Can someone define this paragraph for me? since they have alot of big words i dont understand?

In Chicago, there were many Democrats, but few openly disloyal Copperheads. In 1861, the city's leading Democrat, Stephen Douglas, called on his party to support the Lincoln administration, and most Democrats rallied to the Union war effort with enthusiasm. By 1863, however, discontent with several of the administration's war measures–taxes, banking policies, conscription, infringements on civil liberties, and especially the Emancipation Proclamation–caused an upsurge of antiwar feeling. Wilbur Storey's Chicago Times was nationally famous for its strident antiwar stance, extreme racism, and suppression by military authorities, though it seems never to have represented a large local constituency. A few local residents participated in an abortive conspiracy to mobilize the Confederate prisoners of war held at Camp Douglas as the nucleus of an insurrection aimed at establishing a pro-South “western confederacy,” but this effort went nowhere. Luckily for Chicago, conscription occurred peac