loose-tongued folk who think any vexed question can be settled by
unlimited talk. Next came those "defeatist" cranks who always
think their own side must be wrong, and who are of no more
practical use than the out-and-out "pacifists" who think
everybody wrong except themselves. Finally, there were those
slippery folk who try to evade all public duty, especially when
it smacks of danger. These skulkers flourish best in large and
complex populations, where they may even masquerade as patriots
of the kind so well described by Lincoln when he said how often
he had noticed that the men who were loudest in proclaiming their
readiness to shed their last drop of blood were generally the
most careful not to shed the first.

Many of these fustian heroes formed the mushroom secret societies
that played their vile extravaganza right under the shadow of the
real tragedy of war. Worse still, not content with the
abracadabra of their silly oaths, the busybody members made all
the mischief they could during Lincoln's last election. Worst of
all, they not only tried their hands at political assassination
in the North but they lured many a gallant Confederate to his
death by promising to rise in their might for a "Free Northwest"
the moment the Southern troopers should appear. Needless to say,
not a single one of the whole bombastic band of cowards stirred a
finger to help the Confederate troopers who rode to their doom on
Morgan's Raid through Indiana and Ohio. The peace party wore a
copper as a badge, and so came to be known as "Copperheads," much
to the disgust of its more inflated members, who called
themselves the Sons of Liberty. The war party, with a better
appreciation of how names and things should be connected, used
their own descriptive "Copperhead" in its appropriate meaning of