Anti-war Sentiment in Greene County, Pennsylvania

PART II: “A Loyal Opposition”


As noted by Dr. G. Wayne Smith on page 15 of his Greene County history, “One constant in Greene County politics from the beginning was an affiliation with and unqualified support for the Democratic Party . . . .” The county voted Democratic in the 1860 Presidential election, and in 1864, Greene County was one of twelve counties in the state of Pennsylvania that voted against Lincoln’s reelection. As early as February 16, 1861, with the country drifting toward open hostilities between states of the lower South and the Federal government, Greene County Democrats held a meeting at the Courthouse in Waynesburg to pick delegates to send to Harrisburg for a convention calling for peace and supporting compromise with the South. Charles A. Black, Congressman Jesse Lazear, J. L. McConnell, and Dr. S. Morris were selected as delegates. In his diary that evening, James Lindsey, law partner of J.A.J. Buchanan, Chairman of the County Democratic Committee, wrote that he gave an hour-long speech supporting the resolution for a compromise with the seceding states. He stated that if Lincoln and the Republicans “stubbornly reject all compromises, and recklessly plunge the country into Civil War, they would have to do the fighting themselves.” His remarks were met with great applause by the assembly and to him “seemed to embody the unanimous sentiment of the meeting.”
As war erupted between the two sections of the country, North and South, and with hundreds of Greene County men flocking to join the colors of the Union, the Democratic leaders of the county remained steadfast in their opposition to many of the policies adopted by Lincoln and the Republican majority in Congress for prosecution of the war. To meet the crisis of Civil War, Lincoln suspended the use of the writ of habeas corpus, martial law was imposed even in some areas of the North on occasion when deemed necessary for the war effort, and military courts were used to try civilians charged with being in violation of military policies. As the war continued, Lincoln adopted a more radical policy by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation to take effect on January 1, 1863. The Republican controlled Congress enacted a most unpopular measure on March 3, 1863 when it passed a military conscription act that allowed a man drafted into military service to hire a “substitute” or pay $300 to be exempted from service. As war weariness grew in the North, this draft law led to increasing charges that the conflict was a “rich man’s war” but “a poor man’s fight.” Moreover, many Peace Democrats in the North saw the Emancipation Proclamation as unconstitutional and a stumbling block to any negotiated peace and reunion with the South.
In Congress, Jesse Lazear from Richhill Township, was a stubborn opponent to the Republicans. On July 9, 1861, Congressman Lazear voted against a resolution passed by the House which absolved Union soldiers of any duty to capture and return escaped slaves. Later that year, on December 10, 1861, Lazear supported a resolution, subsequently tabled by the House without action, stating that Congress alone had the right to suspend habeas corpus and that suspension of the writ by any other government department “is a usurpation and therefore dangerous to the liberty of the people.” On February 28, 1863, Lazear gave a speech before the House in which he defended his “pacific views”, at the same time protesting against being abused and called “disloyal” for holding such views. “I confess that I would prefer a peace,” he said, “rather than to have the people of the South exterminated . . .and to see their lands occupied by their discharged slaves, even if we were sure that they would raise no more cotton.” In addition, he argued “that the arrests of citizens by military or executive authority are unconstitutional, and that whoever commits such an act of outrage is liable to an action for damages in our courts, from which responsibility no government power can shield him.” For Lazear, martial law could “only exist where the will of the despot is supreme.” As for the Emancipation Proclamation, he dismissed it as a measure “pregnant with more evil than any single act done by one man.” As late in the war as May 31, 1864, Congressman Lazear introduced a resolution that the President suspend all hostilities and call for a convention of delegates from all the states, North and South, to meet for the purpose of working out a compromise to end the war and to restore the southern states to the Union.
Dr. Alexander Patton, Greene County’s representative in the Pennsylvania Assembly, introduced a resolution on February 5, 1863, stating the Federal government had no right to request that Pennsylvania provide men or material for its war effort until Lincoln rescinded the Emancipation Proclamation. Dr. Patton noted that “the present bloody and devastating civil war could, and should have been averted, by the adoption of the Crittenden compromise, or by some other measure alike just and honorable to all sections of the country.” Placing “the whole responsibility” for the war upon the “dominant party in Congress,” Dr. Patton, speaking for many Peace Democrats throughout the state, declared that the President’s act in freeing the slaves in the South was unconstitutional and unnecessarily changed the objective of the war from its original aim of preserving the Union. The resolution did not pass, but George Turner at Bloomsburg University believes that Dr. Patton’s resolution can be seen as a symptom of fear that the North would be inundated by freed Blacks from the South or that Lincoln and the Republicans were trying to impose racial equality between Blacks and Whites.
Support for his thesis can be found in a series of resolutions adopted by a Democratic Party meeting in Davistown in Dunkard Township held on Saturday, March 8, 1863. John Stephenson, who served as president, with Jacob Shriver and J. Bussey as vice-presidents, and E. Chalfant serving as secretary, chaired the meeting. The committee on resolutions consisted of Samuel Hayes, A. Jamison, and William Knotts. The resolutions proposed by them and passed by the delegates at the meeting included support for the efforts being made by Jesse Lazear in Congress, but added that the Democrats of Dunkard Township were “opposed to any and all of the unconstitutional schemes of Abolitionism to equalize the negro and white races, either by sword or by proclamation.”
Further, they resolved “that this government was made by white men and for white men, and that the negro has no part therein, as a citizen.” Calling for support of the “Constitution as our fathers made it, and for the Union as it was, “ the committee demanded that “this bloody war” be terminated “by fair, just and Constitutional compromises.”
The Waynesburg Messenger, a Democratic newspaper, summed up the view of most Greene County Democrats in an article published on July 16, 1862. Purporting to be a conversation heard in the street by the reporter, the unidentified parties spoke as follows:
“DEMOCRAT -- I am in favor of prosecuting the war to the utter putting down of the rebellion, and shall sustain the Administration in all its efforts to enforce the laws, restore the Union as it was, and preserve the Constitution as it is. But I am opposed to frequent violations of the Constitution, and to unconditional and universal emancipation.

