1864 reelection. white argues many more than soldiers joined the army in support of the union, not necessarily in support of abolition. he explains how many troops had to be coerced into supporting the republican president as he president lincoln earned 80% of the soldiers' vote. the new york historical society hosted this hour-long event. >> thank you so much. it is really good to see everyone out here on the summer evening. it is a pleasure to introduce tonight's speaker. it is always wonderful to come out and see our members. sometimes we have members come to the museum and supports us. we really appreciate everybody's support. jonathan white is an assistant professor of american studies

and a fellow at christopher newport university where he serves as the universities prelaw advisor. he is the author of most recently "emancipation, the union army, and the reelection of abraham lincoln." he is currently at work on the three books including "lincoln's advice for lawyers," "the final voyage," and -- please join me in welcoming jonathan w. white. [applause] >> thank you so much for having me. can you all hear me in the bleacher seats? i love having an opportunity to come to new york city. this is only my third trip. i spent two weeks about eight years ago and i spent two weeks at the new york historical society. i love going there to do research.

i stopped by with my daughter and we had to stop and get a portrait with her by the statue. she has been to more civil war sites that most people see in a lifetime. when she was born, we did not have a name for her. i announced her name as mary todd lincoln white. half of my friends believed it. i am here to talk about the election of 1864 and it is the 150th anniversary. it is the most important. it sealed the doom of the confederacy and set the stage for the destruction of slavery. prior, many americans are doubted it would be held at all. you will see a lot of new yorkers in this talk. francis liebert, who was a professor at columbia university, wrote and said, "if

we come triumphantly out of his war with a presidential election, i shall call it the greatest miracle in all of the course of events." that miracle did take place. on november 8, 1864, americans, both civilians and soldiers, voted for president. it was an unbelievable feat. the first time in our history there had been a popular election like that. president lincoln said to well-wishers, we cannot have free government without election. if the rebellion could force us to postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us. lincoln had reason to feel confidence. he had just won two days earlier

by a landslide. he won 55% of the popular vote in that election. most importantly, he won the soldiers' vote. he would fight to win. there was a grand celebration at cooper union not far from here and the organizers of the celebration sent a letter. since his statue is right over here i had to bring bryant into this. bryant was too busy to attend as said already have a prior commitment. he said to the organizers, i shall be present with you in spirit. and will take place in the rejoicing conspired by the glorious result of the late election which it should be

chronicled among -- to our republic. he concluded that short note by claiming lincoln's reelection would "do more to hasten the close of the war than 20 battles." from these perspectives, from liber's and william cowan bryant's the election appears like a miracle. in a lot of ways, it was. it was a remarkable event. yet, it is important when we look back at it, that we not lose the sense of contingency. for much of the campaign, lincoln's reelection was far from certain. by late august, lincoln was convinced he would lose. on august 23, he handed it is little note to himself now known as the blind memorandum and he essentially said it has become clear to me that i will lose the election. and so, i am paraphrasing but

lincoln said i have to do what i can between election day and the inauguration to restore the union and i will work with the president elect. he took as little memory random and folded it up and sealed it to a cabinet meeting. he had all of his members sign it. lincoln was forcing them to sign on to winning the war and restoring the union with the president elect. lincoln ended up winning. in a later meeting, he opened up and show the members what they signed up to and they had a little bit of a laugh. it gives you a sense that the election was unsure. i want to capture a sense of what it looks like for americans.

i want to look back to what new yorkers were thinking about on july 30, 1864. last week, i went to my library at christopher newport university and i got out the newspapers. i looked at the newspapers from this day 150 years ago to see what new yorkers were reading about. i will give you a sense. if you opened up a new york newspaper 150 years ago today, you would've read a smattering of all more news, a rebel raid, troop movement which is very close to where i live now, and the reports seemed positive. you would've read about guerrilla warfare in missouri and kentucky.

