The Draft Riot in Holmes County, Ohio
Kenneth Wheeler argues that armed resistance to the 1863 draft in Holmes County, Ohio was simultaneously an act of local solidarity as well as defiance against the modernizing forces of the wartime Federal government. In the early 1800s, rural and relatively isolated Holmes County had become populated with Amish and Mennonite German and Swiss immigrants from Pennsylvania, along with Swiss- French and Germans from the Alsace and Palatinate areas of Europe. They were largely Democrats who spoke German and French and were mostly pacifists opposing the war and its infringement on their autonomy. Armed resistance to the draft erupted in an event known as the “Fort Fizzle Rebellion.” It started in June of 1863 with an assault upon draft officer Elias Robinson by a group of men with French ethnicity. A few days afterwards, provost-marshal Captain James Drake attempted to arrest the men involved but was run out of the county by a citizen posse.
By mid-June, 700-900 hundred armed men had gathered at French Ridge. Colonel William Wallace was dispatched with about 400 troops to meet this armed insurgency. After a few small skirmishes where gunfire was exchanged, a contingency of Holmes County men led by former Democrat Congressman Daniel Leadbetter brought forth to Wallace the men to whom the original arrest warrants had been issued. The arrested were sent to jail in Cleveland, and the remaining armed insurgents dispersed without further incident. Forty people were subsequently indicted for participation in the rebellion. Two went to trial; Peter Rinkenberger was found not guilty. Lorenzo Blanchard (whose stone farmhouse was the location of the insurgent’s “Fort Fizzle”) received a six-month sentence and $500 fine. Ironically, Leadbetter railed in the local newspapers about the overreach of the Lincoln administration in implementing the draft. Wheeler argues that the reach of the Federal government into the personal lives of Holmes County residents was viewed as a serious intrusion into their autonomy.[1]
[1] Kenneth Wheeler. “Local Autonomy and Civil War Draft Resistance: Holmes County, Ohio” (Civil War History 45, no. 2, June 1999) 147-159.