Thursday, April 10, 2014

April 11, 1864---"An aptly-named dense obstructive object."



APRIL 11, 1864:

Alexander Long (December 24, 1816 – November 28, 1886) was a Democratic Congressman from Ohio (1863-1865). Long was a prominent Copperhead. Long addressed Congress on April 8th, and said (in part):


I believe now that there are but two alternatives, and these are, either an acknowledgment of the independence of the South as an independent nation, or their complete subjugation and extermination as a people, and of these alternatives I prefer the former . . . I do not believe there can be any prosecution of the war against a sovereign State under the Constitution, and I do not believe that a war so carried on can be prosecuted so as to render it proper, justifiable, or expedient. An unconstitutional war can only be carried on in an unconstitutional manner, and to prosecute it further under the idea of the gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Thaddeus Stevens, the leader of the Radical Republicans] as a war waged against the Confederate States as an independent nation, for the purpose of conquest and subjugation, as he proposes, and the Administration is in truth and in fact doing, I am equally opposed.

Long’s speech so enrages the Radical Republicans that a vote is held to expel him. On this day, Congressman Fernando Wood (1812-1881) of New York, the leader of the Copperhead faction, makes a dramatic speech in favor of Mr. Long:

But we are told that the whole speech gives aid and comfort to the enemy. If that be true, whoever else may take exception to giving aid and comfort to the enemy, it ought not to come from that side of the House, or from gentlemen who represent that party. Their whole political career since the commencement of this war, official and otherwise, has given aid and comfort to the enemy. It has been the fanatical and destructive course . . . it has been the declaration and practical effort to carry fire and sword into every household of the South . . . leaving the South no alternative but resistance or death, that this war has been prolonged . . . This is " the aid and comfort" which has been given 10 the enemy, and it came from the men who affect now to be indignant at the expressions of the gentleman arraigned.

Wood’s speech so polarizes Congress that the Radical Republicans can only muster the votes for a censure on the grounds of "treasonable utterances."




The ultimate Tammany Hall machine politician, Congressman Wood was notoriously inflammatory. He first went to Congress from 1841 to 1843, where he had an unremarkable term. Elected Mayor of New York City in 1855, Fernando Wood proved himself so corrupt that the New York State Assembly voted to shorten his term by two years.  Not that it helped --- he recruited gangs like the Dead Rabbits to stuff the ballot box and got himself reelected.

In 1857, Wood bought the New York City police force in whole. New York’s Finest was legislatively dissolved as a result, and was immediately reconstituted under new laws. Wood refused to acknowledge the New York State Assembly’s authority over New York City. Holed up in City Hall with “his” police, the now illegal “Municipals,” Wood fought a pitched battle with the “Metropolitans,” the legal NYPD. 52 police were injured, several severely. Wood refused to surrender until Federal troops arrived with artillery, ready to blast City Hall to smithereens.

Regardless, Wood was re-elected again. In the early days of the Civil War, Mayor Wood was a secessionist who wanted to declare New York a “Free City” and take it out of the Union. When even his allies in the City chose not to implement this scheme, they mollified Wood by sending him back to Congress (1863-1865), where he became “an aptly-named dense obstructive object” in the words of Thaddeus Stevens.  In his last and longest Congressional stint (1867-1881) he was Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and undoubtedly contributed much to the Public Debt of the United States.

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