A Lesson for All Rebels at Home: The Holmes County, Ohio, Rebellion of 1863 Revisited

Abstract

The Holmes County, Ohio draft-enrollment-resistance episode during the Civil War is well known to historians, but has been poorly understood. Previous studies have characterized the violence as a minor eruption of ethnic localism. New research based on previously unseen archival records reveals a geographically widespread and organized uprising involving partisan Democrats that included many ethnicities. The United States Army and federal and state law-enforcement authorities worked diligently in the uprising's aftermath to deter similar outbreaks.