 
 
Wisconsin Historical Society 
 
 and GDvernor Kirkwood and Senator Grimes in Iowa 
 discovered that secret societies were organized in the 
 several states and in Kentucky and Missouri, having for 
 their main objects opposition to the war and aid to the 
 Confederates. Their origin is traced to "The American 
 Knights," a southern order of which General Beauregard 
 and other southern ofTicers were conspicuous leaders. The 
 northern "lodges" or "temples" at first bore the same 
 name, but were afterwards known as "Knights of the 
 Golden Circle," "The Order of the Star," "Sons of '76," 
 or "Sons of Liberty." They changed their names to suit 
 the exigencies of the time, much as fugitives from justice 
 assume an alias. They discouraged enlistments and en- 
 couraged desertion; they protected deserters and ob- 
 structed provost marshals in the performance of their 
 duties; they resisted the draft and they conspired to 
 overthrow the state governments; they sent information 
 to the southern armies and smuggled medicines, supplies, 
 arms, and ammunition through the lines. They formed 
 military companies w^hich drilled stealthily and provided 
 themselves with horses, guns, and pistols.^ 
 
 Governor Yates wrote, on April 3, 1863, that they were 
 getting ready for resistance to the government and that 
 it would be unsafe to begin the draft without troops to 
 maintain order. There was a draft riot at Danville, 
 Illinois, in August, 1863. ^ Senator Grimes wrote, April 
 20, 1863, "they are organized for insurrection and nothing 
 else."^ Governor Morton, with the aid of General Car- 
 rington, kept close watch on their movements in Indiana. 
 Commenting on his activity, the Indianapolis Sentinel 
 declared in February, 1863 that there w^as no hope of 
 
 1 Rhodes, History of the United States, V, 317-19. 
 
 2 Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, ser. 3, III, 116, 722, 
 1005, 1008, 1047. 
 
 « Ibid., 124. 
 
 [246 1 
 
Dream of a Northwestern Confederacy 
 
 ultimate success. "When Republicans organized to resist 
 the formation of a Northwestern Confederacy it was 
 evident that there was danger of another revolution more 
 alarming even than the rebellion. "^ 
 
 On May 23, 1863 a Democratic mass meeting was held 
 in Indianapolis to which 10,000 or 12,000 persons came, 
 of whom "no less than three thousand were armed." 
 Prompt steps were taken by the authorities for preventing 
 trouble. Policemen accompanied by a small body of 
 soldiers stopped trains outside of Indianapolis and dis- 
 armed the passengers. Others were arrested in Indian- 
 apolis and taken to the police court charged with carrying 
 concealed weapons. "In all, about 500 loaded revolvers 
 were taken from those who attended the meeting."- 
 
 When General John Morgan crossed into Indiana on his 
 famous raid he had every reason to believe that he would 
 receive substantial aid from the Indiana "lodges" which 
 were very numerous in southern Indiana, but hardly a 
 man joined his ranks and the raid was converted into a 
 race for the fords of the Ohio.^ Most people inferred 
 from this that while the "Knights" might covet big titles 
 and wear swords and pistols they would not fight; but 
 their excuse was that while there was hope of carrying the 
 elections it was better to work in secret. 
 
 These societies were scattered through other states, 
 Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Minne- 
 sota, but were not numerous enough to excite so much 
 apprehension as in Indiana and Illinois. -* 
 
 After the fall of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, Governor 
 
 1 Foulke, Life of Morton. I. 243. 
 
 2 Ibid., 273-77. 
 
 3 Ibid., 284, 386; Rhodes, History of the United States, V, 313-17. 
 
 ^ Mil^\-aukee, though, was reported as "disloyal beyond a doubt," and it 
 was said "that it would be foolhardiness to attempt a draft without protection," 
 and a similar report came from St. Paul. Id., IV, 534, 543-74. 
 
