Clement Laird Vallandigham was born in New Lisbon, Ohio on July 29, 1820. He was educated at home by his Presbyterian minister father. At the age of 17, he entered Jefferson College in Pennsylvania as a junior, but never graduated; he left the school early to study law, and was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1842. He entered politics in 1845, served one term in the Ohio legislature from Columbiana County, and was later elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1856. Vallandigham was a staunch opponent of war as a means to settle sectional differences, and his frequent public speeches on the subject earned him condemnation as a Confederate sympathizer, despite his almost equally forceful opposition to secession. He was arrested and convicted by a military tribunal for "declaring disloyal sentiments and opinions," with intent of "weakening the power of the Government in its efforts to suppress an unlawful rebellion." His original sentence of imprisonment was commuted by Abraham Lincoln to exile to the Confederacy. Vallandigham remained a few weeks in the South before boarding a blockade runner bound for Canada, from whence he unsuccessfully campaigned for the Ohio governorship in 1863. After the war, he emerged as a leader of the Democratic Party of his State, serving as the chairman of the Ohio Democratic Convention in 1865. He believed that Democrats had to support the equal rights of Blacks if the party was ever to regain power from the Republicans. He died on June 17, 1871 from an accidentally self-inflicted gunshot wound and was buried in Dayton, Ohio.