CIVIL WAR:
New Jersey was the only Free State that voted against Abraham
Lincoln in both the 1860 and 1864 presidential elections. He lost
the state in 1860 by a margin of 62,800 to 58,000. Four years later
George B. McClellan, twice‑dismissed commander of the Army of the
Potomac, defeated the President by 7,300 votes. Little wonder, then,
that New Jersey was a source of anguish to Unionists and an
inspiration to opponents of the administration. An Illinois
politician speaking before a Newark Lincoln‑Johnson rally in 1864
admitted he had come to New Jersey despite warnings that "there were
no Lincoln men there and it was a Godforsaken place." An angry New
York newspaper once declared: "In no other Free State are disloyal
utterances so frequent and so bold as in New Jersey." New Jersey's
Copperhead press denounced the Republicans, the President, and the
war unsparingly. Lincoln was their favorite target: The Somerset
Messenger called him “a Presidential pygmy;” a Bergen County
newspaper labeled him “a backwoods buffoon…the father of all
iniquity;” and the Newark Daily Journal continually referred to him
as that “smutty joker.” New Jersey was never disloyal to the Union –
the number of brave soldiers sent to the front is evidence enough of
that – yet there were tens of thousands in New Jersey who vigorously
opposed the war. Many factors explain New Jersey’s ambivalence. The
state’s large free Black population had long been a source of
friction: Alone among the Northern states, New Jersey permitted the
capture of runaway slaves within her borders. New Jersey's proximity
to New York City, a hotbed of Copperhead sentiment, and the sense of
insecurity that had made tiny New Jersey a conservative champion of
state's rights as early as the American Revolution, were among the
varied elements that produced what some have called "the
northernmost of the Border States.” Somerset County had been solidly
in the Whig Party camp from the mid-1830s until the election of
1852, when the Democrats won an overwhelming victory. Although the
new Republican Party organized in 1856, the county remained in
Democrat hands for the next four decades. Warren Township mirrored
countywide voting trends, swinging from Whig to Democrat. In the
November 1860 election, Somerset County gave a majority to the
Unionist ticket led by Breckinridge. Warren voters cast 251 ballots
for Breckinridge, 171 for Lincoln. Most prominent of Warren’s
Democrats was Freeholder Daniel Cory, who like many of his fellow
party members wanted nothing to do with a war to free the slaves.
Known as Copperheads, these Democrats opposed emancipation, called
for an immediate cessation of hostilities and hoped for reunion on
Southern terms. Never one to keep his opinions to himself,
especially after a night of hard drinking, Cory loudly proclaimed
his hatred of Lincoln and the abolitionists and boasted of having
raised a body of men ready to burn down the houses of all Unionists
in the neighborhood. Whether it was old John Barleycorn talking, or
Cory had actually done anything to make his boasts reality, will
never be known. When troubling reports about Cory reached
authorities in Washington, however, they decided to act. “Our
community was somewhat startled, upon waking up on the morning of
[September 17], in learning that on the preceding night one of our
citizens, Daniel Cory, had been quietly arrested and as quietly
transferred to that frowning edifice, near the Narrows, at present
appropriated for the benefit of prisoners of state – Fort
Lafayette,” wrote a newspaper correspondent. “So noiselessly and
accurately had all the preliminary arrangements for the arrest been
made that scarcely any one knew of it, until Mr. Deputy Marshal
Benjamin…had his prisoner at the depot in Plainfield awaiting the
arrival of the 8:28 train for New York…, and had the train been in
time, the thing would have remained a profound secret until morning,
but a few of his acquaintances learned of the joyful event, and went
thither and paid their parting respects to the man. Mr. Cory’s
residence is in Warren, on the very top of the second mountain,
surrounded by dense woods, and had five minutes warning been given
to him, all the Marshals in ‘the old concern’ would not have found
him. The arrest was made without any difficulty, and from the time
it was made, until the Fort opened its jaws, he was, as I
understand, as loyal a man as lived. He is a person of shrewdness
and cunning, entirely shorn of any conscientious scruples, in
politics or any other matter, when his own interest is concerned; a
sharp and tolerably well read unlicensed lawyer or pettifogger, a
person who exercises great influence in his own immediate
neighborhood, and a very strong sympathizer with Secession and the
Rebellion, and a man too dangerous to be permitted to run at large
in such times as the present.” After languishing for a month in
jail, Cory was released in October after taking an oath of
allegiance to the United States. Cory enjoyed his own private
revenge the following August when President Lincoln announced the
North’s first call for a draft of 300,000 men to serve for nine
months if an earlier quota of 300,000 volunteers was not filled.
