history. abraham lincoln won reelection over union general george mclellan in 1864 with more than 70% of the soldier vote. some historians have argued that lincoln's strong support from soldiers indicated that the troops also agreed with lincoln's greater mission of emancipation. next, author and professor jonathan white argues that was not necessarily the case. professor white says changes in the military command structure and the weeding of mcclellan backers helped engender such overwhelming numbers on the part of lincoln. this was hosted by the lincoln group of dc. well, you're in for a treat. jonathan white, assistant professor of american studies at christopher newport college has

written several books and several articles, and i've heard him talk on the treason in the civil war about merriman. in fact, last night i watched him on c-span going over with his class this topic. it was really fun. it was neat to see how he interacted with the students and brought out in them a different opinion of what they had when they first came in, how they learned something from the discussion. and it was fun. and in particular, one of the questions one of the girls asked, with all the interests in merriman's rights, what about the gross treason of the whole situation? it seems like we're looking at a little tiny speck, and the whole civil war was treason. so how he dealt with that was pretty good. and he has another book out -- that's this book. and he has another book out, the one he's going to be talking about today, and i'm looking forward to hearing about it.

the first book is "treason, abraham lincoln and treason in the civil war." it's about the merriman trial, and about what he did. the one thing i saw different in that than a lot of the books i've read, it really approached it from two sides. it approached it from a social side and a legal side. and it's easy to just get kind of hung up on one or the other. so we have both these books out front if anybody -- thank you. [applause] >> you know, i remember doing that class on c-span, and i remember that question, and the question essentially was, is succession really unconstitutional, is it treason? i was nervous being on c-span for the first time, i always get a little nervous going on c-span.

i thought, there is no way i'm going to tackle this question on national television. i managed some sort of answer without having to answer it, but i went up to my student maddie afterwards and said, good question, but sorry i couldn't answer it on tv. i'm really happy to be here. thank you to karen for inviting me. i've hosted events like this before and i know how exhausting it is. before i got to seeing you, i had a full head of hair, then i hosted three conferences, and you can see the effect of it on me. thank you also to the lincoln group of d.c. for having me. i'm actually thrilled to be in this very courtroom. i used to work for the federal courts before i got a job as a professor, and i was researching a man named william merrick about 10 years ago, and that was the last time i was in this court. merrick was a federal judge in d.c., and william seward, the secretary of state, had merrick placed on house arrest in 1961 because merrick was issuing

writs of habeas corpus to get men out of the civil war. if you look up there, you see the oval portrait? that's judge merrick. so spent a lot of time thinking about that guy over the years, and now i get to stand in his shadow. by the time of 1864, the republicans had actually -- you know, federal judges get life tenure. the only way to get rid of a federal judge is for them to pass away or impeach them, or if you abolish the court they sit on. so the republicans in congress thought, we want to get rid of this guy but he hasn't done anything impeachable. they abolished the court he sat on, lincoln signed it into law and appointed four new judges. that court was known as the court of d.c., but that court is the forebear of the united states district court in whose

formal courtroom we're sitting in today. thank you, judge merrick, anyway. i want to talk about the election of 1864, and i think the election of 1864 is really the most important election in american history for two reasons. one is it sealed the doom of the confederacy, and the other is that it set the stage for the ultimate destruction of slavery. but i think that the election has been largely misunderstood. on november 8, 1864, americans throughout the north and border states, soldiers and civilians, cast ballots for abraham lincoln and he won by a landslide. he carried 212 electoral votes to mclellan's 21. he won 55% of the popular vote and he carried 78% of the soldier vote in that election, and that statistic, the 78%, is the one i'm going to focus most of my attention on today. now, historians usually interpret this number, 78% of the soldier vote for lincoln, as evidence that the soldiers had become lincoln-supporting,

emancipation-supporting republicans. in his book for causing comrades, james mcpherson said this. when lincoln ran for election on the platform of constitutional amendment to abolish slavery, he received almost 80% of the soldier vote, a pretty fair indication of army sentiment on slavery at that time. and more locally, georgetown university professor shander manning, like mcpherson, points to the statistic. she said when union soldiers voted in 1864, nearly 80% of them cast their ballots for lincoln. for her this demonstrates that they, quote, believe that lincoln shared their vision of the war's cause and purpose. now, these various esteemed scholars believed lincoln throughout the campaign. writes mcpherson, quote, having won the military victory that turned the war around, these civilians in uniform preferred

