Copperheads

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  • The Knights of the Golden Circle

    Probably the largest Copperhead group was the Knights of the Golden Circle; formed in Ohio in the 1850s, it became politicized in 1861

  • "Copperhead"

    The term "Copperhead" appeared in the New York Tribune and within a year was widely employed to describe pejoratively both Democrats sympathetic to the South and all Democrats opposed to the war policy of President Abraham Lincoln.

  • Trials

    Republican prosecutors accused some leaders of treason in a series of trials in 1864.

  • Copperheadism collapsed

    After the fall of Atlanta in September 1864, military success seemed assured, and Copperheadism collapsed.

  • first book-length scholary treatment

    The first book-length scholarly treatment of the Copperheads appeared in 1942. In The Hidden Civil War, Wood Gray decried the "defeatism" of the Copperheads. He argued they deliberately served the Confederacy's war aims.