Copperheads

Copperheads in the American Civil War, a reproachful term for those Northerners sympathetic to the South, mostly Democrats outspoken in their opposition to the Lincoln administration. They were especially strong in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, where Clement L. Vallandigham was their leader. The Knights of the Golden Circle was a Copperhead secret society. The term was often applied indiscriminately to all Democrats who opposed the administration. It afforded an opportunity for impugning the loyalty of those who opposed Lincoln's policies, either military or civil (e.g., the suspension of habeas corpus), and it was not until years after the Civil War that the Democratic party succeeded in living down the association.

Bibliography: See W. Gray, The Hidden Civil War (1942); F. L. Klement, The Copperheads in the Middle West (1960).

Copperheads, epithet applied during the Civil War to Northern sympathizers with the Confederacy, or to the Peace Democrats, who opposed the waging of the war. The name is derived from that of the deadly snake that gives no warning before it discharges its venom. In earlier times, the name was applied to Indians and to the Dutch colonists. The most prominent of the Peace Democrats was C.L. Vallandigham, Ohio politician who in 1864 became president of the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret society of Copperheads, powerful in the Middle West until the end of that year. This organization, which had originated in the South during the 1850s, was also known as the Order of American Knights and the Sons of Liberty. Harold Frederic's The Copperhead (1893) is a story of a New York farmer who opposes Abolitionism, and Augustus Thomas's play The Copperhead (1918) deals with a southern Illinois farmer selected by Lincoln to serve as an espionage agent among the Copperheads.