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From Copperheads To The America First Committee: Wartime Dissent In America by John Bernhard Thuersam Paper delivered at the Spring 2003 WBTS Symposium, Wilmington, NC "The Legacy of the War Between the States" Little discussed in the media today is the dissent raised in America in opposition to war policies driven by presidential prerogatives, Lincoln, McKinley, Wilson and FDR in particular. The names of most, if not all, of the dissenters are lost down the “memory hole” and save for Charles Lindbergh, Jr., all are virtually unknown to today’s public. In a country that prides itself on, and was conceived in, dissent, our history reveals repeated official intolerance of opposition to government policies and that of various presidents. As the so-called Copperheads of the 1860’s were persecuted by the Lincoln administration and its supporters, so too were the dissidents of the Wilsonian era and Franklin Roosevelt’s drive to entangle us in a European and Asian wars.
Although this paper focuses on the period from 1861 through 1941, it is beneficial to briefly look at the years prior to 1861 to see what precedents there were for the suppression of dissent once the WBTS began.
The Alien & Sedition Acts, 1798: It is proper to mention at the outset here what the “official” protection of dissent is in the US as outlined in the First Amendment: It says that Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people to peaceably assemble…”
Keep in mind too that the Supreme Court in Ex Parte Milligan ruled that “the Constitution of the United States is a law for both rulers and people, equally in war and peace….and under all circumstances. The Court said that “martial law can never exist where the courts are open.”
The Alien and Sedition Acts were an outgrowth of President John Adam’s preparation for war with the French in early 1798. In an action copied by a later president, Adams revoked Washington’s order forbidding American merchant vessels to sail in an armed condition to avoid the depredations of the French navy. Jefferson termed this “the insane message”, and had two suggestions regarding the imminent outbreak of hostilities: first, that a president had no constitutional authority to arm merchant ships, only Congress did, and second; that Congress adjourn, go home, and consult their constituents on the state of affairs now existing.
Abigail Adams was incensed at the Boston Chronicle’s charges that the President and his eldest son were profiteering at the expense of the people, another paper referred to the president as ”old, querulous, bald, blind, crippled, toothless Adams.” Abigail felt that there must be some defense against lies and billingsgate; criticism of the government and its officers could be borne---indeed a free press was the support of free government. But what about falsehood and deliberate misrepresentation? In a republic, the people must have access to the truth if they were to act wisely. Certainly a free people had the right to defend themselves, that the right of a free press carried with it a responsibility to truth and decency. “Nothing will have an effect until Congress pass(es) a sedition bill”, Abigail declared. If they (the newspapers) and their lies are not suppressed, “we shall come to a civil war” Abigail affirmed to her sister. The Congress passed a naturalization act on the 18th of June 1798, extending the residency period for citizenship to 14 years. A week later, a law entitled “an act concerning aliens” was passed, and on the 14th of June a statute providing punishment for sedition. The 3 laws together were known as the Alien and Sedition Acts. By the terms of the Alien Act the president was empowered in war to, or at the threat of war to seize, secure or remove from the country all resident aliens who were citizens of the enemy nation. The sedition bill, provided an up to $5000. fine and imprisonment up to 5 years for any persons who should undertake to oppose or defeat the operation of any law of the United States, “or shall threaten any officer of the US government with any damage to his character, person, or property, or attempt to procure any insurrection, plot, or unlawful assembly or unlawful combination.” Similar penalties were reserved for those found guilty of “printing, writing or speaking in a scandalous or malicious way against the government of the United States, either house of Congress, or the President, with the purpose of bringing them into contempt, stirring up sedition, or aiding and abetting a foreign nation in hostile designs against the United States.” The bill was immediately denounced by Republicans as an infringement on the freedom of the press and the aggressive prosecution of Republican newspaper editors soon gave color to their accusations. A Newark, New Jersey man was fined $100. for wishing out loud that a cannon wadding would lodge in the President’s backside; a County official in New York was jailed and manacled for his anti-administration remarks; Congressman Matthew Lyon of Vermont was sentenced to four months in prison for calling Adams pompous and selfish in a personal letter. Just being a Republican was almost tantamount to sedition.
