Articles relating to the Copperheads, a faction of Democrats in the Union who opposed the American Civil War and wanted an immediate peace settlement with the Confederates. Copperheadism was a highly contentious grassroots movement. It had its strongest base just north of the Ohio River and in some urban ethnic wards. Historians such as Wood Gray, Jennifer Weber and Kenneth M. Stampp have argued that it represented a traditionalistic element alarmed at the rapid modernization of society sponsored by the Republican Party and that it looked back to Jacksonian democracy for inspiration.