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.
