# Vallandigham believed that these measures would prevent the restoration of the Union. He wanted the Union of ante bellum days restored, with states" rights emphasized and with slavery recognized.#.
In May of 1863, he was accused of treason and found guilty by a military commission. He was sentenced to imprisonment, but Lincoln intervened and commuted his sentence to banishment behind the Confederate Army lines. After the war, Vallandigham returned to Ohio and became a leading critic of the Radical Republications. He gained a reputation as a critic and obstructionist, Republican congressmen paid less attention to his speeches and comments.# Vallandigham was dubbed a traitor by many of his counterparts, but he was actually a constitutionalist and a conservative who opposed the changes that the Civil War was bringing to America.#.
Throughout the Civil War, a bitter struggle developed within the ranks of the Union army. The struggle was between the professional soldiers and the civilian appointees, or "political generals". Out of the twenty-two Ohioans who reached the rank of major general during the war, sixteen boasted a West Point education as their professional badge.# James A. Garfield, a staunch Republican, was the closest to personifying the political general. Throughout his career, Garfield was transformed from a politician to a soldier.
In 1859, Garfield was elected to the Ohio Senate as a Republican. During the secession crisis, he advocated coercing the seceding states back into the Union. He thundered defiance at the southern rebels. He hated slavery like sin and resolved to fight it as he had once fought with the Devil.# Garfield had no military experience or training, but he never doubted his ability to command. He offered his services to the Governor and believed he was entitled to colonel or brigadier general.
Garfield became lieutenant colonel of the Forty-second Regiment. He had no officers to instruct, no troops to command, no horses, no uniforms.