Jefferson saw the Alien and Sedition Acts as the first step toward tyranny, as “merely an experiment on the American mind to see how far it will bear an avowed violation of the constitution. If this goes down,” he announced,” we shall immediately see attempted another act of Congress declaring that the president shall continue in office during life.” He added that this would be followed by a law making the presidential succession hereditary and the Senate elected for life.
New England In 1812:
The New England states during the War of 1812 were far from supportive of the war effort against England, with Massachusetts leading the resistance. Thirty-two Massachusetts towns sent remonstrances against the war to the General Court, complaining that the once powerful voice of New England had been reduced to “the feeble expression of colonial complaints, unattended to and disregarded.” They also contended that the war faction had put together a veteran army of 60,000 men, which they might someday use to subvert liberty. The Boston Centinal observed in September 1814 that it considered the union already practically dissolved. While President Madison lamented the deterioration of events in Massachusetts and New England, he was a sick man and could not be persuaded to recommend sedition laws or other curbs on civil liberties in Massachusetts, and criticism of his policies. The Bay colony seemed to be a hotbed of secessionism then and also displayed its patriotism by selling grain to the British with which to supply its army.
The Mexican War
Though Lincoln was to radically alter his view toward the war powers of a president nearly 20 years later, his early opinions show he questioned how Polk began the Mexican war. Honest Abe was an Illinois congressman when the Mexican War began.
Although differing with the President as to the justice or even propriety of a war with Mexico, Lincoln voted with the majority of his Whig party for the supplies necessary to carry on the war. Lincoln did this with great reluctance, protesting all the while that “the war was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun by the President.” Lincoln law partner and biographer William Herndon writes that Lincoln thought Polk had exceeded Presidential authority with his invasion of foreign soil. Now, one cannot help noticing Lincoln’s later reversal of logic regarding the invasion of the South and presidential authority to do so.
It was well-known mid-western Copperhead Clement Vallandigham, himself accused of treason for questioning Lincoln’s abuse of civil liberties, recalled and stated in the US House in February 1863…” was Abraham Lincoln guilty (of treason) because he denounced (the Mexican) war while a Representative on the floor of this House? Was all this “adhering to the enemy, giving him aid and comfort”…?
The Copperheads:
Frank L. Klement states in his “Copperheads In The Middle West” that the Democratic critics of abolitionism and of the Lincoln administration came to be called “Copperheads”. He argues that there existed “a war within a war” in the north, and that after the emotional patriotic fervor of early 1861 had died down, the forces of political reality, economic grievances, anti-abolitionism and western sectionalism rose to challenge Lincoln. These western Democrats rightly blamed Republicans for the loss of the Southern market (which plunged the upper Mississippi Valley into an economic depression) and the distraught state of national affairs. Truthfully, Copperheads were not “seditious pro-Southerners”, but a loosely organized effort by northern and western Democrats to oppose what they saw as Lincoln’s assault on civil liberties and destruction of the country. To the end of his career, Klement remained firmly entrenched in his belief that the alleged Copperhead threat in the north was no more than a smear campaign and smokescreen to discredit harmless civilians who strongly opposed Lincoln and the Republicans. The Copperhead wartime slogan, “the constitution as it is, the union as it was”, proved that they looked toward the stability of the Constitution and feared the changes which the war, and the revolutionary Republicans, foisted upon the country.
Less than two months after assuming office as president, Lincoln wrote to General Winfield Scott unilaterally authorizing him to make arrests in the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus for reason of “public safety” in locations between Philadelphia and Washington City. By the 19th of August, 1863, anti-war sentiment so pervaded the north that Lincoln suspended the writ throughout the States remaining in the old union. Though Lincoln acted alone to suspend the writ, nowhere in the US Constitution does the president have this power and in fact is conferred only on Congress in Article I, Section 9.
