Civil War

This Week in the Civil War

00000174-b11b-ddc3-a1fc-bfdbb1a20000The Schreiner University Department of History is honoring the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War with a series of short vignettes focusing on events from 1861 through 1865. The Civil War was the most destructive conflict in American history, but it was also one of our most defining moments as a people and as a nation. Let us know what you think about "This Week in the Civil War." E-mail your comments to Dr. John Huddleston at jhuddles@schreiner.edu.Airs: Weekdays at 5:19 a.m., 8:19 a.m., 4:19 p.m. on KTXI and 4:49 a.m., 9:29 p.m. on KSTX.

This Week in the Civil War - 564

Texas Public Radio | By Texas Public Radio

Published May 7, 2013 at 2:36 PM CDT

On Tuesday, May 5, 1863 former congressman Clement Vallandigham, leader of the Northern Copperheads, was arrested in Dayton, Ohio. Tried by a military commission, he was convicted for expressing treasonable sympathies.

He had previously referred to the war as an attempt to destroy slavery so as to create a Republican Party dictatorship and had described the Civil War as “wicked and cruel.”

Vallandigham was sentenced to two years' confinement in a military prison, but Lincoln did not wish to make a martyr out of him, so the president ordered Vallandigham sent to the Confederacy.

Vallandigham's alleged assertion that "he did not want to belong to the United States" prompted Edward Everett Hale in December 1863 to write the often reprinted short story “The Man Without a Country” in The Atlantic Monthly.