most alarmingly, you would've read about the northwest conspiracy. i do not know how many of you are familiar with this, but union military authorities had just uncovered or so they claimed a massive plot in the old northwest and today we know it is the midwest. they had uncovered in this massive plot where the supposed secret societies all over the place being run by democratic leaders. they were organizing with confederate agents in canada and they were getting money and guns and the plan that did the secret societies had were we are going to take all of the guns and go to union pow camps and break in and give these guns to confederate pows and arm them and we are going to overthrow the union and the loyal northern government from within. this was breaking news on july 30, 1864. if you were a new yorker, these

were the stories you would've been reading about. if you opened a "the new york times," you would have found a recipe for blackberry brandy for soldiers. i wanted to try to make it before i came to tell you how it was but i do not have time. you could have read about a baseball match. philadelphia won, 29-12. you know i will never see a score like that from my hometown boys. you could've read excerpts from graduation speeches from colleges around new york. if you turn to the police blotter, you would've read about the arrest of an irish immigrant whose offense was having two wives and his child was set for september. if you turn to "the new york herald," you would have found a list of things to do in new

york. you could have gone to a concert at 4:30 in central park. you could have seen a list of musicals and plays going on on broadway. music -- if music and theater was not your thing, you could go to a museum which was promoting giants and dwarfs for your viewing pleasure. if you wanted to see the police blog, you would have read about a massive jewel heist. if you turn to the classified of the most important northern newspaper, women could have purchased for $.50 a self-interest envelope a secret that every married woman should know. the very next ad was for this "divorce is legally procured in another state without publicity." i gave this talk as a trial run to my wife two nights ago. she was generally paying

attention but when i got to this line, she said what is the secret that every married woman should know? i said i have no idea. if i did, i would charge a lot more than $.50. on the whole, the news that new yorkers were rating was positive. but new yorkers did not know what had taken place on july 30, 1864. that rebel raid kept going and went into pennsylvania. confederates went to a city and demanded money from the residents and the residents turned over the money and they demanded more and said if you do not, we will burn down your town. the confederates kept demanding more money until there was none left and the confederates burned down in the town. further south near petersburg,

there was the battle of the crater. for weeks leading up to july 30, there were pennsylvania coal miners in ulysses s. grant's army and they said we could dig under petersburg and pack the tunnel full of dynamite and did they did this. at 4:00, they lit the fuse. some guy goes into the tunnel, lights the fuse, and they wait. nothing happens. some poor guy had to crawl back in. he saw the fuse had gone back out and re-lights. there is a massive explosion. it created a huge crater. it is still there today. the union troops should have gone around the crater when they

attacked, but instead, they went into it. when they got to the other end, they found they cannot scale of the wall, so they were stuck. many were killed. by the time confederates gained their bearings, they found they could go into this pit. if any of you have seen "cold mountain," this one the opening scenes. even further south, union general sherman was stuck outside of atlanta unable to capture the stronghold. july 30, 1864 was actually a pretty awful day for the union. in the following days, new yorkers would open up their newspapers and read about the terrible news. there is a very famous new york lawyer. he recorded in his diary and said "it is the hottest day of

the burning summer. according to my sensations, i stayed indoors until tonight. steaming with perspiration. at 2:00, a newspaper reported that the debacle that had taken place a petersburg and strong went back to his diary and describes what took place was he concluded with this note "we have no right to expect speedy victory in this war or to ask that rebellion to be suppressed so we have suffered more than we have done." the news of july 30 captured how the summer of 1864 felt too many people in the north. it was a long, hot, awful summer. in may and june of 1864, ulysses s. grant and robert e lee had pummeled each other outside.

in the midst of all of that carnage, lincoln was reelected by the republican party for president. he was put on a platform pledging a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery. if any of you have seen "lincoln," you know how it turns out. even though his nomination was unanimous, she was not necessarily well-liked by everyone in his party. the radical wing of his party was doing everything it could to get rid of him before his renomination, lincoln's secretary was using his position to use patronage putting people into useful positions who might be able to help get rid of lincoln. after lincoln was nominated a major general named john frémont refused to drop out.

fremont was the first republican candidate. frémont was threatening to divid the party if lincoln would not drop out over the race. the democrats had been planning to hold their convention on july 4. what better day, and the democrats saw how badly the war was going. they decided it maybe we should wait and see how much worse it gets before we choose our nominee and also write our platform. they waited until the last three days of august. one of that convened on august 29 in chicago, they chose to nominate george b mcclellan for president and george h pendleton for vice president. george mcclellan had been a very popular army officer.

