Civil War

Leading Dissenters: Deuster and Pomeroy

Peter Victor Deuster was born February 13, 1831 in the Prussian Rhineland of Germany and immigrated with his parents to a small farm near Milwaukee in May, 1847. He worked in journalism and politics his whole life, beginning in a small Milwaukee printing office and eventually editing (1856) and owning (1860) the Milwaukee See-Bote. Deuster served Port Washington as notary public, clerk of circuit court, clerk of land court, and postmaster before being elected to the State assembly in 1863, the State senate in 1870 and 1871, and the United States Congress from 1879-1885. He resumed his newspaper career, which became a prosperous business, and was appointed to two minor political posts before dying in Milwaukee, December 31, 1904.

According to Frank Klement, a Marquette University expert on Democratic dissent in the Midwest during the Civil War, “Lincoln’s critics in Wisconsin were legion,”1 but “[n]o Wisconsin Democrat…developed as solid an anti-war bloc as Peter V. Deuster,” a man who “served as chief spokesman for the thousands of German Catholics who lived in southeastern Wisconsin.” Deuster did not support the war from the start, but he did not become highly critical of Lincoln until the 1862 emancipation proclamation2 and the number of military arrests of civilians multiplied. Then his venom flowed free.

Peter Deuster:3 The war is destroying the very ideals that attracted immigrants to this country in the first place. “The motives which induce immigration are hope of freedom and lighter taxation. But neither freedom nor light taxation is to be found here. The taxes in the future will be heavier and more oppressive than they were in Germany, and as for freedom, we confess that we are living in the century of the Bastile and a muzzled press. The freedom which we receive from Washington is gone forever, and under the name of political necessity, the government takes away…the constitutional rights of the people.”4 The truth is that the war is being fought in the interests of eastern bankers and industrialists, who are war-profiteers. Wisconsin is becoming “slave and servant” to New England. The workingman in Wisconsin will face unemployment or lower wages when the cheap labor provided by former slaves moves north and takes their jobs.

Deuster continues: It was bad enough when Lincoln called for volunteers to die in this unnecessary and ill-fated war, but now he is drafting young men to leave their families and jobs to die in southern cotton fields for a cause they don’t believe in. Republicans run the draft unfairly, allowing the rich to buy their way out of military service and setting higher quotas in Democratic counties. The Draft Act of 1862 was even ruled unconstitutional by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.5 Being drafted is like being sentenced to execution. Now we have the Draft Act of 1863. When will it end? Lincoln has become a military dictator, and Republican radicalism may even lead to a Civil War in the north.6

Deuster concludes: The military arrest and trial of the civilian and Democratic politician Clement Vallandigham in Ohio for his criticisms of the war when civil courts are in operation is “an outrage” and Lincoln’s extreme policies are akin to “the excessive measures of the French Revolution.” Lincoln is “the most incapable of statesmen and the most irresponsible of butchers of men.” He has no conscience and tells smutty stories while widows sigh, children complain, and the wounded moan upon the battlefield. A soldier standing next to Lincoln was shot recently as the President visited the front lines. “Oh, if a fortunate coincident had caused that bullet to pierce the black, inhuman heart of this great butcher of men, rather than lodge in the leg of the poor soldier.”7

Marcus Mills Pomeroy, nicknamed “Brick” for his part in a friendly feud with another newspaperman while running the Horicon Argus, pursued several journalistic endeavors before arriving in La Crosse in 1860. He soon owned and edited the La CrosseDemocrat and immediately blasted then President James Buchanan for his failure to deal effectively with the southern states: “Buchanan is a traitor to his Country—a traitor to his party—a traitor to his word.” We should all pray, “Save our Country, but damn our President.”8 Pomeroy supported the war at its start since it began as a response to southern aggression,9 but he soon became a protestor and full-blown copperhead after a trip to the Arkansas war front in late 1862 and early 1863. His scathing criticisms of Lincoln were read far beyond the Wisconsin border. Frank Klement says, “No Wisconsin critic of Lincoln received the nation-wide notoriety and publicity accorded ‘Brick’ Pomeroy.”10 In the post-war years Pomeroy built his newspaper into “the best-known weekly in the country” with over 100,000 subscribers and he went on to New York and Chicago to achieve even greater fame.11

Pomeroy begins: “This war is not being carried on to preserve the Union. Such talk is all bosh…Were there no President to make—did there not exist parties in the North and South which appeal to the passions and prejudices rather than reason—were there no cotton in the South, no chance to steal in one day more than one man can earn in a lifetime—were there no rich speculators and moneyed men, as selfish and unprincipled as the devil himself, now controlling this crusade, there would be peace today over the land.”12 “The people do not want this war. Taxpayers do not wish it. Widows, orphans and overtaxed working men do not ask or need this waste of men, blood and treasure….But so long as blind leaders and fanaticism rules the day, so long will there be war, tears, and desolation. It might be treason to write this. But we cannot help it. If the truth be treason, this is the heighth [sic] of it, but such treason will find a cordial ‘Amen’ in thousands of hearts both in and out of the army.”13

Pomeroy continues: The emancipation proclamation of 1862 is indiscreet, unnecessary and unconstitutional and will be “powerful in producing evil results.”14 Lincoln is wrong to remove General McClellan, the only high-ranking Democrat in the military, from his post and to suspend habeas corpus. The Conscription Act of March 3, 1863 will crush “the sovereign power of the States” and “elevates Abraham Lincoln to the position of MILITARY DICTATOR…”15 Lincoln’s policies have been used to silence his critics, most famously, to arrest and deport Clement Vallandigham from Ohio. But Lincoln is the traitor, not Vallandigham. He is the one who has “warred against the Constitution.” How can he expect the citizen’s allegiance to his administration when it has no allegiance to the citizen?

