John McClernand had told President Lincoln in October of 1862 that reopening the Mississippi to shipping traffic was vital; the Western states, unable to carry on their normal trade with the South, were forced to turn east and in doing so had been gouged mercilessly by the greed of railroads seeking to profit from the war as much as possible. Discontent was mounting in the Western states and McClernand feared some might consider themselves seceding from the Union.And so, nine months after McClernand voiced his concern, the Stars and Stripes fluttered above Vicksburg and Lincoln could say "The father of waters once again flows unvexed." Trade links were restored and it seemed as if things had gone back to the status quo in 1860 but the war had changed everything forever; the leisurely antebellum days when paddle wheel steamers floated down the great river taking cargoes of bacon, corn, and lumber to port at New Orleans, were over. The West was bound to the Northeast from now on. William T. Sherman was writing enthusiastically to his Senator brother to predict that Union armies could be in Mobile by October and in Georgia by Christmas. While Sherman was a year premature in those predictions, it was obvious that the fall of Vicksburg meant the end of the Confederacy was not a matter of if but when.
In Ohio was one Clement Vallandigham, formerly a Democrat Congressman, lately unemployed as he'd lost his seat in the 1862 midterm elections. Prior to leaving Congress in January, he made a blistering speech on the House floor where he accused Lincoln of tyranny and of making the war into a crusade for Negro liberation rather than saving the Union. His term expired, Vallandigham then went home to Ohio. Also in the Buckeye State was Major General Ambrose E. Burnside formerly commander of the Army of the Potomac. After being removed from his command, Burnside offered to simply resign his commission altogether and return to civilian life but Lincoln rejected that idea and said there was still a place for him in the Army. He was thus given command of the Department of Ohio, encompassing that state, Indiana, and Illinois, and as it was out of the way of any fighting, it seemed unlikely that he could get into much trouble there.But Burnside was an intensely loyal man and the wave of antiwar sentiment in his department troubled him. First he turned his sights to Clement Vallandigam who on May 1 gave a public address in Mount Vernon where he largely repeated his comments in Congress from four months earlier. Army agents in the crowd wrote down the gist of his speech and gave it to Burnside, who decided the former Congressman's remarks were enough to count as treason. Four days after Vallandigham's speech, he was arrested for violating General Order No. 38, which forbade any person in a public place to openly give aid and comfort to the enemy. Having suppressed freedom of speech, Burnside next decided to suppress freedom of the press. He turned his attention over to Illinois where a pestiferous newspaper, the Chicago Times, had been for a long time putting in print the same type of comments Vallandigham was saying. He had troops go to the offices of the Times and order its staff to cease printing papers.
The whole situation was embarrassing to Lincoln and he promptly rescinded Burnside's actions, ordering the Chicago Times reopened and Vallandigham freed along with a stern reminder to the general that he was not to shut down any more newspapers or arrest any civilians for treason without the White House's consent. Burnside had meanwhile decided Vallandigham was to be deported to Confederate lines. This proposal struck Lincoln as a good idea and he declared that the former Congressman was to be taken to the no man's land in Tennessee between Union and Confederate lines, released there, and into the Confederacy's custody where they could do as they pleased with him.The Confederates did not quite know what to do with their surprise guest. Vallandigham was flitted across the South as a prisoner of war and finally taken to Richmond where he met with his former schoolmate Robert Ould. Embarrassed by his presence, the Confederate government finally put him on a blockade runner and sent him north to Canada where he continued to make speeches critical of the Lincoln Administration while awaiting his return when the right moment came. While this was going on, John Hunt Morgan embarked on a raid north.
The 38 year old Morgan was a Kentucky native and one of the Confederacy's great, dashing cavalry raiders who made his name off raids that looked more important at the time than they do in retrospect. He belonged to Joseph Wheeler, who in turn belonged to Braxton Bragg, and in mid-June, as Rosecrans was beginning to break camp and Grant's noose around Vicksburg was tightening, Bragg had Morgan and 2,500 horsemen to Kentucky in a raid designed to break up the Louisville & Nashville Railroad and loot Union supply depots. Morgan, instead of obeying orders, set off on a wild romp by crossing the Ohio River, entering Indiana, and then turning east into Ohio, requisitioning horses and supplies as he went while Burnside got off furious telegrams demanding help and reinforcements at once.Morgan had by now kicked the hornet's nest and Ohio was buzzing with Federal troops and militia. At Buffington Island on July 19, seven hundred of his men were captured trying to cross the Ohio River into West Virginia. Morgan himself along with 300 men made it across but on the 26th they finally threw in the towel and surrendered at Salineville, Ohio. The raid accomplished little from a military standpoint and did nothing but anger Ohio farmers whose property was looted by the Rebel cavalry--any Copperhead sympathy these farmers may have previous had was effectively extinguished. Held prisoner in the Ohio state penitentiary in Columbus, Morgan and six of his officers staged a mysterious escape on November 27 and made their way across the Ohio River, into Kentucky, and back to Confederate lines. One Union officer who helped capture them wrote that the raid proved Copperheads had no real support in Indiana and Ohio, and that the "patriotic citizenry" of those states had helped capture Morgan's raiders.
