Abner Beech was an American dairy farmer and Copperhead activist who lived in Upstate New York during the American Civil War. A leading Democrat in Munsons Corners, he opposed the use of military coercion to bring the seceded Southern states back into the Union, criticized President Abraham Lincoln's detention of critics and closure of Democratic newspapers, and opposed the Emancipation Proclamation and the implementation of the draft. For these controversial views, he was subjected to harassment and later physical violence by his community's Radical Republicans.
Biography[]
Beech in 1862
Abner Beech was born in Munsons Corners, Cortland County, New York. Beech became a dairy farmer and was a staunch Democrat, holding small-government Jacksonian views, believing in constitutional originalism, and idolizing Thomas Jefferson. Beech married M'Rye and named his son Thomas Jefferson Beech in honor of his hero.
After the outbreak of the American Civil War, Beech opposed any efforts to coerce the secessionist Southern states into rejoining the Union, arguing that such efforts would be unconstitutional and not worth risking the lives of so many young men. In 1862, he criticized Republican Senator Benjamin Wade's statement that "anyone who quotes the Constitution in this crisis is a traitor," supporting a Democratic paper's retort "Such an abolitionist should be hung 'till the flesh rots off his bones and the winds of heaven whistle Yankee Doodle through his loathsome skeleton." Beech criticized Abraham Lincoln for closing down newspapers, putting critics in prison, and recruiting young men into the Union Army, believing that the South's secession would be "harmless." While Beech personally opposed slavery and had not been in favor of the annexation of Texas, he once told the Republican blacksmith Avery, "I don't want our boys dying, and I don't want our Constitution dying with them."
Beech's views were unpopular in his small town, and neighbors snuck an abolitionist pamphlet into his newspaper, his pastor vilified Democratic politicians of both the South (such as John C. Breckinridge) and the North (such as New York gubernatorial candidate Horatio Seymour), and he made enemies with the Radical Republican Jehoiada Hagadorn, whom he blamed for the harassment campaign against him. Against Beech's wishes, his son Jeff (who rebranded himself as "Tom" to distance himself from Confederate president Jefferson Davis) joined the Union Army's 82nd New York Infantry Regiment at nearby Juno Mills to impress his romantic interest Esther Hagadorn. After the Emancipation Proclamation, he criticized Abraham Lincoln for freeing the slaves while "enslaving free men," and he argued that the Constitution didn't allow the President to abolish slavery. In response to Lincoln's introduction of a draft, Beech swore to walk through the gates of Hell if necessary to join his housemates Timothy and Jimmy Hurley in casting Democratic ballots at the November 1862 midterms.
The Hurleys and Beech going to vote
On Election Day, he and the Hurleys got into a scuffle with nativist Republicans after the election clerk Graves L. Hargis initially refused to acknowledge Timothy Hurley's naturalization papers. Ultimately, another clerk reluctantly accepted Hurley's vote. Once the votes were in, the Democratic Party won the governorship, lieutenant governor, canal commissioner, clerk of the court of appeals, and director of state prisons. Beech expressed hope that the new Democratic administration could release the dissidents imprisoned in the state's jails. Beech also expressed hope that the Democrats could win Congress, the South could come back into the Union, and the Constitution would come back. When Hurley asked what would happen if the South did not come back, Beech said that the South should be left in peace, and that the war between brothers should end.
Beech, his wife, and Jimmy Hurley watching the community rebuild the Beech farm
After the election, Esther Hagadorn visited Beech's home to warn him that her father and a violent mob of Radical Republicans intended to retaliate against the Beech and Hurley families for the Copperheads' election victories and for their celebratory bonfire. The mob shot at and set fire to the farmhouse, forcing Esther to hide in the wine cellar and the Beech family to shelter in their barn. Believing his daughter to have died in the blaze, a remorseful Hagadorn hanged himself. Not long after, Beech's son Thomas, feared dead during the war, returned home to his estranged family and Esther, as Esther's brother Benaiah Hagadorn had rescued him from a Southern prison camp. At his father's funeral, Benaiah chastised the Radical community for failing to live up to Jesus' command to love one's neighbor, and, the next day, the community came together to rebuild Beech's farmstead.