He was not a southerner, nor did he have anything to do with the Confederacy, or Slavery.
He was a northern Democrat, and a staunch Unionist. He was an Ohio Congressman serving in the United States Congress in 1862, who in exercising his 1st amendment free speach rights got cross ways with the Lincoln adminstartion over the legality of the Emancipation Proclaimation. He was arrested by order of General Ambrose Burnside for expressing his views while running for Governor of Ohio in 1863 on a popular anti-war platform. Martial Law was NOT in force. Ohio was a loyalist state that was not apart of a military jurisdiction district. Yet a federal judge denied Vanlandingham the right of Habius Corpus, found him guilty without trail simply on the assumption that Burnsides was acting on orders from higher authority (Lincoln), expelled him to the Confederate authorities and deported him from the United States without charge.
This, along with a simular arrest of a newspaper reported in Chicago for the same reason, raised such an uproar of protest in Ohio and New York, especially among such persons as Horace Greeley of New York Times fame, that Lincoln sent Burnside specific orders NOT to make any other arrests of this kind without Lincoln's personal approval.
Should persons like Clement Vanlandingham recieve an apoligy and restitution for damages and abridgement of their constitutional rights, cause by persons in authority, repersenting the United States Governemnt, acting under the color of law by their position?
This case very closely parallels the Japanese Americans of World War II, and we have established in that case, as a nation, by act of our Congress, and the Executive branch of Government, that such actions are illegal and should be paid restitution for damages?
Unlike the slaves in 1863, Clement L. Vanlandingham at the time of his arrest was a citizen of the United States and subject to all rights and priveleges thereof. I am not sure if Vanlandingham's U.S. citizenship has ever been restored.