to give old abe a thumping endorsement at the polls. i'm going to offer a slightly different interpretation than jennifer weber in my talk. she says this: when union soldiers' support for lincoln and the republicans never wai d waivered, even in the dark days of 1864. when lincoln stood at the lowest point, his support in the ranks was sustenance. i think this is a story that everybody else had turned against lincoln but the soldiers were there supporting him. but i think it needs to be complicated a little bit. and in order to do that, i need to take us back to the very beginning of the civil war and look at how lincoln and the republican party dealt with the issues of emancipation and the troops. now, many scholars believe that many soldiers came to support

emancipation as a result of their interaction with slaves. they went south, they saw slaves for the first time and that influenced the way they thought about southern slaves. and scholars would adhere to a theory and were taught they needed to free the slaves and this eventually worked its way up the chain of command until eventually the soldiers taught their officers who taught congress who taught lincoln that he needed to free the slaves. according to people like manning, shander manning, the soldiers learned this lesson in 1861 and it's a long time until lincoln figures it out. i think there is some truth to the view that union soldiers came to oppose slavery as a result of interacting with slaves. i've certainly seen evidence for that in my research. but i think it's only part of the truth. and if, indeed, soldiers did come to support emancipation, i think it happened in a much more complicated way.

in fact, my contention today is that there was a concerted effort from the top down by republicans in congress, in the lincoln administration, and in the war department in particular to teach the union soldiers that they needed to fight in a war fioor emancipation. emancipation, in other words, was much more of a top down process in my view than a bottom up one. to sort of set the stage, i want to start with what is a fairly famous incident. in october 1861, there was a battle not far from here near le leesburg, virginia that is now a state park. in the midst of the battle, a famous officer, general d. baker, was killed. this was a very important casualty. not only was baker a general but he was also a u.s. senator, and he was also a personal friend of abraham lincoln's. so union authorities wanted to

look for a scapegoat for this defeat, and the scapegoat that they chose was charles p. stone who you see pictured on the top right of this slide. now, stone was a pro-slavery democrat. he was also a union general. during the time of this battle, stone returned two fugitive slaves to their master. for this action stone was chosen as the scapegoat. on the floor of the u.s. senate, he chastised stone for not freeing the slaves. he called him vile and outrage and abuse and an act unworthy of our national flag. now, stone replied in good 19th century fashion by challenging sumner to a dual. the dual never took place, but instead republicans and congress decided that they would use their powerful political influence to go after stone's personal reputation and military career.

stone was hauled before the congressional committee on the conduct of the war, but neither he nor his lawyers were told why he had been brought in. and on the committee's recommendation, he was arrested by secretary of war edmond stanton's order and sent to fort lafayette in hamilton and new york harbor where he was imprisoned for six months. a newspaper howled with glee. one newspaper reported, his punishment must be prompt. whether that punishment is military disgrace or a death that a traitor should have. here is a guy in uniform fighting against traitors in arms, but simply because he's not anti-slavery, the republican newspaper will say he should be executed for what he had done, which was perfectly legal, by the way, in october 1861. now, this incident took place in

1861, more than a year before lincoln issued his emancipation proclamation. but it set a stage for -- it was an early precedent for how anti-emancipation officers would be dealt with for the duration of the civil war, in particular after lincoln issued his famous emancipation proclamation. now, following the issue of the emancipation proclamation, on january 1st, 1863, the union high command mounted a concerted effort to find and remove anti-emancipation officers from the army. in february 1863, general ulysses s. grant established a board of examiners to remove these loyal officers from the army. and the president of the board is the man i have highlighted here in red, thomas bennett of the volunteers. bennett wrote a letter to the general of his state to describe the work his board is doing. it's a very colorful letter, i'll give you a little bit of

it. he said, we are having a good time. we will give the army a good perju purge and a healthy puke of copperheads. once this, quote, of weeding out the internal skoucoundrels will help the nation. dozens of army officers were dismissed by saying bad things about lincoln or the emancipation or about soldiers. i'll give you a few examples. here are charles j. whiting and major howler. whiting was in the 7th salvery, and he was dismissed for saying that lincoln's emancipation policy was dividing the north and uniting the south.