 [2471 
 
Wisconsin Historical Society 
 
 Morton, addressing an audience at Cincinnati, said: "The 
 great event of the war, and one which is of special im- 
 portance to the city of Cincinnati, has transpired — the 
 opening of the Mississippi river. It is the beginning of the 
 end * * *."^ 
 
 But the end was not yet. Chickamauga and the siege of 
 Chattanooga followed in September and the Union forces 
 were unsuccessful in most of their operations in January, 
 February, March, and April, 1864. The Red River ex- 
 pedition under General Banks was especially disastrous, 
 and again the cry was raised, "You never can defeat the 
 South." There was a feeling, both in the North and in 
 the South, that the troops of the Northwest were about 
 the only ones that had accomplished anything, and this 
 stimulated in the South, a fresh discussion of the feasi- 
 bility of sending commissioners to the states of the North- 
 west to negotiate for peace and an alliance with them. 
 
 But the Richmond Enquirer, which had entertained the 
 idea in 1862, now opposed it. On March 30, 1864 it advo- 
 cated the election of "Our Best Friend — Abe Lincoln," be- 
 cause it would "Effectually and forever close the door 
 against all kinds of reconstruction; cutting off the North- 
 western States j ust as effectually as the Northeastern. This 
 is a most desirable object." On April 1, 1864, under the 
 caption "That North-west Again!" the editor said: 
 
 The Selma "Mississippian" continues terribly exercised about the 
 rejection of some alleged proposition, said to have been made by "lead- 
 ing anti-Lincoln men of the Northwest" some eighteen months ago 
 
 * * *. We may be allowed to say that no such proposition, formal or 
 informal, was ever made to the Government of the Confederate States. 
 
 * * * If the "political revolution in the "North-west," which the 
 "Mississippian" alleges that the "Enquirer" "arrested," had for its 
 object the reconstruction of the old Union, under any form whatever, 
 
 * * * we rejoice that our efforts have been crowned with success. 
 
 1 Foulke, Life of Morton, I, 285. 
 
 [248 
 
Dream of a Northwestern Confederacy 
 
 By whom was the "Mississippian" driven from its home ? What 
 States furnished the troops that ravished, desolated and destroyed 
 Mississippi ? What soldiers burnt Jackson * * * and inflicted all 
 manner of injury and insult upon all classes? The Northwest. * * * 
 rather than reconstruct under any shape or form, with any part or 
 parcel of our despised and despicable enemies, Virginia will continue 
 the fight. She will know them only as foreigners. 
 
 The Confederate government evidently thought dif- 
 ferently, for Capt. Thomas H. Hines of the Ninth Ken- 
 tucky Cavalry, who had been with Morgan in his raid 
 through Indiana and Ohio, was sent to Canada in March, 
 1864 to confer with Jacob Thompson, ex-secretary of the 
 interior in Buchanan's cabinet, who was then acting as 
 "Special Commissioner of the Confederate States in 
 Canada." Thompson was liberally supplied with funds 
 and was to assist Hines in carrying out any plans he might 
 devise to release Confederate prisoners confined on John- 
 son's Island, Ohio, and in camps near Columbus, Indian- 
 apolis, Chicago, Springfield, Illinois, and Rock Island. 
 With the aid of the "Sons of Liberty" these released 
 prisoners were to overthrow the governments of Ohio, 
 Indiana, and Illinois, and establish a northwestern con- 
 federacy. Hines was sent to Windsor, opposite Detroit, 
 to confer with Vallandigham, who had been elected 
 Supreme Grand Commander of the Order. Vallandigham 
 claimed that the Order had enrolled 84,000 men in Illi- 
 nois, 50,000 in Indiana, 40,000 in Ohio, and lesser forces 
 in other states, amounting altogether to 300,000 men, 
 and that they were thoroughly organized with "major 
 generals" for each state, "brigadier generals" for each 
 county, etc. When properly armed and equipped they 
 would be re^dy to act with any force that might be sent 
 to aid and direct them. Arrangements were made with 
 Thompson for purchasing and shipping arms and ammu- 
 
 [2491 
 
Wisconsin Historical Society 
 
 nition to the various organizations, and representatives 
 of the Order were supplied with funds by Thompson. 
 
