COPPERHEADS
UCGA – Vol XX – No. 3 – Fall 1995
Copperheads, a name applied during the Civil War to members of the Democratic Party
in the Northern states who violently opposed the prosecution of the war. They were also
known as Peace Democrats. They were not necessarily in sympathy with the South, but
held that the Confederacy could never be conquered, and that the attempt to coerce the
seceding states was hopeless and illegal. The name was generally indicative to
treacherous character and is thought to have been derived from the copperhead snake
which habitually strikes without warning. Another explanation of the name is that it
came from the head of the goddess of liberty cut out of a copper cent and worn as a
button by the opponents of the war. The Copperhead’s greatest strength was in Illinois,
Indiana, and Ohio. The most prominent of them was Clement L. Vallandighiam.
The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001.
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.
See W. Gray, The Hidden Civil War (1942); F. L. Klement, The Copperheads in the
Middle West (1960).
The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001.
Vallandigham, Clement Laird
(vln´dghm´´, –gm´´) (KEY) , 1820–71, American political leader, leader of the
Copperheads in the Civil War, b. New Lisbon (now Lisbon), Ohio. He became (1842) a
lawyer, was elected to the Ohio legislature