Henry Clay Dean Henry Clay Dean ( October 27 , 1822 - Feb . 6 , 1887 ) was a Methodist Episcopal preacher , lawyer , orator and author who was a critic of the American Civil War and the Lincoln Administration . Early life and education . Dean was born in Fayette County , Pennsylvania , October 27 , 1822 . Named for the Senator from Kentucky , Henry Clay , Dean was born just two years after Clay guided the Missouri Compromise into law . He was one of three sons of Caleb Dean , a stonemason . He was a graduate of Madison College in Pennsylvania . He taught for a time in the area and studied law . Dean married Christiana Margaret Haigler Jan . 19 , 1847 and together has six children , John Willey Dean , Charles Caleb Dean , Henry Clay Dean Jr . , Mary Jermima Dean , George James Dean , Christiana Margaret Dean , Virginia Rebecca " Vinnie " Dean . Career . In 1845 he joined the Methodist Episcopal Conference of Virginia and began to preach in the mountain region of that state where he remained for four years . In 1850 he removed to Iowa , locating to Pittsburg in Van Buren County , where he preached through the Keosauqua circuit , joining the Fairfield Conference . Through the influence of General George W . Jones , one of Iowa ' s early United States Senators , Dean was chosen chaplain of the United States Senate on Dec . 4 , 1855 . Dean was one of the trustees of the Iowa Wesleyan College at Mount Pleasant , Iowa . Dean was admitted to the bar but did not practice law until after the Civil War . He was a public speaker of rare eloquence and was frequently invited to deliver lectures , among which was a ‘ Reply to Ingersoll , ' ‘ The Constitution , ' ‘ Declaration of Independence ' and many other topics . United States Civil War . Dean carried his Methodist values into the period leading up to the Civil War . He opposed the extension of slavery . He opposed the Lecompton Constitution written by proslavery Kansans and supported the popular sovereignty view of Stephen Douglas . He did not support the continuation of slavery in the nation , but he believed that slaves should be freed through government purchase over time . When the Civil War began , Dean opposed secession but also voiced opposition to the war . In turn , he became known as one of the Democratic Party ' s outspoken Copperheads and he made speeches denouncing the war and the actions of President Lincoln . His views made him many enemies who viewed him as a traitor ; a mob in Keokuk even threatened to hang him . In his article " The Bloodmarket of the Rich " , Dean argued the entire war was conceived by an international conspiracy of bankers and " stock - gamblers " . Dean was arrested for disloyal utterances and confined in prison for two weeks by order of Government officials . Upon his release he wrote and published a book with the title , ‘ Crimes of the Civil War . ' It was a bitter rebuttal against President Lincoln and the administration in the work of subduing the Rebellion . Later life . With the conclusion of the war , Dean became a spokesman for Democrats in opposition to Radical Republicanism . In 1867 he began to advocate " soft money " inflation and payment of the national debt through the continued printing of paper money . In doing so , he became a founder of the United States Greenback Party among western Democrats . Dean vociferously promoted Greenbackism , decried the National Bank system , and denounced bondholders . He also again offered stinging criticism of Lincoln ' s wartime actions . He brought his views together in Crimes of the Civil War and Curse of the Funding System ( 1869 ) . Dean also practiced law after the war and became known for accepting the cases of poor clients . In 1871 Dean moved to a farm in Putnam County , Missouri , which he named ‘ Rebel Cove ' . He gathered a great library which was later destroyed by fire . Death and legacy . Here is what Mark Twain had to say on the subject of Henry Clay Dean : " He began life poor and without education . But he educated himself - on the curbstones of Keokuk . He would sit down on a curbstone with his book , careless or unconscious of the clatter of commerce and the tramp of the passing crowds , and bury himself in his studies by the hour , never changing his position except to draw in his knees now and then to let a dray pass unobstructed ; and when his book was finished , its contents , however abstruse , had been burned into his memory , and were his permanent possession . In this way he acquired a vast hoard of all sorts of learning , and had it pigeonholed in his head where he could put his intellectual hand on it whenever it was wanted . His clothes differed in no respect from a " wharf - rat ' s , " except that they were raggeder , more ill - assorted and inharmonious ( and therefore more extravagantly picturesque ) , and several layers dirtier . Nobody could infer the master - mind in the top of that edifice from the edifice itself . He was an orator - by nature in the first place , and later by the training of experience and practice . When he was out on a canvass , his name was a lodestone which drew the farmers to his stump from fifty miles around . His theme was always politics . He used no notes , for a volcano does not need notes . " - Life on the Mississippi References . politics