 Captain Hines says that subsequent investigations 
 fully confirmed all that Vallandigham had claimed with 
 reference to the numbers and purpose of this secret organ- 
 ization but, as events proved, they lacked the "unflinch- 
 ing nerve" necessary for success. July 20 was the date 
 first fixed for the uprising and release of prisoners in 
 Illinois and Indiana. At the suggestion of numbers of the 
 Order, however, the date was changed to August 22, to 
 enable Confederate forces to move into Kentucky and 
 Missouri and thus occupy the attention of the Federal 
 troops stationed in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and this 
 date was again changed to August 29, on which day the 
 Democratic national convention would meet at Chicago. 
 It was thought that the "Knights," or "Sons," could 
 concentrate in Chicago on that date without attracting 
 attention, and that the prisoners at Camp Douglas, over 
 5,000 in number, could easily be released and armed and 
 that they then, with the aid of the "Knights," or "Sons," 
 could easily set at liberty the 7,000 prisoners confined at 
 Springfield and overpower any forces of the United 
 States in Illinois. The success of this uprising would 
 embolden the Indiana men, and the movement would 
 spread until the whole Northwest would become involved. 
 If Union troops were withdrawn from the front to put 
 down the insurrection, the Confederate armies in the field 
 would press forward and, crossing the Ohio, aid in the 
 establishment of the new northwestern confederacy. On 
 the appointed day Captain Hines, with some sixty Con- 
 federate officers of experience and ability, was in Chicago 
 ready for action, but the "Knights" were too few in 
 number and too poor in spirit to justify action. There 
 were evidences that some of the men were being closely 
 
 [2501 
 
Dream of a Northwestern Confederacy 
 
 watched by government detectives and the best thing 
 to do was to break up and get out of Chicago as speedily 
 and quietly as possible. Thus failed the most promising 
 enterprise for establishing a northwestern confederacy by 
 armed insurrection.^ 
 
 After the fall of Atlanta General Beauregard was again 
 placed in command of the Western Department of the 
 Confederacy, although Hood retained field command of 
 the army. Both knew that President Davis was opposed 
 to another invasion of Tennessee and Kentucky and that 
 he thought the army ought to oppose, follow, or cut 
 across and get ahead of Sherman's army.^ Yet, obsessed 
 with the old idea that thousands of recruits in Tennessee 
 and Kentucky were only waiting for an opportunity to 
 join the Confederate army, and that a movement north 
 would result in the long-talked-of rising in the Northwest, 
 Beauregard authorized Hood's ill-starred movement into 
 Tennessee. His army was repulsed at Franklin with 
 heavy losses in killed and wounded and still heavier loss 
 in morale, and was completely shattered at Nashville. 
 
 1 The source for most of this information is Benn Pitman's stenographic 
 notes of the treason trials at Indianapohs in the fall of 1864, published at Cin- 
 cinnati in a volume of 340 pages, double column, very fine print. Those who do 
 not care to go through this mass of question and answer, will find most of the 
 facts stated in a report of Judge Advocate General Holt to the secretary of war, 
 dated Oct. 8, 1864. Foulke, Life of Morton, I, 385-432, gives a good summary 
 of the trials. Senator Morton himself gave an excellent account of the move- 
 ment in a speech in the United States Senate, May 4, 1876. Other very readable 
 accounts may be found in Rhodes, History of the United States, V, 320-38; Nicolay 
 and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, VHI, 1-27; Randall and Ryan, Ilistonj of Ohio, IV, 
 262-78. To round out the detailed account persons interested should also read 
 Jacob Thompson's reports to the Confederate secretary of war, Felix G. Stidger, 
 Treason History of the Sons of Liberty, formerly Circle of Honor, succeeded by 
 Knights of the Golden Circle, afterward Order of American Knights * * *(Chi- 
 cago, 1903), and Capt. Hines' very interesting account of the northwestern 
 confederacy published in the Southern Bivouac (Louisville, Ky.), H, nos. 7, 8, 
 9, and 11. It was as thrilling an episode as ever came to naught. 
 
