Western Maine
48
The Oxford County Copperheads Residents thronged an 1863 rally at South Paris by Brian Swartz
B
y late summer 1863, Republicans detected a Copperhead behind every rock maple and white pine in Maine, and pro-Republican newspapers like the ironically named Oxford Democrat in South Paris fed the hysteria. A well-designed and thoroughly read weekly published every Friday in South Paris, the paper sprinkled its August 14 edition with such headlines as “Portland Copperhead Convention,” “Copperhead County Convention,” and “The Peace Advocates in the Copperhead Democracy.” And how did the Oxford Democrat define Copperheads? As “the
friends and followers of Jeff Davis in this state,” the paper described the pro-peace advocates who convened in Portland in early August. Reading like a Republican poster pasted to a South Paris barn, the article about the “Portland Copperhead Convention” called the event “a convention of the old stagers,” where “more fanatical rant and vulgar abuse of free institutions and a free government was never witnessed.” Then “a Union meeting” took place in Portland on Saturday, August 15, and the Oxford Democrat waxed eloquent about Vice President Hannibal Hamlin and Maj. Gen. Oliver Otis Howard speaking to participants. From Leeds
in Androscoggin County, Howard had lost his right arm in combat 15 months later. He was a real hero, not a Jeff Davis backer. “Urging the setting aside of a party feeling” so Mainers could focus on saving the United States, Howard reminded his listeners “what the unflinching bravery of our armies had accomplished” in 1863, the South Paris reported. But the Copperheads were everywhere in Oxford County, weren’t they? Were many pro-Union men left? Their nerves probably rattled by the incessant Copperhead coverage, Lincoln backers in Androscoggin County called for a
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