REPUBLICAN -- D__n the Constitution! -- What has it to do with the war? The `war power’ gives the President the right to arrest whoever he pleases and to suspend the writ of Habeas Corpus when he pleases, and gives Congress the right to emancipate the slaves, and I’m in favor of doing it if necessary.”

The late spring and summer of 1863, however, was destined to be a trying time in Greene County as it was for Pennsylvania and the rest of the country. It started on April 20 and April 21, 1863, when two columns of approximately 7000 Confederate troops made their way out of the Shenandoah Valley headed on a raid against the B&O Railroad facilities in western Virginia. A force of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, led by Brigadier General John D. Imboden headed toward the towns of Beverly, Philippi, and Grafton. Brigadier General William E. (Grumble) Jones led the second column composed of 3000 men, mostly cavalry. Jones was leading his detachment toward the bridges on the Cheat River and the Monongehela River near Morgantown in Monongalia County. Arriving at Rowlesburg on the Cheat River on April 26, Jones was met by Major J. H. Showalter with two hundred fifty men from the 6th (West) Virginia Infantry. Showalter put up a strong defense, and Jones eventually skirted the Union position and moved on to Morgantown with 1500 men. In the meantime, Showalter, fearing for the safety of his small force, hastily retreated to Uniontown, Pennsylvania, taking with him five hundred men and four pieces of artillery. He proceeded from there to Connellsville, where he placed his troops on a train bound for Pittsburgh, intending to board a riverboat for Wheeling. Jones’ force of 1500 Confederate cavalry occupied Morgantown at about four o’clock in the afternoon of April 27, 1863. Panic spread throughout western Pennsylvania and Wheeling.
After occupying Morgantown, the rebels began searching the vicinty and making prisoners of certain citizens who were known to be strong Union supporters. One of these, identified by the Wheeling Daily Intelligencer as a Colonel Boyers, a deputy marshall, rode north toward Waynesburg just as the Confederate cavalry approached his home. He lived two miles down the Monongahela River from Morgantown and rode all the way through Waynesburg, arriving in Washington, Pennsylvania about 11 o’clock that night. In the meantime, another rider left Waynesburg around 2 o’clock the next morning bringing to Washington the news that Confederate cavalry was reported to be at Newtown [Kirby], only nine miles from Waynesburg. Late in the evening of April 27, several trains that had been waiting at Cameron arrived in Wheeling with news that a bridge had been burned at Burton and rebel cavalry were seen twenty miles east of Cameron. The commander of the Union forces at Wheeling, Captain W. C. Thorpe of the 13th United States Infantry, became even more alarmed when it was mistakenly reported that Confederate cavalry was at Waynesburg.
By the morning of April 28, 1863, however, Jones, after destroying the turnpike suspension bridge over the Cheat River, had moved off to attack the garrison at Farmington and search for Imboden near Clarksburg. By May 6, 1863, The Waynesburg Messenger reported that the excitement “has almost entirely subsided.” The newspaper noted that Waynesburg’s Committee of Public Safety had gotten the “home forces” in readiness, and Washington County had sent a company of infantry commanded by a Captain Wishart. By Saturday, May 2, 1863, the alarm was over and the Washington County men went home. Now, “all is quiet, and all alarm allayed.”
The Reporter and Tribune from Washington, Pennsylvania, however, published an interesting piece on May 13, 1863 under the headline: “A Genuine Copperhead.” It seemed that the Uniontown papers were reporting that Major Showalter who had again occupied Morgantown captured and brought with him to Uniontown a man named David Lilly. Lilly was accused of being a spy for the Confederate raiders and a traitor who led the rebels around Morgantown to the homes of prominent Union men. Moreover, Lilly had been seen in Uniontown a few days before the raid, leading to speculation that he was scouting for a foray into Fayette County. The paper described Lilly as “a Democrat of the Vallandigham stripe,” referring to a notorious Peace Democrat from Ohio who was eventually banished to the South. The most curious thing about Lilly, however, was that he was a resident of Pennsylvania and a member of the Waynesburg bar.