he was loved by his soldiers. they absolutely adored him. the democrats hoped they could win over some of the soldiers' votes. mcclellan was a moderate candidate. he was also proslavery. the vice presidential nominee was the more controversial one. george h pendleton, who was depicted in the spielberg film, if you want to see one of the copperheads, pendleton was one. he was proslavery and antiwar. what the democrats hoped they could do was balance of their ticket. we'll have a pro-war candidate for president and an antiwar known as a copperhead for vice president and we can have a broad appeal to a lot of different democratic voters. the democrats wrote their

platform. they made one huge miscalculation in their platform. if you read in the platform, a huge indictment of the lincoln administration. they called the war a failure. keep in mind the summer has been going very badly. lincoln thinks he is going to use so they call the war a failure. the timing could not have been worse for the democrats. the very day after they and adjourned, william sherman captured atlanta. this capture of atlanta sent a thrill through the north. from that point forward, it was pretty clear to most observers that lincoln was going to win. there is a general overview of the election. what i want to do now is tell you a little bit about the research in my book and research no one is really done before. my research focuses on lincoln and his reelection in 1864. 19 northern states passed legislation also rising soldiers to vote away from home.

this legislation two different forms. in some states, soldiers could vote in the field and they set up polls. other states did it through absentee balloting. new york, for example, the governor had vetoed a law in 1863 allowing soldiers to vote because he said our state constitution requires people to vote in new york. the legislature thought he will veto if we do it all again. we will let soldiers fill out their ballots in the field and they will mail them home and someone will send them in. there were parts of my book that i wrote when i was 21 years old and i hope you do not notice which parts i wrote when i was younger. i was studying under a professor named mark neely.

he is one of the most important historians. she is a wonderful historian. i was taking a civil war class. i wanted to do an independent study with him. this was the fall of 2000, during the bush versus gore fiasco. one day i want to mark and said i want to do an independent study from -- study and i gave him idea and he said it was not a good idea. i went back and he gave me a few topics that i could do as an undergrad and in the middle of nowhere in pennsylvania.

one of them was the soldier vote. i had never heard of it before. i never knew soldiers had insulted. i'd never heard of contested elections before bush versus gore. it seemed like an interesting topic to me. i did not know at the time that mark had been planning to walk on the soldier vote on a book he was writing. he very graciously gave the subject to me. as a student, i published three articles out of it. and now finally my book. i was thrilled to dedicate the book to mark neely. sorry for the tangent. as i mentioned earlier, 80% of the soldiers who voted for lincoln. historians have generally looked at the statistics and said it is pretty obvious, the soldiers supported emancipation and the soldiers supported lincoln. i can only briefly summarize my findings tonight but the main

thrust of my book is to show how democrats and the army were intimidated and coerced into silence and they use coercion measures to try and teach the soldiers that they needed to fight in a war. when the war began, lincoln's argument is it is a war of union and soldiers who enlisted would say i am enlisting for the union. they had to teach them they had to fight for emancipation. and this period, there is a lot of soldiers on opposing emancipation, speaking out against it. the war department use a lot of energy to force them to not go

against emancipation. the assistant secretary of war was a man named charles dana. he recalled in his memoirs years after, he said all the power and influence of the war department was employed to secure the reelection of me -- mr. lincoln. dana's recollection is substantiated by historical evidence i found from the election of 1864 is so. the secretary of war was a man named edwin stanton. he used in man's power to bring voters into line to make sure they voted for lincoln or did not speak to badly about the president. stanton dismissed dozens of offers during the summer and fall when they spoke out against lincoln. in one occasion, stanton dismissed almost two dozen at

one time. one of the u.s. senators from new york was a man named at one of morgan and have a one-time served as governor of new york. he went to stanford and said there are some clerks who are out there for mcclellan. stanton dismissed 20 of them. one of the clerks went to stanton and complained. stanton said when a young man receives his pay from an administration and spends his evenings denounce him inoffensive terms, he cannot be surprised if the administration prefers a friend on the job. stanton made very little effort to hide this sort of partisanship. he learned all about one officer who was wagering bets against the republican governor which was illegal. the soldier is betting against