he also said lincoln's writ of habeas corpus was unconstitutional and that was dismissed. howler went a little bit further. they were having a party at some point, and howler proposed a toast. he said, here's to separate union and confederate countries while lincoln is president. and for that he was dismissed. but he was really saying, once the republicans are out of power, then we'll reunite. which, as we've heard earlier, was wishful thinking. alexander montgomery, a quarter master in pittsburgh, pennsylvania was summarily dismissed from the army in 1863 for saying, quote, president lincoln ought to have his heart cut out for issuing the emancipation proclamation. in one instance i saw a postal error that led to a dismissal. there was an officer in the 42nd u.s. infantry named john

garland. gore la garland was a missionary in china. he posted a letter for 40 cents. it turned out it took 90 cents to get a letter to shanghai in 1863. there was no return address on the front so they wanted to see who do they send this letter back to. they opened the letter and it was full of this emancipation discontent. so instead of returning the letter to garland, they promptly arrested him. i'll give you a sense of what he said. he blasted the lincoln emancipation proclamation as unconstitutional and unjust. and he pro claimed -- and i'm going to sensor the n word here, and i'm going to do that throughout the talk actually -- that the administration have at last shown their hand and that their principles and their hearts are blacker than the negro they're fighting for.

garland was promptly sent out of the army and out of military lines. so far the cases i've given you have all been sudden dismissals of officers, but some of these guys were court martialed, so i'll give you some examples of these. there was the ordinance sergeant right here in washington, d.c. who was court martialed and dishonorably dismissed from the army saying, quote, that he would no longer fight for a black republican and negro war, and that lincoln and this administration in this rotten hole, meaning washington -- people have always looked badly on washington -- this rotten hole ought to be blowed to hell. in a similar vein, lieutenant f.m. hiatt was dishonorably dismissed for saying he wished washington could drive abe and the damn abolitionists out.

the cavalry was barred from holding a federal office from ever again for saying, quote, this is nothing but an abolitionist war, we are fighting to help the negros. military authorities really had no patience when officers said this sort of thing in front of their soldiers. this is my favorite, and i did run this by c-span. they gave me the go-ahead to give this quote. well, i didn't today, i did it once before. i thought i was going to get in trouble for this. captain john gibson of the 114th illinois, was court martialed and dismissed in 1863 for saying he would rather sink to hell than fight to free the god damn negros and abe lincoln is a god damn old shit. in hindsight, you pick a title for a book and you realize you picked a bad title. if i had used that as the title for my book, old abe lincoln is a god damn old shit, i think i would have had a best seller.

just a few more. an illinois surgeon was court martialed in 1863 for saying lincoln was, quote, attempting to raise a degraded race on inequality with the superior race. and sergeant howard fitzsimons of the 3rd missouri cavalry was court martialed for saying, quote, the army of the united states was engaged only to free the negros, and rather than do that for my part, the union might go to hell. this guy was found guilty by court martial, he was sentenced to be reduced to the ranks. and in front of all of his regiment they would cut off his stripes, so this is a very publicly humiliating action. they would do this at press parade and they would read his sentence in front of a thousand men at his regiment to make sure no one else acted alike. one more of these cases. private phillip curlin of the iowa volunteers was court martialed in february 1863, so a month after the emancipation proclamation, for saying in

front of his company that, quote, the president of the united states is a damned abolition son of a bitch and i would like to shoot him. curlin, in his trial, is right over the national archives, and it's kind of funny to read because he pleads not guilty, and he says, i don't think i said that. i don't have any recollection of saying anything like that. you would think you would remember if you did. but the court found him guilty and here is his sentence. curlin was sentenced to, quote, walk the beat with the sentinel at the reg mental aa aa aa aal with a 20-pound weight on his back and a placard on his vest with the words, violation of the fifth article of war, and to forfeit all pay andal loun al l