Despite the horrendous bloodletting of the Peninsular campaign, the
men of New Jersey stepped forward in answer to Lincoln’s call,
prompted in part by cash bonuses offered by counties and towns.
Somerset’s quota was set at 530. Of that, Warren (which then
included present-day Green Brook, Watchung and North Plainfield) was
to furnish 74 men. Alone among all of New Jersey’s towns, Warren
offered no bonus and, as a consequence, enlisted no men on its
quota. When no volunteers stepped forward, Federal authorities were
quick to respond, ordering a draft in Warren, “the only place in the
State that we have heard of where a draft was made,” reported a
newspaper. “The Township is strongly Democratic and Seceshy and for
discouraging enlistments it has justly suffered the penalty of
having 48 of its men drafted. Two of them are sons of the Mr. Cory
who took a trip to Fort Lafayette last winter.” The result of the
draft make it clear than Cory was not the only one in Warren opposed
to the Union effort: Of the 48 men drafted, only 32 reported for
duty at the rendezvous in Flemington, of which 17 were paid
substitutes. Sixteen men never showed up, subjecting themselves to
possible arrest as deserters. Cory’s two sons, both drafted, never
served but did furnish substitutes of dubious quality. Preston
Cory’s substitute, Dennis Hagaman, was one of those who never
reported for duty. Forest Cory’s substitute, John Noe, deserted from
the ranks in January 1863. Of the 17 substitutes, some were hardly
fit material for soldiering. The examining surgeon rejected Robert
Ruff as being “totally unfit being deaf and imbecile,” Augustus
Frazee was 51 years old “and an habitual drunkard” and Philip
Nischwitz suffered from “club feet.” In the end, just 26 men from
Warren Township were mustered into service, a far cry from the
town’s quota of 74. Elected to the State’s General Assembly in 1863,
Cory continued his campaign against the government. In a speech made
in January 1864, Assemblyman Cory let it be known his sojourn in
Fort Lafayette had not changed his opinions one whit. “I have been
willing at all times to give Abraham Lincoln every man and every
dollar necessary to defend and sustain his constitutional
authority,” he proclaimed, “but not a man or a dollar to make war on
the Constitution and the rights of the States and the people, by
commencing and continuing a war for the abolition of slavery and
Negro equality, with all their attending concomitants and obscene
doctrines of amalgamation and miscegenation.” Cory’s last laugh at
the expense of the taxpayers came in April 1864 when the
Democratic-controlled State Legislature appropriated $6,392.53 to
pay bonuses of $245 to each of the 26 men who entered service from
Warren. “The townships of this and other counties, did their duty,
and by the payment of bounties, raised all the men called for, and
paid them the money,” wrote the Trenton State Gazette on July 15,
1864. “The Township of Warren failed to do its duty, and all the
other townships of the state are taxed to pay money not due from
them. The act passed by the Legislature in nothing less than a fraud
upon the Treasury for the benefit of a nest of Copperheads who
refuse to take part in the defense of the country.” The 26 men from
Warren Township who entered service in September 1862 were mustered
into the 30th New Jersey Volunteer Regiment, which left the state
one thousand strong on September 30th for assignment to the Army of
the Potomac. The regiment was fated never the see any fighting,
although it stood in reserve during the Battle of Chancellorsville,
and returned to New Jersey nine months later. Three men from Warren
deserted the regiment, five were discharged for disabilities and
three died of illness or injury. Anti-war emotions ran high in
Warren even after the tide of battle began to favor the North. In
the November 1864 elections the Democratic candidate, George B.
McClellan, defeated Lincoln by a vote of 243 to 156. Not even Lee’s
surrender and Lincoln’s assassination calmed the troubled political
waters. When the Rev. William Wolff, who lost an eye in the war,
preached his first sermon at the Coontown church on the Sunday after
Lincoln’s death, a church officer told Wolff “he was glad the old
rascal was dead.” The members of the church “were almost to a man
Democrats, and so bitter in their hatred of Abraham Lincoln that
they would not allow the slightest [mourning] drapery on the
church.”