The writ is the central point that the dissent debate revolves around, and Lincoln’s actions after April 12th 1861 shook the constitutional foundation of our country, and with far reaching effects that are with us today. In his July 4th 1861 speech to Congress, and after already illegally suspending the writ and arresting many for opposition to his policies, Lincoln claimed “…the Constitution itself is silent as to which, or who, is to exercise the power (of suspending the writ).”
The historical record speaks volumes, and reaching back to Madison’s extensive notes on the debates of the Constitutional Convention in August 1787, show clearly that the suspension was intended to be exercised only by the legislative branch.
Chief Justice Marshall in Ex Parte Bollman and Swartwout in 1807, affirmed the proper residence of the suspension power by stating that “it is for the legislature to say so…”, and that “..the legislature is to decide.” Not the president. Reflecting on the Constitution’s early days in his 1821 autobiography, Jefferson also placed the suspension power for habeas corpus with the Congress. Additionally, in distinguished legal advisor William Rawle’s 1826 “View of the Constitution of the United States of America”, he states that “of this necessity the Constitution probably intends that the legislature of the United States shall be the judges”; and in Justice Joseph Story’s “Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States” he writes “…as the power is given to the congress to suspend the writ….that the right to judge, must exclusively belong to that body.”
In May 1861 and the arrest of Marylander John Merryman, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney struck down Lincoln’s order to suspend the writ as unconstitutional. His ruling declared “with such provisions in the Constitution, expressed in language too clear to be misunderstood by anyone, I can see no ground whatsoever for supposing that the president, in any emergency, or in any state of things, can authorize the suspension of the privileges of the writ…” The Court’s ruling was delivered to Lincoln informing him of the unconstitutionality of his action as ruled by Taney’s Circuit Court. Legally, this left Lincoln with the option of either abiding by the decision, or appealing it to the US Supreme Court. Lincoln did neither and simply ignored the judiciary’s ruling against him. This action violated the constitutional judiciary system which, according to the landmark Marbury vs Madison ruling of 1803, Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that “the judicial power of the United States extended to all cases arising under the constitution.”
The sectionalism between east and west was strong, and the westerners had little trust in their New England brethren. The editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer stated the case of the western sectionalists succinctly regarding the Morrill Tariff Act of 20 February 1861: “The spirit in which the measure is gotten up is to oppress the agricultural interests of the west….It well deserves the name “The Bill of Abominations” and it will never be submitted to by the west….It is a New England measure, and is an evidence of the way the west will be treated in a Confederacy of which she (New England) is the dictator….she is determined that the whole country shall be subservient to the interest of her manufactures; and having driven the South out of the union, she wants additional burdens put on the west to make up for the loss of the Southern market. Her policy is extremely selfish and injurious to the interests of the northwest, who, we are confident, will resist it to the last extremity. Such oppressive taxation for the benefit of the few is almost sufficient to drive any people to rebellion.
Enter Vallandigham: The most famous Copperhead, though little remembered beyond comparisons to Benedict Arnold for obvious reasons, is Ohioan Clement Vallandigham. A congressman prior to the war and through 1863, his vocal opposition to the Lincoln administration led the Republican controlled Ohio legislature to redistrict the State in 1862 to ensure Vallandigham’s defeat. While this strategy was (and still is) a favorite for dealing with dissent, the Republicans in many northern States devised voting-in-the-field schemes so soldier votes could be manipulated and counted in the Republican columns. While it is popular to state that Lincoln was unsure of his ability to be re-elected in 1864, this naïve observation doesn’t give due credit to the Republican control of the military which policed the polls and ensured Lincoln’s victory over McClellan.
Consider the speeches of Vallandigham two years into the war:
Vallandigham, January 14th, 1863, said in the House of Representatives….
“…Yet after nearly two years of more vigorous prosecution of war than ever recorded in history,…you have utterly, signally, disastrously…failed to subjugate ten millions of “rebels”, whom you had taught the people of the North and West not only to hate, but to despise. Rebels did I say? Yes, your fathers were rebels, or your grandfathers. He, who now before me on canvas looks down so sadly upon us, the false, degenerate and imbecile guardians of the great Republic which he founded, was a rebel. And yet we, cradled ourselves in rebellion and who have fostered and fraternized with every insurrection in the nineteenth century everywhere throughout the globe, would now…make the word “rebel” a reproach.”