the republican. once danton -- when a stanton learned he said i reduced him to a captain and ordered him salved. in other words, i am sending him to the front. i found this quote two weeks ago. one of the hardest things is you always find a great things after the book is there it is. democrats noticed what was going on. they came to believe that stanton was taking the vindictive actions so he could control the officers in a way that will not only influence their votes, but influence of the votes of the enlisted men serving under them. democrats learned they needed to keep quiet if they opposed lincoln in the field. i found a letter from a colonel named durbin ward. i found a letter he wrote where he said i am driven to be cautious because publicly speaking my political opinions might cost me my commission. i found a massachusetts

artillerist who send a private letter. he said i might be called a copperhead. he said perhaps a poor guy like me might be shot. other forms of intimidation took place as well. i found a newspaper article about something that took place near west point. there were a bunch of soldiers and cadets and the democrats wanted to go to a rally. the superintendent found out in the previous superintendent had been dismissed because the stanton foundation was a democrat. the new superintendent found out the soldiers are going to hear a democratic meeting. when the soldiers came about, they were put into the guard house. the next morning, they were made

to dig the training ditch. republicans who went to republican rallies faced no such intimidation. one of the things at the heart of my research our cart -- court martial records. they have not been mined enough by historians. there are thousands of records. i found a number of democratic officers who were court-martialed for speaking ill of lincoln during election season. i cleared this with c-span, some of the language is colorful. i want to give you a couple of examples of things people were court-martialed for. there was a lieutenant named edward austin and he was court-martialed and dismissed from the service for saying he

would "stab lincoln finer than hell." i found a missouri artillerist who said in that lincoln was a damned son of a bitch. there are a lot of these and my favorite quote from a captain, he was the captain of the 114th illinois. he was court-martialed and dismissed from saying he would rather sink to hell then free the negroes. you know, again, you think of things later. i think that would've been a great title for my book. these guys and many more like them were court-martialed. some of them deserved it for

some of the things they said. some went beyond the excerpts i gave you. they were not to criticize the war, the official military policy. it was effective. it taught people to keep their opinions to themselves. so the most egregious favoritism involved furloughs. some states did not permit soldiers to vote in the field and so republican governors from the states wrote letters to secretary stanton and though letters are still as a war of congress asking will you please furlough republican soldiers to vote and we will lose if you do not. stanton was happy to oblige. i found a doctor from indiana and the doctor was dealing, taking care of wounded soldiers.

he wrote a letter about one soldier and he said, "you should give him a furlough to vote because his vote will be as much value than his service might otherwise render the government." in other words, his bullets will be more important than his ballot. officers throughout the the union army to granted furloughs to republican soldiers and they were allowed to go home and vote. democrats were kept in the field. i want you to think about this for a moment. some of the soldiers had not been home for many months if not several years. getting a furlough to go home to vote was a huge thing because it meant you got to see your parents or siblings or wife or children. now, some people, some democrats

are going to rightly complain about this. i found a commissioner who reported that democrats were threatened to be sent -- an illinois soldier noted that his regiment was cold to see who'd vote for lincoln if they got to go home. i found one soldier from new hampshire and he was a sharpshooter and he wrote a letter to his brother and said i shall be as black as the darkie to get a furlough to go home. it was an epithet to refer to the republicans going home to vote. he was saying i am willing to vote the black republican ticket is i can go home. not also just were willing to sacrifice their principles. one soldier wrote i suppose i

might have gotten home if i would have said i should have voted for old abe, but never. well, for those soldiers who did vote in the field they found it was not necessarily easy to vote the democratic ticket. many democrats complained they cannot find a balance in the field and others complained they cannot read a democratic newspapers or campaign literature. you know how important it is to read both sides. i found one private from the 75th ohio named rufus miller. when he found that there were no democratic ballots, he exclaimed i would rather vote for geoff davis than abraham lincoln. you have to love the way they talk to back again. he was court-martialed for saying that in camp. another new york soldier "such a main favoritism or partisanship is shown from lincoln and by many officers in the army that hundreds of soldiers have been literally prescribed from voting

from a cloned by their officers and have been obliged to find mcclellan ballots from other sources." historians often point out that lincoln won eight of percent of the soldiers' vote as they have -- 80% of soldiers' vote. many union soldiers supported lincoln and emancipation. there is no doubt about that. i do not think their support of lincoln was as universal. i think that 80% statistic is deceiving. clearly, i show in the book that many democratic soldiers were intimidated or coerced into voting for lincoln. more importantly is the soldiers who did not vote. many chose not to vote in a difficult before because they saw lincoln as an abolitionist and they saw their own party as disloyal. august 1864, the democratic national convention in their platform called the war a failure.

