During the Civil War, Clement L. Vallandigham, of Ohio, had shown
himself, in the National House of Representatives and elsewhere, one
of the bitterest and most outspoken of all the men of that class which
insisted that “the war was a failure.” He declared that it was the
design of “those in power to establish a despotism,” and that they had
“no intention of restoring the Union.” He denounced the conscription
which had been ordered, and declared that men who submitted to be
drafted into the army were “unworthy to be called free men.” He spoke of
the President as “King Lincoln.”
Such utterances at this time, when the Government was exerting itself to
the utmost to recruit the armies, were dangerous, and Vallandigham was
arrested, tried by court-martial at Cincinnati, and sentenced to be
placed in confinement during the war.
General Burnside, in command at Cincinnati, approved the sentence,
and ordered that he be sent to Fort Warren, in Boston Harbor; but the
President ordered that he be sent “beyond our lines into those of
his friends.” He was therefore escorted to the Confederate lines in
Tennessee, thence going to Richmond. He did not meet with a very cordial
reception there, and finally sought refuge in Canada.
Vallandigham died in a most peculiar way some years after the close of
the War, and it was thought by many that his death was the result of
premeditation upon his part.