Vallandigham again…”I repeat it; I am for suppressing all rebellions---both rebellions. There are two, the secession rebellion South, and the abolition rebellion north and west.”
And Vallandigham commented on February 23rd, 1863 as he spoke against the Conscription Bill on the floor of the House…”The Bill virtually admits that the war is no longer one to which the people give, freely (of) themselves and their substance; but a war whose further prosecution must be enforced by arbitrary power. The Constitution makes a distinction between the army and the militia….This reserved right of the States the Conscription Bill disregards, and clothes the President with power to convert the entire militia into a federal army, under his immediate direction and command; leaving out those who are able and willing to commute by paying three hundred dollars.”
The resistance to Lincoln’s war was not only in Vallandigham’s Ohio, but in Iowa as well, where a federal inspector wrote to Secretary Stanton in July, 1862 that “men in this and surrounding counties are daily in the habit of denouncing the government, the war, and all engaged in it, and are doing all they can to prevent enlistments.” The States of Wisconsin and Minnesota in August 1864 saw men fleeing from the draft, and military preparation by citizens to resist the draft as well. This followed the bloody draft resistance of July 1863 in New York, erroneously labeled a race riot when it was in fact organized resistance to the Lincoln administration. In Connecticut and Michigan as well, federal troops and artillery were utilized to execute the conscription needed to fill the depleted ranks of federal armies. One is not surprised then to see one in three federal soldiers in late 1864 being German, or the large number of captured or impressed slaves wearing blue uniforms.
Baltimore newspaper editor Francis Key Howard, grandson of the Star Spangled Banner’s author, was arrested for printing seditious materials in September 1861 and imprisoned in Fort McHenry. Only 47 years earlier, his grandfather penned the famous song whilst a prisoner aboard a British ship in the harbor. On 26 September 1862, the office of Provost Marshall General was created in the War Department and given the authority to arrest all those suspected of disloyal practises. This action was directed primarily against the northern Democrats who opposed Lincoln’s war. Throughout the war, Lincoln and his Provost Marshals arrested and imprisoned approximately 38,000 political prisoners and shut down hundreds of newspapers, arresting their editors. Even telegraph operators worked as censors and spies, alerting federal authorities to “disloyal” activities and refusing to transmit anything they considered treasonous.
After Vallandigham’s arrest for disloyal utterances in May 1863 by federal General Burnside, he was banished to the Confederate lines by Lincoln. Though thought of by Lincoln as pro-South, Vallandigham had to be forced across Confederate pickets and he surrendered to Southern forces as a prisoner of war and wanted to be returned north. He eventually was carried to President Davis in Richmond who was convinced of Vallandigham’s desire to return to his home State, then had him sent to Wilmington and General William Whiting. Vallandigham was given passage on the blockade runner Lady Davis, formerly the Cornubia and owned by Secretary of War Seddon. He was taken to Bermuda, then to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and eventually to Niagara Falls, Ontario.
