Book Review: February 2007 Archives

Copperheads were a faction of Democrats in the North who opposed the American Civil War, wanting an immediate peace settlement with the Confederates. The name Copperheads was given to them by their opponents the Republicans, probably derived from the venomous snake (the American copperhead) that strikes without warning... By all accounts, Copperheads were traitors to the Republican-led effort to end slavery.

To my surprise, in Fifty Degrees Below (p. 56), Kim Stanley Robinson has a major character (sympathetically portrayed, pro-environmentalist Senator Phil Chase) declare that Abraham Lincoln was no Republican, Republicans hated him, Copperheads were Republicans, and that

[they] did everything they could to sabotage him. They cheered when he was killed, because then they could claim him as a martyr and rip off the South in his name.

Bizarre and ridiculous. It doesn't even seem to fit in the plot or storytelling. Is Robinson undermining the character by making him speak falsely, or is he trying to revise the history of Copperheads in the name of an irrational hatred of Republicans?