COPPERHEADS

"COPPERHEADS" is a plural of: copperhead.

Specialty Definition: COPPERHEADS

Domain	Definition
Literature	Copperheads Secret foes. Copperheads are poisonous serpents of America that give no warning, like rattlesnakes, of their attack. In the great Civil War of the United States the term was applied by the Federals to the peace party, supposed to be the covert friends of the Confederates. Source: Brewer's Dictionary.
Mining	Copper-colored spots--generally in a first coat on iron and not easily covered with a second coat. Copperheads are spots of excessive oxidationwith red iron oxide producing the color. (references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Specialty Definition: Copperheads (politics)

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Warning: there is some racist (the " N-word") language in this article. It is simply the language that was used during the American Civil War.

Who the Copperheads were

The Copperheads were a group of Northern Democrats who opposed the American Civil War, wanting an immediate peace settlement with the Confederates. They were also called Peace Democrats.

The most famous Copperhead was Clement L. Vallandigham, who was a serious thorn president Lincoln's side.

More on the Copperhead agenda

They opposed emancipation of American slaves, forming groups to persuade Union soldiers to desert, and helped Confederate prisoners of war escape. The name Copperheads was given to them by Republicans and may have derived from the venomous snake (the Copperhead) that strikes without warning or may have been a reference to the copper liberty-head coins which many wore as badges.

Copperheads opposed turning the Civil war into a total war to destroy the South and restore the Union. They sometimes met with Confederates, aiming at restoring peace.

How they were treated in the Union

As war opponents, they were suspected of disloyalty, Lincoln often having them arrested. In summer 1864, Ulysses S. Grant was bogged down in the Siege of Petersburg and William Tecumseh Sherman getting nowhere in Georgia. At this sad moment for the Union, during midterm election in Lincoln's home state of Kentucky, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and arresting every Democrat he could round up. The Democrats still swept the July 1864 election in Kentucky.

See the Shelby Foote reference, pg. 471 for an account of this sorry event.

But the Confederates loved them, encouraging them whenever possible.

Areas of strength

The Copperheads were strongest in Irish Catholic groups (poor Catholics were often anti-war, expecting to lose jobs to newly-freed slaves) in the eastern Pennsylvania coal country, and German Catholic areas of Wisconsin. They were also strong in border areas. They sometimes carried signs reading things such as "The Constitution As It Is, The Union As It Was," or, more offensively, "We won't fight to free the nigger."

Every Union defeat such as the Battle of Chancellorsville led to louder calls from the Copperheads — and given the inept Union leadership through much of the war, they had ample ammunition.

The decline of the Copperheads

After the spectacular victory at Atlanta in Fall, 1864, and the end in sight of Grant's dug-in siege of Petersburg, the Copperheads declined in influence.

Further notes

The Confederates had their own discontents who opposed the war and supported re-union with the North. These movements were particularly strong in mountainous areas of the South (where there were few slaves) and some border areas; one such organization was the Red Strings.

External links and references (alphabetical)

Foote, Shelby, (1963), Red River to Appomattox
- (ISBN 0394746228)

McPherson, James, (1988), Battle Cry of Freedom
- (ISBN 0934746236)

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Copperheads (politics)."

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Crosswords: COPPERHEADS

English words defined with "COPPERHEADS": Agkistrodon, Ancistrodon ♦ Denisonia ♦ genus Agkistrodon, genus Ancistrodon, genus Denisonia. (references)

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Photo Album: COPPERHEADS

Thumbnail	Description & Credit
	The pending contest. Although all Copperheads call themselves Democrats, nevertheless, all Democrats are not Copperheads. Credit: Library of Congress.
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits.

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Usage Frequency: COPPERHEADS

"COPPERHEADS" is generally used as a noun (plural) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "COPPERHEADS" is used about 2 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)

Parts of Speech	Percent	Usage per 100 Million Words	Rank in English
Noun (plural)	100%	2	245,945

Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.

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Expression: COPPERHEADS

Hypenated Usage
	Ending with "COPPERHEADS": hooks-and-copperheads.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Frequency of Internet Keywords: COPPERHEADS

The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com.

Expression	Frequency per Day
copperheads	120
copperheads ohio southern	17
asheboro copperheads	16
copperheads snake	12
copperheads picture	9
baseball copperheads	7
baby copperheads	6
carolina copperheads	6
civil copperheads war	5
asheboro baseball copperheads	2
baseball copperheads ohio southern	2
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Rhyming with "COPPERHEADS"

# of Phoneme Matches	Pronunciation	Word(s) rhyming with "COPPERHEADS" (pronounced kÄ"perhe'dz)
5	-er h e' d z	loggerheads, overheads.
4	-h e' d z	arrowheads, beachheads, bulkheads, Bullheads, deadheads, flatheads, foreheads, skinheads, warheads.
3	-e' d z	coeds, hotbeds, newlyweds, waterbeds, watersheds.
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits.

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Anagrams: COPPERHEADS

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams
	Words within the letters "a-c-d-e-e-h-o-p-p-r-s"
	-1 letter: copperhead.
	-2 letters: choppered, copperahs, preshaped.
	-3 letters: choppers, copperah, copperas, coppered, coshered, ephedras, escarped, peachers, peasecod, poachers, pochards, preached, preaches, precodes, preshape, proceeds, prophase, recapped, reshaped, respaced, rhapsode, scarphed, scorepad, scrapped, searched, sorehead.
	-4 letters: acerose, adheres, apposed, apposer, capered, cappers, carhops, chadors, chapped, cheaper, cheapos, cheders, cheeros, chopped, chopper, choreas, coheads, cohered, coheres, coppers, coppras.
	Words containing the letters "a-c-d-e-e-h-o-p-p-r-s"
	+1 letter: sharecropped.
	+4 letters: cyproheptadines.
	+5 letters: pseudoparenchyma.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.