McKinley and the Anti-Imperialists: William Graham Sumner observed in his 1899 book, “Conquest of the United States by Spain”, that he saw the future written on the waters of Manila Bay. He said “the conservative elements in this country are making a great mistake to allow all this militarism and imperialism to go on without protest.” We know of course the Splendid Little War of 1898 started the US on the path of imperialism and we live with the effects of that war today. McKinley’s decision to not grant independence to the Philippines or Cuba created an opposition that was both populist and patrician, very much like the latter America First Committee of 1940-41. The Anti-Imperialists included William Jennings Bryan and Massachusetts Senator George Hoar, Mark Twain and Henry Adams, Henry James and Hamlin Garland. Agrarian and Populist Tom Watson of Georgia spoke for his party in saying that “the privileged classes will profit by this war…what do the people get out of this war? The fighting and the taxes. Republics cannot go into the conquering business and remain republics. Militarism leads to military domination, military despotism. Imperialism smoothes the way for the emperor.” Close to home, Congressman Claude Kitchin from Halifax County was a strong opponent of Wilson’s militarism and Wilson’s close ties with militant Republican leaders from New England, the center of the munitions industry. Propaganda for war “readiness” was advanced by so-called patriotic organizations, most importantly the Navy League, sponsored by J.P. Morgan and his partners, Westinghouse, US Steel, Lackawanna Steel and International Nickel. These were all patriots for whom preparedness held the lure of huge profits. In August 1915, Kitchin said that our menace came not from abroad but from our own militarists, “headed by Roosevelt” and from the “war traffickers, interested solely in profits to themselves.” With the big-navy coalition of naval officers, politicians and steel company owners pushing for more ships, Kitchen noted that “if Germany, with greatly inferior strength in battleships could triumph over the combined navies of the allies by means of small craft, then battleships were highly undependable.”
World War One and Woodrow Wilson:
From Neely’s book “The Fate of Liberty”, he states that “Wilson did not act in the same way that Lincoln had 56 years earlier. Wilson did not make arrests by executive authority using his (assumed) “war powers” and then await endorsement by Congress long after the fact. With no enemy invasion or presumed rebellion, suspending the writ in WW1 was out of the question. Congress provided Wilson with the Espionage Act of 1917 and the 1918 Sedition Act. Wilson did not initially need the congressional action to accomplish his goals of silencing critics…his proclamation that implemented the old 1798 Alien Enemies Act allowed the arrest of 6300 enemy aliens. And, without using direct military authority, Wilson met the ubiquitous problem of draft resistance in part by allowing the “arrest” of some forty thousand Americans by the American Protective League’s quasi-vigilante “Slacker Raids”. After Robert M. LaFollette voted against US entry into WW1 on the grounds that it benefited only the J.P. Morgan interests and the international bankers, the Wisconsin state legislature passed a resolution accusing the Senator of being an agent of Kaiser Bill.
Post World War One Dissent:
Former WBTS federal army officer, and later Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes figures prominently in the issue of free speech, and his Massachusetts abolitionist background before and during the war helped form his attitudes toward anti-government speech. Born in 1841, he served as an officer in the northern army, was appointed to the Supreme Court by Teddy Roosevelt in 1902, and lived to offer FDR advice until 1935. It is significant too that Holmes turned down an offer to be an officer of US Colored Troops. The regiment sought as officers “young men of military experience, of firm anti-slavery principles .…superior to a vulgar contempt of color, and having faith in the capacity of colored men for military service.” The faith did not extend into black men serving as officers as they did in the Native Guards of New Orleans, the first black regiment in WBTS service, a Southern unit. Holmes was a typical northern abolitionist, opposed to people as property, opposed to purchasing slave freedom with New England slave-trade profits, but not opposed to one race being superior to the other. Holmes as a Justice emerged as one of the founders of modern First Amendment theory, ruling in postwar Espionage Act cases that if one expressed intent or a bad tendency to bring about a legislatively prohibited evil, then one was guilty. In the case of Socialist Eugene Debs, merely suggesting in a speech that railroad workers consider resisting the draft was sufficient for 10 years in prison.
In the early postwar period, Wilson critics like Tom Watson of Georgia demanded immediate repeal of all coercive legislation passed during the war. He called for the restoration of freedom of speech, assembly, press and all civil liberties that Wilson had abridged. He further attacked Wilson saying the peace of Versailles was an iniquitous bondage forced on a helpless people by bayonet, and an American blockade still imposed starvation upon German citizens. He also regarded the League of Nations as an unholy alliance of the victors to impose imperial exploitation upon the subject nations. Under it, he thought, the US would be “made security for every bankrupt nation, and pledged to interfere with every squabble on God’s earth.” A very prescient thinker, Mr. Watson.