if you are a soldier who has been fighting for two or three years, are you going to vote for a party who says that what you are don't is a failure? voter turnout among the soldiers is something no historian has consider before with a look at the election. it reveals a lot of what was going on. i found a wonderful letter from a corporal named george buck. he served with the 20th michigan volunteers. he sent a letter to george b mcclellan, the candidate who had

just lost. this is what he had to tell mcclellan. he said some soldiers "were offered a promotion if they would vote for lincoln." he said democrats were reduced to the ranks or a place at the front if they chose to vote for you. we have seen that testimony elsewhere. bucks said he knew of hundreds of soldiers who voted for lincoln under protest and hundreds more of your more ardent supporters who do not vote at all. he said "there are over 300 men in my regiment eligible to vote on the only 188 ballots were cast." that was the evidence that buck could show that people were supported not to vote for mcclellan. i found republicans who admitted as much. i found one soldier who supported lincoln, but he was upset and at the way stanton was acting, secretary of war stanton. he noted the tyranny and persecution that stanton practices against subordinate officers.

he said any soldier who does not a great would does with the administration must be -- who does not agree with the administration must be gotten rid off. he gave examples. he said he was scarcely credit the number of cases as this. cases of spite. fitting a bad tempered child. unlike democrats, it was quite easy for republican soldiers to vote. i found an account of by a confederate and this was a confederate from maryland. he and his men captured some union soldiers just prior to the election.

they forced the soldiers to take off their blue uniforms and that the ferrets but on the uniforms as they got lincoln's ballot and they went up to the polls and voted for lincoln. they do not support to lincoln but they wanted to prove a point. one wrote after this saying "no one could object to us after voting for lincoln." all of this sort of evidence suggests there was a great amount of pressure and even version -- coersion. i found one artillerist who said if i was a civilian i would say what i thought of it but at present, i better keep quiet. what does this all mean? first, i have to say, i love abraham lincoln. i think he is our greatest president.

i've written several books. i would not devote all of this time to lincoln if i do not think he was worthy of the study. and certainly, i think his reelection was the best thing that could've happened was that it led to the death of the confederacy and the ultimate extinction of slavery. i also think it is important to understand the mechanisms of how the election took place. it was mostly a free election but not entirely a free vote. i think having this broader understanding helps us better understand how politics worked during the civil war and questions and issues related to civil liberties. whenever scholars and tv pundits talk about civil liberties in wartime, they talk about the effect that war has on civilians. all that said, lincoln would have been reelected even if stanton had not gone to these great measures and the months

leading up to the election. now, second, the pattern emerged in the summer and fall of 1864 had also taken place earlier in the election. i do not get into this in my talk but i have two chapters in my book. what i found was after lincoln issued the emancipation proclamation, the war department and the state department were taking the same kind of measures. i think this is important because it shows us how honest lincoln was about emancipation. lincoln and new there were a lot of soldiers who opposed and he was going to go to great lengths to try to teach them that emancipation was a cause worth fighting for. unless i appeared to be coming to critically on the lincoln administration during the summer and fall of 1864, let me close

with 2 positive observations about the significance of the soldier vote. the first is this. per mating soldiers to vote was an incredible innovation. we take absentee balloting for granted today. in fact, there's one state, oregon, requires all votes -- and voters to vote by absentee. you can request a ballot and go vote and no one will think anything of it. absentee balloting was not common in the 18th century. i found one example during the american revolution, new york soldiers were allowed to vote absentee and it never became a policy. in the war of 1812, 2 states passed legislation, pennsylvania and new jersey. new jersey repealed its law in 1815.

