A military tribunal sentenced Clement Laird Vallandigham to prison at Fort Warren for the duration of the war at his trial in early May 1863 on charges of treasonous, anti-war speech. Apparently, the Lincoln administration was concerned about the political impact of keeping the Copperhead locked up in Boston harbor indefinitely. Eventually the administration decided to send him to the Confederates. Before the decision was well known there was a lot of speculation about where Vallandigham might be headed. Here a Northern Democrat paper feared he might be assassinated, or at least wrote it to fire up its readership.
From a Seneca County, New York newspaper in May 1863:
The Nation Disgraced.
In the sentence of Hon. C.L. VALLANDIGHAM, free speech and personal liberty have been sacrificed, the people of the North insulted and the nation disgraced. Arrested without warrant of law, tried without indictment, for an offense unknown to the statute books of the nation; denied the constitutional right of trial by jury, and sentenced by the decree of a military despot to the walls of a dungeon; can it be a subject for marvel that the aisles of democratic freedom should ring with the indignant declamation of outraged civil liberty? Can it be considered extraordinary, that every hill-top of the nation should echo the cry of shame, and that every valley where civilization nestles, should bristle with hostile demonstrations against the aggressions of federal despotism.
The popular impression that fanaticism is wholly blinded by its own evil passions, never was more truthfully demonstrated than in the arrest of VALLANDIGHAM, the bold and dauntless champion of free speech and personal liberty.
To add insult to injury, Mr. VALLANDIGHAM has been secretly abducted from his place of confinement, in Cincinnati, and transferred none knows whither. Perhaps assassinated. Meanwhile his injured and innocent family are suffering all the anguish of suspense, and all the agony of separation incident to his unjust punishment and uncertain fate.
Some people thought Vallandigham might have been sentenced to the Dry Tortugas.
From the Richmond Daily Dispatch May 18, 1863:
Mr. Vallandigham–Lincoln and the North.
The latest Northern news received here brings the rumor that Mr. Vallandigham has been sentenced by the drum-head court that tried him to two years imprisonment at hard labor on the Dry Tortugas, Florida. The Herald discredits the rumor on the ground that the rigid rule of secrecy prevailing in such courts as tried him would prevent its decision from gaining publicity until made public by the court itself. The same paper takes occasion to say that such a sentence would make certain Mr. V.’s election as Governor of Ohio in the fall.
In the meantime there are indications of some popular excitement on account of Mr. Vallandigham’s arbitrary arrest and trial — especially in New York, where a large meeting had been held on the subject. Mr. James Brooks, of the Express, made a very strong declaration in his speech to that meeting. He said, “In my judgment and belief it is not so much the intention of the Administration to subjugate the South as it is to subjugate the North!” Mr. Brooks is mistaken in this much. That it is the intention to subjugate the South, and the execution of that intention renders it necessary to subjugate the North! The very process demands the exercise of arbitrary power that is utterly inconsistent with freedom at the North. Both North and South must be free, or neither. It is impossible that the Southern States can be conquered and held as provinces by the Washington Government, while the Northern States retain their independent sovereignties under the Constitution. The Federal Administration is certainly not more humane in its purpose towards the South than the North. It merely ignores the State and personal rights of the North as a means to make more complete the crushing of all right, all justice in the South–the general subjugation, robbery, and ruin of the Southern people. But Mr. Brooks is bold in his language, and may have to follow Mr. Vallandigham to Tortugas, if Lincoln has the courage to send him there. …
According to A Life of Clement L. Vallandigham By James Laird Vallandigham, Mr. Vallandigham had been “secretly abducted” to a boat in the Ohio River:
All efforts for Mr. Vallandigham’s release having failed, on the 19th day of May, 1863, he was placed upon the gunboat Exchange, commanded by Captain John Sebastian, to be transferred to Louisville on his way South. … It was the 19th of May when Mr. V. was put in charge of Captain Sebastian, and at 11 o’clock on the 22d the steamer started down the river. He was informed of the change of his sentence (from imprisonment in Fort Warren to banishment to the South) upon the gunboat a day or two before.