The America First Committee:
Author Walter McDougall in “Promised Land, Crusader State” draws a lesson from both the prophet Isaiah and George Washington…”put not your trust in allies, especially those who are stronger than you. At worst they will betray or disappoint you; at best, they will make you a pawn in their games.” He goes on to say that “the second great tradition (the above being the first) of US foreign policy is habitually dubbed “isolationism”. This, despite dogged efforts by some diplomatic historians to instruct us that no such principle ever informed the American government, and that the word itself came into general use only in the 1930’s. To be sure, references to America’s “isolation” can be found in documents dating back to colonial times, but their authors were just stating geographical fact.
What brought “isolation” to the consciousness of the American public was the propaganda of navalists like Captain A.T. Mahan, who sought to pin on their anti-imperialist critics a tag that implied they were old-fashioned curmudgeons. Most telling of all was that the “isolationists” of the 1930’s had little use for the term, preferring to label themselves nationalists or neutralists. And as McDougall adds, “so, our vaunted tradition of “isolationism” is not tradition at all, but a dirty word that interventionists, especially since Pearl Harbor, hurl at anyone who questions their policies.” MacDougall rightly states that what Washington was referring to in his farewell address was not isolationism, but a neutrality or “unilateralism” that kept us clear of European entanglements.
The America First Committee officially formed September 4th, 1940, and was a fixture in American political life until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. While its leadership presented an America First position to large crowds across the country, there also was much debate in Congress regarding the Roosevelt administration’s warlike policies.
Montana Senator Burton K. Wheeler was outspoken against the British attempt to lure us into protecting Western economic interests in Shanghai, arguing that “England’s strong arm policy in the Orient has failed, and if the US follows the advice of some of our pro-British citizens in the Orient, she will also fail.” If we had allowed Hitler and Stalin to fight it out, he believed, then “one would end in his grave, the other in the hospital, and the US and the world would have been rid of two menacing tyrants.” This was the crux of the Old Right’s foreign policy stance in the prewar years, and it was the natural extension of the old progressive critique of dollar diplomacy, with the added feature of a growing anti-communism. Speaking of dollar diplomacy and US foreign financial interests, it is important to read Marine Corps General Smedley Butler’s biography by author Hans Schmidt. The military career of this holder of two Medal’s of Honor is revealing.
Back to Burton Wheeler, it was he who observed in 1940 that “the US will undoubtedly enter the war with Germany and win. But mark my word, within ten years we will be asking Germany to assist the West in controlling Russia.” After Pearl Harbor, Wheeler did not give up his pressure on FDR and he lobbied for a negotiated peace. Why, he wanted to know, was FDR not making a deal with the anti-Hitler opposition in the German military, a deal that could save millions of allied lives. FDR was following a disastrous policy of unconditional surrender that was even opposed by Stalin.
In the postwar period, Wheeler was targeted by the leftist Democrats, the labor unions, communists and even the big eastern interests. Together they succeeded in unseating him in 1946 after a smear campaign far worse than the one waged against Lindbergh.
Senator Gerald P. Nye of North Dakota also questioned FDR’s policies, stating on November 14th 1941, “We are where we are, as a result of proclamations issued by our President and, if hostilities should come, historians will no doubt refer to it as the war of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Deception has been our lot. The altering of American thinking has in some degrees constituted a crime. It equals the sin of Judas….and during this time, this government has not made one move to bring about peace in Europe.” (Speech in New York City, 14 November 1941)
Senator Nye spoke again in St. Louis, August 1, 1941, saying that: “The government of Great Britain is trying for its own reasons to get us into war….and now we see America being stripped and oiled and groomed for another such war…You know as well as I do, that this, as in the last war, has been a propaganda job….And one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful instrument of propaganda, are the movies…but these movie moguls and directors are patriots---these men who only a few years ago filled their pictures with so much immorality and filth that the great Christian churches had to rise up in protest against it and organize the League of Decency to stop it…We want to know what part the government has played in this---and whether the government here, like the government in Hitler’s Germany, and Mussolini’s Italy, is using the films to poison the minds of the American people against most of Europe in order to plunge us into the bloodiest war in history. And for what reason? To make the world safe for British imperialism and Russian communism?” (Speech in St. Louis, 1 August 1941)
“If President Roosevelt finally gets what he has been issuing engraved invitations for, if we get into a shooting war in Europe, that war must always be referred to by historians as “President Roosevelt’s War.”