when the civil war began, pennsylvania was other -- only state allowing soldiers to vote. soldiers voted in pennsylvania in 1861 and there was a tremendous amount of fraud. there was one regiment that cast more than 900 ballots even though there were not 900 men in the regiment. the state supreme court struck that law down. what republican politicians began to realize, we have got hundreds of thousands of men making to the ultimate sacrifice on the battlefield for their nation. to say of all people deserve the right to vote. beginning in 1861 and up to 1864, states through the north passed legislation enabling soldiers to vote. this was a remarkable expansion of democracy in america. it sets the precedent.

finally, i will close with this. i think the republican policy for permitting soldiers to vote during the civil war had a wide ranging implications. if a voting is based on service to one's country and you have 200,000 african-american men serving in the union army during the civil war, surely they, too, deserve the right to vote. i think it is a connection between the northern states passing laws allowing soldiers to vote and the 14th and 15th of amendments being ratified. the republican policy of granting soldiers the franchise is tremendously important for the calming of last suffrage.

with advance, i am happy to entertain any questions. thank you so much for coming out on this beautiful evening. [applause] i think there will be a microphone. if you will go to the mic. >> thank you. it was excellent. the union high command was very politically diverse. democrats and howard was an abolitionist. butler was a war democrat, anti-slavery. how did this election affect the union high command? >> it is a great question. secretary of war stanton got a letter i want to say in september where he got word that there were several democrats and the highest echelon of officers who were going to use their influence. the letter asked stanton to use

his remedy to handle them. i've only found one brigadier general who was dismissed for opposing emancipation. a guide named james spears. at first he tried to commission someone to write an op ed against emancipation and then he wrote one himself. lincoln a hand wrote on his -- dismissed. lincoln was very fair-minded and lincoln believed -- lincoln wanted a fair vote. he said as much. we have his words. as far as i know, he did not to get rid of any of the democrats like hancock. you mentioned butler. butler was a war democrat who moves into the radical republican camp by the end of the war. butler got about 5000 soldiers, who he brought to manhattan.

she was worried there was going to go people here. he figured out he cannot put to them and the city because people were not go for it. they were in boats around the coast of manhattan ready to go into the city should there be upheaval. he was an ardent guy and he was going to go to great lengths. for the new york soldiers, he kept them on the new jersey side of the water. they had already turned in their absentee ballots. the law stipulated if they went to new york among their ballots would be void. >> i have two questions. stephen pendleton, the democratic candidate for vice president -- george pendleton,

he as everyone else must have been aware of the pressure that was exerted on democrats in the army. did this have any influence on -- any motivation influence him when he became senator in the 1880's? >> with civil service reform? >> yes, with civil service reform. you mentioned a labor. -- lieber. is he the same francis lieber who wrote the code -- >> the first question is about george h pendleton. i did not mention it but he is famous today as the father of civil service reform. i think it was 1883 that the civil service reform act was passed. soldiers would write to politicians after they had been dismissed and say look at what

just happened to me. one of his closest allies was an ohio congressman who was actually kicked out of the union camp for trying to peddle democratic tickets. it might have been but i do not know definitively. francis lieber is probably most famous today for having written general orders 100. this was basically a code of war that would guide union war policy when waging war. same man. >> thank you.

>> the question that comes up that lincoln wanted a fair election, but as far as commander in chiefs go, hughes probably the strongest we ever had. -- he was probably the strongest we ever had. he knew what stanton was doing. with all of the court marshals, what does lincoln know and what did the president know and when did he know it? following that, do you have any evidence of what lincoln thought of all of these courts-martial's? >> a great question. i do not know. lincoln and did not keep a diary, so i do not know his most intimate thoughts. what you can tell if he ended up having to approve a lot of these. anytime a soldier was sentenced to be executed, lincoln would have to approve. i found one soldier who deserted who was sentenced to be executed and lincoln appeared to allow the execution to go forward. the soldier is not a listed in

the name of men executed. lincoln approved a lot of the dismissals. there's a very famous case that took place in 1862, a major named john key and he served in maryland. he was rumored to have heard or overheard to have said, we do not really want to hurt the south that it badly, we just want to bring them to a point that it they will surrender and we can protect slavery. when the lincoln heard about that, he called key and to the white house office and he talked to him about that this was a key said, yeah and i stand by it. he thought it was ok. lincoln said, you seem like a

