Peace Movements
Efforts to retain and regain peace during the Civil War (1861–1865) were uniformly unsuccessful. The earliest of these efforts took place in Washington in the winter of 1860–1861 as the outbreak of war threatened. Kentucky Senator John J. Crittenden drafted a series of initiatives, including an irrevocable constitutional amendment protecting slavery, protection of slavery south of the Missouri Compromise line, and compensation to owners for fugitive slaves. The Republican Party immediately rejected these proposals. Shortly thereafter, a peace convention of Unionists from the upper South met to try to find an alternative plan to prevent war. The convention adopted a modified form of the Crittenden plan that both the Republicans and the newly formed Confederate States of America rejected.
The initial organization of purely voluntary armies by both governments and the overwhelming martial spirit in both sections temporarily silenced peace advocates after April 1861. Individual pacifists, especially the Quakers, announced their opposition to the war on moral and religious grounds and were allowed to avoid participation in the bloodshed. Peace advocates became more outspoken when the Confederacy imposed conscription in 1862 and the Union did so in 1863, and when Abraham Lincoln announced his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862. By 1863 one wing of the Democratic Party had become advocates of an armistice to end the fighting, and they expected peace negotiations would follow. Their most active spokesperson was Clement L. Vallandigham, a gubernatorial candidate in Ohio. Although there was substantial support for this policy in the North—particularly among farmers in the lower Midwest—peace candidates lost most of the major political races in the North in 1863.
Peace movements began to appear openly in the Confederacy in the summer of 1863. These movements appeared to be motivated by the economic challenges facing lower-class whites and a decline in morale that developed after major Confederate defeats at Vicksburg and Gettysburg in early July. The most significant of these efforts took place in North Carolina and was headed by newspaperman William W. Holden. More than 100 public meetings were held throughout the state, and participants demanded that the administration of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, seek an armistice and negotiate a peace. As a result of this popular clamor, three peace candidates were elected to the Confederate Congress from North Carolina.
By 1864 revulsion against the heavy losses suffered by both armies led to renewed efforts to end the hostilities. On the Union side, secret groups called the Sons of Liberty and Knights of the Golden Circle formed in the Midwest. They called for an end to the fighting and supported the Peace Democrats. The Peace Democrats controlled their party's national convention in August and called for an armistice and a convention of states. Although the Democratic presidential candidate, George M. McClellan, repudiated the peace plank, many Democrats supported the party platform throughout the campaign.
In the Confederacy, public disillusionment with the Davis administration also created an organized opposition. Clandestine groups—particularly among yeoman farmers in the Appalachian Mountains—worked to end the war and to bring about reunion. Among these organizations were the Peace Party in Alabama and the Heroes of America in Virginia and North Carolina. William Holden ran for governor of North Carolina in 1864 as an avowed peace candidate but was soundly defeated.
As the military defeat of the Confederacy became more obvious in the winter of 1864–1865, several individuals and groups in the South sought to end the fighting. Legislators in Virginia, Georgia, and North Carolina introduced initiatives calling for an end to the fighting, but these were defeated by a majority of members. Senator William A. Graham of North Carolina reported that some members of the Confederate Senate were encour-aging the states of Virginia and North Carolina to withdraw their troops from the Confederate army. In February 1865 President Lincoln and his secretary of state, William H. Seward, agreed to meet Confederate representatives at Hampton Roads, Virginia. The three Confederate officials—Vice President Alexander Stephens, Senator Robert M. T. Hunter of Virginia, and Davis's assistant secretary of war, John A. Campbell—sought an armistice and a joint foreign policy initiative by the two governments. Lincoln rejected the Confederate overtures, and peace came only with the surrender of the Confederate armies in April.
The Civil War peace movements failed for two major reasons. First, the majority of people in both sections rejected compromise on the key issues of reunification and slavery. Second, both Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln, and their advisors, refused to consider any peace terms other than those unacceptable to the other. Thus, the peace movements of the Civil War never had a chance to succeed.
Davis, Jefferson; Lincoln, Abraham; Peace Movements.
Bibliography
Auman, William T. and David B. Scarboro. "The Heroes of America in Civil War North Carolina." North Carolina Historical Review, LVIII (Autumn 1981), 327–363.
Curran, Thomas F. "Pacifists, Peace Democrats, and the Politics of Perfection in the Civil War Era," Journal of Church and State, XXXVIII (Summer 1996), 486–506.
Junk, Cheryl Fradette. "Good Soldiers of Christ: A Case Study of North Carolina Quaker Resistance to the Civil War." Southern Friend, XV (Spring 1993), 21–57.
This is the complete article, containing 841 words
(approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page).