And closer to home, North Carolina Senator Robert Reynolds questioned on June 5th 1941: “What business is it of ours, of the American people, what form of government Germany, Italy, Japan or any other country on earth has? Why should we be sticking our noses into the affairs of other nations?” (C.R., 5 June 1941)
“Great fear has been instilled into the minds of the American people by false propaganda delivered daily in large, but evidently digestible doses, from hour to hour, by newspaper columnists, editorial writers, magazine editors, radio commentators, pamphleteers and the motion picture producers of the propaganda films.” (America First Bulletin, 2 August 1941)
And these quotes from Congressman Anton Johnson, Republican, Illinois. “…I admit we are faced with an acute danger. But it is from within rather than without. I refer to the minority war group…” C.R., 12 August 1941
“I firmly believe that if the coming vote in Congress on the repeal of the Neutrality Act carries, it will be our last chance to vote on the question of keeping out of war and that our representative form of government will be doomed. It will probably require another revolution to reestablish it. C.R., 15 October 1941
And Congressman Charles W. Tobey, Republican from New Hampshire.
“It is high time to speak frankly. The interventionist leaders of the nation are using subtle propaganda, deceit and misrepresentation to push the American people into the war…” C.R., 24 July 1941 And Congressman George Tinkham, Republican, Massachusetts.
“President Roosevelt and Secretary of State Hull have plotted against the peace and safety of the United States. They have purposely created a war hysteria and they are now projecting the United States into war. Their conduct is disloyal and traitorous.” C.R., 16 January 1941
While Roosevelt carefully avoided any interventionist moves prior to his 1940 reelection campaign and even stated that he would not have American boys fighting in Europe, he became a full interventionist after the election. Congressman John Taber, Republican from New York gives us this observation of FDR: “Since 1933, the distinguishing characteristic of the Roosevelt administration has been its adherence to the principle of double-crossing everybody who came in contact with it…” C.R., 9 July 1941
While far from being pacifists, the AFC official creed began with “I believe in an impregnable national defense”, and a resolve to keep this country out of the Old World’s everlasting family quarrels. “Our fathers came to America because they were sick of the quarrels” was another part of that creed. A wide range of members included San Francisco novelist Kathleen Norris, Jeanette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress and only Senator to vote against entry into WW1, West Pointer General Thomas E. Wood, Colonel Hanford MacNider, former American Legion national commander and Hoover’s assistant Secretary of War, and actress Lillian Gish, who was blacklisted after speaking at an AFC rally. With membership 800,000 strong at its height prior to Pearl Harbor, the FDR administration and interventionist allies were relentless in their efforts to associate the AFC with pro-Nazi sympathies, constantly pointing out Charles Lindbergh Jr.’s 1938 acceptance of the Service Cross of the German Eagle from Hermann Goering. On July 16th 1941, Lindbergh wrote to FDR, reminding him that he had received the decoration “in the American Embassy, in the presence of your Ambassador”, and “was there at his request in order to assist in creating a better relationship between the American Embassy and the German Government, which your ambassador desired at that time.” Lindbergh became a regular speaker at America First Committee rallies held around the country. Once the war began after Pearl Harbor, he was shunned by Roosevelt and not allowed to enter the service of the United States due to his opposition to the war.
Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio wrote Lindbergh to congratulate him on his foreign policy stands. As Taft saw it, the President “lacks the courage to come out openly for a declaration of war, while taking every possible step to accomplish that purpose, and yet threatens those who oppose his policy as if the country were at war.” To demonstrate the widespread support for Lucky Lindy’s stance, and the enduring legacy of Clement Vallandigham, some undergraduate students at the University of California formed a “Campus Copperhead” organization supporting Lindbergh.
