The only friends they (the south "editor") had politically were the Democrats at the North, and these
friends had never deserted them from the time the war closed.
Confederate Military History 1899

 Although the Democratic party had broken apart in 1860, during the secession crisis Democrats in the North were generally more conciliatory toward the South than were Republicans. They called themselves Peace Democrats; their opponents called them Copperheads because
some wore copper pennies as identifying badges.
A majority of Peace Democrats supported war to save the Union, but a strong and active minority asserted that the Republicans had provoked the South into secession; that the Republicans were waging the war in order to establish their own domination, suppress civil and states rights, and impose "racial equality"; and that military means had failed and would never restore the Union.

As was true of the Democratic party as a whole, the influence of Peace Democrats varied with the fortunes of war. When things were going badly for the Union on the battlefield, larger numbers of people were willing to entertain the notion of making peace with the Confederacy. When things were going well, Peace Democrats could more easily be dismissed as defeatists.

But no matter how the war progressed, Peace Democrats constantly had to defend themselves against charges of disloyalty. Revelations that a few had ties with secret organizations
such as the Knights of the Golden Circle helped smear the rest.
The most prominent Copperhead leader was Clement L. Valladigham of Ohio, who headed the secret antiwar organization known as the Sons of Liberty. At the Democratic convention of 1864, where the influence of Peace Democrats reached its high point, Vallandigham persuaded the party to adopt a platform branding the war a failure, and some extreme Copperheads plotted armed uprisings. However, the Democratic presidential candidate, George B. McClellan, repudiated the Vallandigham platform, victories by Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman and Phillip H. Sheridan
assured Lincoln's reelection, and the plots came to nothing.
With the conclusion of the war in 1865 the Peace Democrats were thoroughly discredited. Most Northerners believed, not without reason, that Peace Democrats had prolonged war by encouraging the South to continue fighting in the hope that the North would abandon the struggle.
Source: "Historical Times Encyclopedia of the Civil War" Edited by Patricia L. Faust

The Republicans and the Civil War

In keeping with the prevailing tendency toward political realignment, and as a direct result of the Kansas-Nebraska act, a new political party now came into being. Wilmot-proviso sentiment caused various diverse elements here and there to fuse into organizations which sometimes bore the awkward designation of "anti-Nebraska" parties, but which soon came to be known as the "Republican" party. There has been some dispute as to the exact time and place where the party was "born." Coalition movements of a similar sort were afoot in many parts of the country at about the same time, and such a dispute is of little importance. The name Republican was adopted at a mass meeting on July 6, 1854, at Jackson, Michigan; prior to this, however, while the repeal of the Missouri compromise was pending in Congress, a similar mass meeting at Ripon, Wisconsin, had resolved that in the event of such repeal old party organizations would be discarded and a new party would be built "on the sole issue of the non-extension of slavery." Elsewhere in the country local conventions followed suit; and by late summer of 1854 the new party movement was well under way. Made up of old-line Whigs, many of whom, such as Bates of Missouri and Browning of Illinois, preserved the Southern conservative tradition, together with radical anti-slavery men such as Sumner and Julian, Know-Nothings, and Free-Soil Democrats such as Trumbull and Chase, the new party combined many diverse ingredients; the force that cemented them (at the outset) was common opposition to the further extension of slavery in the territories.
The outcome of Douglas's policy had been the opposite of his intentions. So far from allaying sectional conflict and uniting his party, he had reopened the strife which he himself had designated the "fearful struggle of 1850"; he had split the historic Democratic party; he had supplied the occasion for the entrance of a wholly sectional party onto the scene; and he had driven many Northern Democrats into the ranks of this sectional group.
Source: "The Civil War and Reconstruction" by J.G. Randall and David Herbert Donald

Black Republicans

From 1854, when the Republican Party was founded, Democrats labeled it adherents "black" Republicans to identify them as proponents of black equality. During the 1860 elections Southern Democrats used the term derisively to press their belief that Abraham Lincoln's victory would incite slave rebellions in the South and lead to widespread miscegenation. The image the term conveyed became more hated in the South during Reconstruction as Radical Republicans forced legislation repugnant to Southerners and installed Northern Republicans or Unionists in the
governments of the former Confederate states.
Source: "Historical Times Encyclopedia of the Civil War"

Republicans

The Republican party in 1861 was a coalition of disparate elements. Formed only 7 years earlier, it contained men who had been Whigs, Anti-Slavery Democrats, Free-Soilers, Know-Nothings, and Abolitionists. By the outbreak of the war, these fragments had coalesced into 3 basic factions: conservatives, moderates, and radicals. President Abraham Lincoln's task was to mold these factions into a government that could win the war without destroying the
South politically and economically.
The most aggressive and, eventually, most influential of the three was the Radical Republican faction. All Republicans were against slavery, but this group was the most "radical", in its opposition to the "peculiar institution." While conservatives favored gradual emancipation combined with colonization of Freedmen, and while moderates favored emancipation but with reservations, Radicals favored immediate eradication of an institution they viewed as iniquitous, and saw the war as a crusade for "Abolition."
Never a majority within the party, the Radicals dominated the other factions because of their commitment to their cause and the talent of their members, some of whom chaired key committees in Congress. In the House, their ranks included the Speaker, Galusha A. Grow, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Thaddeus Stevens, and influential members like Owen Lovejoy, Joshua Giddings, and George W. Julian. In the Senate, Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson, John P. Hale, Zachariah Chandler and Benjamin F. Wade chaired committees. Within Lincoln's cabinet, the secretaries of Treasury and War, Salmon P. Chase and Edwin M. Stanton, respectively, were Radicals. The center of Radical strength in the North was New England.
Men of little patience and less tolerance, the Radicals advocated an implacable, uncompromising prosecution of the war against the Southern rebellion, and were in the forefront of such issues and legislation as the Confiscation Acts, emancipation, the enlistment of blacks, the 13th Amendment, and Reconstruction policies. Though Lincoln, a moderate, eventually sided with the Radicals on a number of key issues, such as emancipation, many Radicals opposed his renomination in 1864 primarily because of their differences regarding Reconstruction. Certain generals also faced Radical opposition, not because of the officers military abilities but because of their political views. Radicals dominated the Committee on the Conduct of the War, which investigated military matters. Gen. George B. McClellan, in particular, was an anathema to Radicals.
The Union victory and the destruction of slavery did not conclude the Radicals program. With Lincoln's assassination and Andrew Johnson's succession, the Radicals domination of the party and Congress increased. These committed politicians would shape the reconstruction of the nation.
Source: "Historical Times Encyclopedia of the Civil War"

The following material is meant to illustrate the varied views that relate to the Copperhead movement. The italicized description of this first letter, from the 7th Wisconsin archive, gives a succinct breakdown of the divisions within the Democratic Party of the time. We intend to include letters and material from Democratic papers and many more are within the letters From the Front, the most blatant in the 7th Wisconsin from S.J.M..

We believe the material helps to appreciate some period politics and editorial attitudes that can and have been picked up and presented as mainstream by modern chroniclers. They are reprinted exactly as presented at the time and some are, advisedly, especially to a modern eye, offensive. The first letter is printed here to emphasize that they were also offensive in period.