Daniel Wolsey Voorhees (September 26, 1827April 10, 1897) was an American lawyer and politician who served as a United States Senator from Indiana from 1877 to 1897. He was the leader of the Democratic Party and an anti-war Copperhead during the American Civil War. Childhood and early career Voorhees was born in Liberty Township, Butler County, Ohio, of Dutch and Irish descent. He was the son of Stephen Pieter Voorhees and Rachel Elliott. During his infancy his parents moved to Fountain County, Indiana, near Veedersburg. He graduated at Indiana Asbury University (now DePauw University), Greencastle, Indiana, in 1849; was admitted to the bar in 1850, and began to practice in Covington, Indiana, whence in 1857 he moved again to Terre Haute. From 1858 to 1861, Voorhees was U.S. District Attorney for Indiana. Representative From 1861 to 1866 and 1869 to 1873, Voorhees was a Democratic representative in Congress. During the American Civil War he was an anti-war Copperhead, though not as radical as Clement Vallandigham. He was accused of membership in the Knights of the Golden Circle, an organization promoting Southern conquest of much of Central America and the Caribbean as a pro-slavery empire. Historian Kenneth Stampp has captured the Copperhead spirit in his depiction of Voorhees of Indiana: There was an earthy quality in Voorhees, "the tall sycamore of the Wabash." On the stump his hot temper, passionate partisanship, and stirring eloquence made an irresistible appeal to the western Democracy. His bitter cries against protective tariffs and national banks, his intense race prejudice, his suspicion of the eastern Yankee, his devotion to personal liberty, his defense of the Constitution and state rights faithfully reflected the views of his constituents. Like other Jacksonian agrarians he resented the political and economic revolution then in progress. Voorhees idealized a way of life which he thought was being destroyed by the current rulers of his country. His bold protests against these dangerous trends made him the idol of the Democracy of the Wabash Valley. [Stampp, p. 211] After the Civil War, Voorhees was a staunch opponent of Black civil and political rights. He believed that whites' temporary loss of total political control in places where they were not in the majority made them "as very a slave in the hands of a brutal overseer as any negro ever driven in a cotton-field, and that he had no more power under existing laws to