Roosevelt asked news commentator Jay Franklin (John F. Carter) to research the WBTS Copperheads for him. On April 22nd 1941, Franklin submitted a 50 page report, and in it compared Lindbergh to federal general George McClellan as similarly “giving the sanction of professional prestige to the doctrines of defeatism”. At his press conference three days later, newsmen asked Roosevelt why Colonel Lindbergh had not been called into active military service. In his response, Roosevelt compared Lindbergh to Clement L. Vallandigham, the leading WBTS Copperhead. Thus we come full circle.
On May 20th 1941, FDR appointed Mayor LaGuardia of New York City to be Director of a new office of civilian defence. One of his responsibilities was to “sustain national morale”. And, the President explicitly defined the morale aspect to include “the whole subject of effective publicity to offset the propaganda of the Wheeler’s, Nye’s, Lindbergh’s, etc.” The total effort by the Roosevelt administration to defeat the isolationists was massive, many faceted and effective. On May 21st, 1941, FDR authorized the Attorney General “to secure information by listening devices direct to the conversation or other communications of persons suspected of subversive activities against the government (not Constitution) of the US, including suspected spies.” At that time, many telegrams received at the White House criticizing the president’s defence policies were being referred to J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI. And in May 1941, correspondence endorsing Lindbergh’s opposition to the use of American ships to escort convoys was removed from the White House and “sent to the Secret Service.” In November 1941, the president asked the AG “about the possibility of a Grand Jury investigation of the money sources behind the America First Committee.”
Let’s look again at the principles behind the AFC that FDR was worried about: 1. The US must build an impregnable defence for America. 2. No foreign power, nor group of powers, can successfully attack a prepared America. 3. American democracy can be preserved only by our keeping out of a European war. 4. “Aid Short of War” weakens national defence at home and threatens to involve America in war abroad. The list of principles above certainly begs the question….This is sedition?
Lastly, throughout our history as a country, and as outlined above, dissent has pervaded our culture as an ever-present force, but for the most part officially opposed, suppressed or belittled. A vexing problem we have today in this country is that there seems to be no one in Congress, save for Ron Paul of Texas, who represents what Sinclair Lewis called the “Mind Your Own Business Party”. No more William Jennings Bryan’s, Burton K. Wheeler’s, Robert LaFollette’s, Gerald Nye’s, Robert Taft’s, Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr’s, or William Borah’s, patriots all.
And today outside of government, only Patrick J. Buchanan and Gore Vidal seem to follow in the footsteps of all those mentioned above who saw their constitutional duty, as citizens of a free republic, to question our elected leaders and their unconstitutional policies.
Bibliography and Recommended Reading: Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter With The World Since 1776. Walter A. McDougall. Houghton Mifflin, 1997
The Copperheads In The Middle West. Frank L. Klement. Peter Smith, 1972
The Limits of Dissent: Clement L. Vallandigham & The Civil War. Frank L. Klement Fordham University Press, 1998
Dark Lanterns: Secret Political Societies…Civil War Frank L. Klement LSU Press, 1984
Abolition, The Union, And the Civil War. Clement L. Vallandigham. J. Walter & Company, 1863
The Fate of Liberty Mark E. Neely, Jr. Oxford University Press, 1991
Irrepressible Democrat: Sunset Cox David Lindsey Wayne State University Press, 1959
Herndon’s Life of Lincoln William Herndon DaCapo, 1983
Lincoln, The Man Edgar Lee Masters Foundation For American Education, 1931
Tom Watson, Agrarian Rebel C. Vann Woodward Oxford University Press, 1979
Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr, The Battle Against American Intervention Wayne S. Cole Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1974
The Illustrious Dunderheads Rex Stout, Editor Alfred A. Knopf, 1942
John Adams, Volumes I & II Page Smith Doubleday & Company, 1962
The Real Lincoln. Charles L. C. Minor Sprinkle Publications, 1904/1992
Lincoln and the War Governors William B. Hesseltine Alfred A. Knopf, 1955
Claude Kitchin and the Wilson War Policies Alex Mathews Arnett Little, Brown & Company, 1937 |