Copperheads, also called Peace Democrats, during the American Civil War, pejoratively, any citizen in the North who opposed the war policy and advocated restoration of the Union through a negotiated settlement with the South. The word Copperhead was first so used by the New York Tribune on July 20, 1861, in reference to the snake that sneaks and strikes without warning.
At the time of the Civil War, pennies, being made of copper, were also called “copperheads.” On one side of the penny was a bust of Lady Liberty. Part of the reason antiwar Democrats opposed Lincoln was because they thought he was trampling the Constitution and their civil liberties. So when they referred to themselves as copperheads their message was that they were the defenders of liberty. It wasn’t unusual for many of them to advertise their sentiments by making a pin out of a penny and wearing that in their lapels, the Lady Liberty side facing out to the world.
Historians have been divided in their treatments of the Copperheads. Some have portrayed the Copperheads as willful obstructionists and conspirators, much as their detractors had during the Civil War. Other investigators, by contrast, see them as conservative and highly partisan dissenters whose often misguided actions fell short of treason. The thrust of recent scholarship supports the latter interpretation. Whatever the verdict on the Copperheads, the controversies that swirled about them defined the limits of dissent in the North during the Civil War. The larger questions they raised about the protection of civil liberties during times of civil strife, the relationship between rights and responsibilities, and the meaning of the United States Constitution are still of interest to historians and legal scholars. The history of the Illinois Copperheads is also a vivid reminder to all of the passion and intolerance that occurred in that crisis and the personal consequences of taking a stand.