Pomeroy concludes: “May God Almighty forbid that we are to have two terms of the rottenest, most stinking, ruin-working small pox ever conceived by fiends or mortals in the shape of …Abe Lincoln’s Administration.”16 He is a “clown,” “buffoon,” “teller of smutty jokes,” “widow maker,” “orphan maker,” and “hell’s viceagent on earth.” With the 1864 election coming, “[t]he man who votes for Lincoln now is a traitor and murderer…[a]nd if he is elected to misgovern for another four years, we trust some bold hand will pierce his heart with dagger point for public good.”17

Critics like Deuster and Pomeroy received threats against their homes, their businesses, even their lives. Deuster, for example, was called mischievous, treasonous, mean and disgraceful, a comfort to the enemy, and was blamed for the Port Washington draft riot on November 10, 1862. The federal marshal in Milwaukee threatened to arrest him and the Wisconsin Assembly supported an army ban on his newspaper, which is addressed below. When his home in Milwaukee burned down, many applauded it.18

Pomeroy was criticized harshly by Wisconsin Republican newspapers. Local citizens and soldiers writing home from the war front threatened his property and life, and a passing regiment attempted to destroy his newspaper office. Businesses quit advertising in his paper and individuals dropped subscriptions. He was threatened with arrest for involvement in Lincoln’s assassination.19

In defending their attacks on the President, copperheads insisted that their voice was needed to prevent abuse of power by the majority party and the Lincoln administration.20 Yet many of their opponents wanted copperhead Wisconsin newspapers shut down and individual copperheads jailed or deported. They believed the critics had crossed the line from criticism to treason.

Notes

1 Klement (1959), p. 186.

2 Klement (1959), p. 185, writes, “Nearly every Democratic editor condemned the Emancipation Proclamation,” and gives several specific examples.

3 Paraphrases and excerpts from the See-Bote. See, e.g., the Appendix to the Report of the Wisconsin State Assembly Committee on Federal Relations.

4 June 11, 1862. October 1862 denounces the appointment of a general provost to Wisconsin—Watched by a military dictator or guarded by bayonets, the freedom of suffrage proves a farce….Ye citizens! Ye once free American citizens! You have lost your most precious jewel! Your magna charta, your patents of citizenship are torn to pieces, your ‘bill of rights’ has been destroyed…”

5 July 16, August 6 and 20, November 5 and 12, 1862. Klement (1972) pp. 25-27 maintains that “Democratic efforts to capitalize on fear of the draft were best illustrated in Wisconsin.”

6 March 25, April 20, July 23 1863. Odd as it may sound, even before the Civil War broke out, Assemblyman Ben Hunkins of Waukesha introduced a resolution declaring war on the U.S. in March 1860 because of the widespread sentiment in Wisconsin that the federal government was not respecting the sovereign rights of the states. However, the Speaker of the Assembly immediately ruled the resolution unconstitutional and the resolution was dropped. See Current, p. 277.

7 December 18, 1862, and June 25, July 27, 1864.

8 Dec. 26, 1860.

9 Pomeroy supported Lincoln early on, writing an editorial entitled “Stars and Stripes Forever” and even trying (though not succeeding) in organizing a company of volunteers he dubbed “ Wisconsin’s Tigers” to join the war effort. Klement (1962) pp. 160-161. He also did not endorse the Ryan Address of 1862 until the next year. In 1862, he considered the speech “too partisan.” Klement (1951), p. 111.

10 Klement (1959), p. 188.

11 Klement (1972), p. 265-6.

12 March 17, 1863.

13 A letter of February 26, 1863 published in March 17, 1863 La Crosse Democrat.

14 Klement (1962), p. 162.

15 Klement (1962), p. 164.

16 La Crosse Democrat, July 5, 1864.

17 When the editor of the rival La Crosse Republican paper accused Pomeroy of being all bark and no bite, Pomeroy responded that he would “shoot him quick as any man.”

18 However, the fire was not the result of vigilante action; the fire began in a nearby bakery and spread to the neighboring buildings.

19 See Rasmussen, pp. 35-36 and Klement (1962), pp. 168 and (1972), p. 244.

20 See, e.g., Pomeroy in La Crosse Democrat, July 17, 1861 and Carpenter in the Wisconsin Patriot (Madison), August 1, 1861.