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Clement Vallandigham, a notorious anti-Union zealot from Ohio was banished from his own country by Abraham Lincoln. He would not go peacefully though, nor could he remain long away from the war that fueled his hatred. Eventually, he would die in as bizarre a fashion as he had lived.

Clement Laird Vallandigham, a former Ohio Congressman from Dayton, Ohio was largely responsible for a growing and vocal opposition to the Civil War. The reportedly handsome young lawyer, son of a Presbyterian minister, was the undisputed leader of the Copperheads ("Peace Democrats") in the Northwest. He was also a notorious, thinly-veiled, Southern sympathizer who made speeches, to anyone who would listen, calling the war, "wicked and cruel," and which was quite obvious to all. Then however, Vallandigham strayed beyond the realm of reality and suggested that the Republicans only wanted to end slavery to further their quest for a dictatorship. The government had little tolerance for such reckless and inflammatory remarks. Unfortunately for Vallandigham, "treason" was then a clay-like concept that would be molded to suit the needs of the war effort.

On May 5, 1863, a Company of the 115th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, dispatched to Dayton, Ohio by special train, broke into Vallandigham's house at 3:00 A.M. and arrested him. The former Congressman was taken from his home in a nightshirt and quickly transported to Cincinnati where he would be tried by a military commission the following day on charges of "treasonable utterances." Riots broke out in Dayton in response to the arrest, with fires destroying an entire city block. Troops from Columbus and and Cincinnati were brought in and martial law declared. Vallandigham was soon convicted of aiding the Confederates, and on May 19, 1863 President Lincoln ordered Secretary of War Stanton to see to it that Vallandigham was banished to "beyond the military lines of the United States and not be permitted to return, under threat of arrest."