‘Valiant Val’ Reexamined

There is ample reason why Clement Laird Vallandigham’s turbulent life story has rarely been chronicled. He was an unapologetic pro-slavery racist. He was an anti-war Northerner—some called him “chief of the Copperheads”—a bitter critic of the ultimately martyred Abraham Lincoln, and a failure in his own quest for high office in his native Ohio. At most a footnote figure, he is chiefly remembered as the target of an aggressive federal crackdown on free speech. No wonder his first—and, for generations, only—biographer was his own brother.

In fact, “Valiant Val,” as admirers dubbed him, has long cried out for a new look, and the task has been handsomely accomplished by Martin Gottlieb, retired columnist for in Vallandigham’s onetime political base: Dayton.