 2 Davis, Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, II, 566-70; John B. Hood, 
 Advance and Retreat * * * (Philadelphia, 1880), 278 et seq. 
 
 [2511 
 
Wisconsin Historical Society 
 
 The dream of a northwestern confederacy was effectually 
 dispelled and soon the southern Confederacy ceased to be. 
 
 Many things contributed during the war to strengthen 
 the Union feeling in the Northwest. While the South was 
 being depleted of its manhood the Northwest was filling 
 up with a fresh, virile, enterprising, and industrious class 
 of immigrants from the eastern states, from Canada, and 
 from Great Britain, Germany, Sweden, and^ Norway. 
 They loved freedom, were inured to labor, and had an 
 instinctive aversion to slavery and all its concomitants. 
 Markets were found in the East for all the West could 
 produce, and the southern markets were hardly missed 
 after the first year of the war. When actually deprived 
 of the Mississippi navigation and commerce, the people 
 of the Northwest found they were not so badly off as they 
 had anticipated. Of the products of the South, cotton 
 was the only one the want of which was seriously felt. It 
 was found that tobacco could be raised in the northern 
 states and fine crops of good quality were raised in Con- 
 necticut, Pennsylvania, and southern Ohio before the war 
 closed. Farmers in Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin 
 experimented with it in 1864 and 1865, and were soon 
 able to supply the market with a good article. 
 
 One of the results of the war was that the South learned 
 to raise its own foodstuffs and the North learned to raise 
 its own luxuries. Whisky and tobacco were esteemed such, 
 fifty years ago. Existing railroad lines were extended to 
 and through the West, new lines were built, and old ones 
 consolidated, and railroad transportation to the seaboard 
 was cheapened and expedited until river and lake trans- 
 portation were hardly thought of as essential or even 
 important. Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois were fairly grid- 
 ironed with railroads, and the iron tracks — soon to be 
 converted into steel — stretched out in every direction 
 
 [2521 
 
Dream of a Northwestern Confederacy 
 
 from Chicago, binding the great Northwest together with 
 bonds more stable than water and providing all the 
 facilities for travel and commerce which the inhabitants 
 could reasonably desire. After the close of the war the 
 river trade between the chief cities of the Ohio Valley 
 and the upper Mississippi and the Gulf states was re- 
 vived and large fleets of steamers plied the running waters 
 for a time; but gradually this traffic declined. Old steam- 
 boats were allowed to sink, burn up, or rot on the sand 
 bars and along the shores, and their places were not 
 supplied. The steamboat landings at Cincinnati and St. 
 Louis, which formerly were wont to be lined with palatial 
 steamers, were almost deserted in the seventies and the 
 Mississippi River ceased to be of commercial importance, 
 except for the transportation of coal. If all these things 
 had been foreseen in 1861, the Northwest might not have 
 deemed the Union worth preserving and might not have 
 put forth that tremendous and heroic effort, without which 
 secession would doubtless have become an accomplished 
 fact. Is it difficult to believe that all these events were 
 guided and controlled by an unseen Power with a view 
 to the beneficient results which all now appreciate and 
 enjoy? 
 
 The passions which preceded and immediately followed 
 the Civil War have died out. The soldiers who fought the 
 battles for and against disunion acquired new respect for 
 each other. The breaking up of the United States into 
 a number of provincial confederacies, tormented by sec- 
 tional jealousy and disturbed by perpetual intrigues and 
 threats of war, is no longer a possibility. State pride, still 
 great, has made room for national pride, and all is well 
 with the Republic. 
 
 253 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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