Vallandigham, Clement L.
Vallandigham, Clement L. (1820–1871),Demo cratic congressman, leading critic of the Lincoln administration during the Civil War. A lawyer and editor active in Democratic party politics from the 1840s, Vallandigham entered Congress in 1858. During the Civil War, he stridently opposed slave emancipation, the growth of central government power, and a harsh war policy against the South, demanding instead a negotiated peace to save the Constitution from Republican depredations. His opponents claimed that he was so militantly antiwar that he espoused treason. He came under military surveillance and was arrested by Gen. Ambrose Burnside after a speech in 1863 whose General Order No. 38 forbade any “habit of declaring sympathies for the enemy” in Ohio. He was tried and convicted by a military commission, not a civil court, and sentenced to...
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