We Can No Longer Keep Silent

Abstract

This chapter details the army's collective proclamation of political sentiment in early 1863. Following the disaster at Fredericksburg and general frustration during the "emancipation winter," a growing number of anti-war Copperheads on the home front convinced junior officers to mobilize the army for political action. In a series of several dozen political resolutions adopted by regiments throughout the Army of the Potomac, the officers and men in the ranks proclaimed themselves in the nation's press to be the arbiters of loyalty and guardians of civic virtue. In the process, they endorsed the Lincoln administration and broadly supported its efforts to weaken the Confederacy through conscription, emancipation, and "hard war." This campaign elicited a backlash from Democratic men at home and in the ranks, but the publication of such a vehement political stance from the army throughout Northern newspapers drowned them out.