**HISTORY REPEATS: Pete Hegseth’s Kentucky Campaign Echoes 1863 “Copperhead” Playbook**

HISTORY REPEATS: Pete Hegseth’s Kentucky Campaign Echoes 1863 “Copperhead” Playbook

In a striking parallel to the bitterly divided “Copperhead” movements of the Civil War, Pete Hegseth’s surprise campaign swing through Kentucky today has historians drawing direct lines to the anti-Lincoln sentiment of 1863.

Hegseth, the veteran and former Fox News host, rallied crowds in Bowling Green with a message of “restoring the warrior ethos to the White House,” but local archivists noted the striking similarities to Clement Vallandigham’s infamous “Peace Democrat” rallies. “The rhetoric is almost identical—dismissing a wartime president (then Lincoln, now Biden) as a tyrant, while calling for a return to ‘true American values’ that exclude the current political class,” said Dr. Emilia Vance, a historian at the University of Kentucky.

The comparison went viral after Hegseth’s speech included a line about “winning the peace at home” – a phrase pulled directly from an 1863 copperhead pamphlet. Critics are now calling him “Hegseth the Copperhead,” while supporters argue he’s simply channeling the same populist fire that once elected anti-war candidates.

With Kentucky’s deep roots in both pro-Union and revisionist Confederate memory, the campaign is already being called the most historically charged political event since the 1968 “Lincoln vs. The South” remakes. Is Hegseth channeling history, or repeating its darkest patterns?