competent officers but i cannot allow you to be talking like that because it will make the man think of the war is not worth fighting. lincoln not only dismissed key from the army, he had his private secretary john hake anonymously right and editorial -- write an editorial talking about how this was the right thing to do. lincoln understood the popular sentiment. he knew how to use of the newspapers to get his point across. in a lot of cases, many of the ones i found, lincoln upheld the punishment because he thought it was essential. lincoln was not invented this detriment did if -- vindictive the way stanton was. a lot was not done by court-martial so many do not come across lincoln's desk. i just do not know. thank you. >> thank you for an excellent lecture. what if any significance do you attach with respect to lincoln's presidency the fact he was a

practicing lawyer for many years? and how do you reconcile that or view that in the light of the position that was taken with respect to the suspension of [indiscernible] >> i have to thank you for that letter. they mention in the introduction that i have a book coming out. it is a wonderful little gift that i highly recommend for all of your lawyer friends. it will only be $12.99. lincoln was a brilliant lawyer. he began a practicing law around 1837. one of lincoln's major approaches to the law was trying to bring peace to neighborhoods. lincoln believed it was important if it all possible to settle out of court. he thought the litigation was a bad think and if it could be

avoided. i found one a letter where lincoln wrote and said his client, if you can settle with this other person, i will not charge you anything. that is how much lincoln wanted to settle out of court. i think lincoln abroad to that sort of approach, wanting to work with people and wanting to bid to resolve issues. and ultimately, he was trying to resolve issues between 2 bigger neighbors, the union and the confederacy. your question was about the suspension of habeas corpus?

>> [indiscernible] >> right. sure. i do not know if it lincoln's practice as a lawyer prepared him necessarily for that specific issue. i will briefly summarize. i wrote a book about this called "abraham lincoln and treason in the civil war." seven states had already seceded before lincoln became president. the upper south seceded. maryland was on the verge of secession so lincoln thought. he looked at the situation at thought and said i cannot allow maryland to secede because if they do the national capital will be surrounded by an enemy nation. he sent a private letter to his commanding general, a man named winfield scott.

it meant the military could arrest civilians and attain them indefinitely without charges. lincoln faced this decision on article one, section nine of the constitution which says the privilege of the writ of war be as corpus -- lincoln look at the situation and said, i have a rebellion on my hands and i think public safety requires it. most legal theorists look at that clause of the constitution and said clearly that is a legislative power because it is an article one of the constitution and the clause that had to do with congress. lincoln a look at the situation and set the constitution is silent.

it does not say who can suspend it. not only that but congress was out of session. handles not supposed to come back until december. he fell do i just wait until they come back and by then the rebellion could be over. lincoln claimed the constitutional authority to act as an executive with a greater authority. i wanted to give a background for those who may not be familiar. i do not know if lincoln's practice as a lawyer, he never would've dealt with a case quite like that. i do agree with you that i think he was a deep constitutional thinker. you read lincoln's speeches from his 1838 address and 1857 drug scott speech. lincoln is thinking about the words to the constitution. he gave them a plausible reading.

>> i have a what if question. what if atlanta had not fallen on september 1? what if johnston had stayed in office and not been removed by davis? and atlanta stays up until the election? do you think it would have resulted in lincoln losing the election? if lincoln does lose the election, what would that have resulted in? would a mcclellan administration resulted in a lost war for the north? >> a great question. the what if's are the hardest because we do not know. i will give my best shot. let's assume that atlanta does not fall and link them not win. there were a few union victories.

let's assume that mcclellan wins. mcclellan was argument latched to winning the war and restoring the union. there was a famous article that was based on better research that said mcclellan wavered and was not as strong on the union as we ought. that myth has been debunked. mcclellan would have done what he could've done to restore the union, but mcclellan would not have probably cap to the emancipation proclamation and plates. he would've been fine with trying to win the war and letting the south keep slavery. mcclellan would've had a lot of peace democrats who voted for him who would've said wait a

second, the platform says this war is a failure in the platform says we want to let the convention of the states and negotiate with the south. how mcclellan would've handled that is impossible to know. i have read several letters by democrats, these are soldiers who say i want to vote for mcclellan, but what if he wins and then dies? then you get a peace democrat. there were people who thought mcclellan might get knocked off and peace democrats would come and say we wronged you and you should go in peace. my answer is all over the place. i hope that helps. >> actually, my question has been answered as i stood in line. the question is what was lincoln's attitudes for the coercion of others of his administration for coursing the soldiers and demoting them in court marshaling them? however, the answer seems to be he did not exactly reject this

practice, but he did not condone it either. benevolent, beloved abe was really a politician. he knew how to handle any controversial situation. however, i am satisfied with the fact he never condoned it and did not reject it. and by the way, speaking of you, i always thought i was in new york's premier civil war historian. now, i see i am number two. >> awww. thank you so much. [applause] >> thank you for the excellent lecture.

one observation. getsaid they were trying to votes -- if there was a secret ballot, how would they vote? >> wonderful question. the secret ballot is known as the australian ballot and we don't get the us trillion gallon in america until much after the civil war. war, the locall government did not make the ballot the way to do today. the political parties would print their own ballots and often printed on a distinctively cluttered -- colored paper. paper. you voted with a yellow ballot or a pink ballot, and everyone knew how you were voting. and not only that, when you got to the poll booth, you voted into a glass bowl. so, there was really no secrecy. that is the thing. i am going tosay vote one way and then vote the

other. there was no secrecy in the balloting. that is why the intimidation is so powerful. the soldiers will be seen to be voting in a particular way. obamaknow that president dismissed general mcchrystal and others -- but if someone is in today, can he express any opinion in contradiction to policy to his officers? ruleson't know what the are for soldiers today. i know there are prescriptions criticizing --d in the civil war in the articles of war, which had been adopted by congress many years before the award, there is the fifth article of war, and that prohibited criticizing the president or the congress or the governor of your state. that is what a lot of these guys were charged under. ae question is, if you oppose policy like emancipation, which was very controversial and you

consider yourself a citizen first -- is were guys who saw themselves as citizen soldiers. they went off to fight for a time and then went home. they were not professionals. they never believed they lost the right to free speech. when they are court-martialed, they make this claim. they say, i never thought i lost the right to speak freely on political issues. i am an american citizen. but the army held otherwise in most cases i have looked at. >> in a contemporary context, i think officers cannot just say whatever they want, criticized their commanders -- you're right about that. >> coming back to our beloved abram lincoln, it is not so that it was political move ring. it was bad for out. >> certainly that was the way he took it. sure. for thisyou

little-known dimension. you mentioned that lincoln during the summer was very pessimistic about his chances in the war. only tookhe election place in the northern states. >> great question. >> the question is -- >> oh, sorry. between theens first election and the second one that caused lincoln -- generally a very astute observer -- to think he had a very bad chance of winning? thank you. >> that is a great question. i will answer both parts of it, two-year low. there were elections held in confederate states that were undergoing lincoln's reconstruction plan. if memory serves him of voters voted in tennessee, louisiana, and maybe in arkansas. the military

governor of tennessee was andrew johnson and he was also the republican candidate for vice president. and andrew johnson issued an oath that voters had to take, and the oath was very long. i listed all of it in the book. but part of the oath required voters to pledge that they opposed an armistice to negotiate with the south. in this democratic platform said, we stand for an armistice to negotiate with the south. andrew johnson's oath that was required to vote essentially made it impossible for democrats to vote in tennessee. can you -- that was the first part. can you repeat the second part? >> what was lincoln so pessimistic? >> i think he was pessimistic because of how badly the war was going. aagine 16,000 casualties and 30-day span. that is a lot of families who were going to be disheartened. that was the sentiment in the

summer of 1864. people did not see the war going well. it is really not until the fall of atlanta and the mobile bay and the shenandoah valley -- it was at that point lincoln became confident. there were state elections in indiana, pennsylvania, and ohio, and those elections all went republican. those were bellwether elections. everyone knew how those three states went, that was how the election would go in november. by october, lincoln was confident he would win. it was really only the summer he thought he would lose. thank you so much. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] next on the civil war, the med thompson discusses the 1864 election the between abram lincoln and general george mcclellan. she explains that lincoln was so unsure about his reelection chances that he hap