for the next six months. surely curlin got the punishment he deserved, you can't threaten to shoot the president. but he sensed that the sentiment against emancipation will not be tolerated and others must think clearly before they made a sentiment in a similar manner. another soldier from iowa in a completely different regimen wrote in his diary, he said, quote, one man in the 11th iowa was court martialed for cussing the president of the united states, calling him a black son of a bitch and a black abolitionist. he now has to carry a 20-pound ball two hours a day. that other soldier actually got the punishment wrong. it was actually 25 pounds, and i'm sure that makes a difference, and it wasn't two hours a day, it was two hours on, two hours off, two hours on, two hours off, from revelry to retreat. but the point is everyone in the

brigade knew exactly what curlin had said and they could compromise the severity of his punishment. they saw him walking around, like the guy you see in this slide here, and the punishment was meant to send a message to other soldiers who might be considering speaking out against emancipation as well. it became important to union military leaders that these punishments be not only punitive but also preventive. now, the point of these examples, and i have a lot more in my book, is to show that during the winter and spring and summer of 1863, lincoln and his commanders sought to teach the union soldiers that they needed to fight in the a war fiore manslaught -- emancipation and that this was a top down process. one other thing i'll say about 1863 before turning to the reason for this symposium, 1864, is to say many democrats in the army resigned their offices, and soldiers deserted rather than

than fight a war of emancipation. in a very real way, these men voted with their feet before the presidential election of 1863. now, back to this 78% statistic. we have to first realize that with the material this presented, the composition of the army changes a bit from 1863 to 1864. there are fewer democrats in the army by the time of the election of 1864. now, let me transition to the candidates and what goes on during the election, and i hope what i've said so far can serve as a backdrop to the election of 1864. i've already done a recap so i'm going to say a couple things about the democrats. the democrats had been planning to have their nominations in

1864. what better day to have it than the fourth of july. but things were going bad for the union in the summer of 1864, so they thought, maybe we should wait and see if things get much worse, then we'll have our nominating convention. so they delayed and postponed until the end of august 1864. as we already heard, they nominated george mclellan for president and george h. pendleton for vice president. mclellan had been very popular among the soldiers at the beginning of the war. he was the commander of the army in 1862 and the soldiers loved him. he was pro slavery, but he was also pro war. and so the democrats saw him as sort of a moderate pro war candidate. and they wanted to balance their ticket, so they picked george pendleton for vice president. and pendleton, as we've heard, was a copperhead from ohio, he was stride he not annt anti-war. what the democrats thought they were doing was balancing their

ticket. we're going to have a pro-war candidate for president, we're going to have a pro anti-war vice president, we're going to have a balance, a broad appeal. then as we also heard, they made one very fateful error in their platform. they called the war a failure. and this decidedly anti-war term would come back to haunt them, because as we've also heard already, the very next day after they adjourned, sherman captured atlanta, and this very military event sent a thrill through the north. from that time forward, i think most observers in the north realized that lincoln was going to win the election. in the meantime during 1862, '63 and '64, 19 northern states passed laws that enfranchised their soldiers to vote away from home. and this was a pretty remarkable feat in american political history. if you'll allow me to just take

a personal note here, i actually began this part of my research when i was an undergrad at penn state. it was the fall of 2000, and the election bush versus gore was going on, and i say it was going on because it lasted quite a while. during that time i was taking a course with mark knenealy, who one of the most important historians alive. i wanted to do an independent study with mark, and he said, sure, but we had to come up with with a viable topic. i proposed a topic to him, and he said, no, that's not a viable topic. the next week he had three topics written down. one was the soldier vote of 1864. this was something that was ripe for historical inquiry. so i started this project the spring semester of my senior year at penn state. i didn't know at the time that mark was planning to write his own material on the election of 1864, but he instead very

graciously gave the subject to me, and now 14 years later, i finally finished the book, and i was thrilled to be able to dedicate it to him. that's the dedication that's pulled out of the front of the book. well, at any rate, i mentioned at the beginning of my talk 78% of the soldiers voted for lincoln. and historians have generally believed that this statistic is evidence of the soldiers' support fioor emancipation, and read some quotes earlier. on the surface it seems kind of obvious. if almost 80% of the soldiers voted for something, you would think it was pretty clear he was voting for emancipation. but they were missing very important parts of the election. i can only briefly summarize my findings here, but the main thrust of my book was to show democrats of the army were coerced into silence throughout much of the war, beginning with the post-emancipation

proclamation era and continuing through the election campaign of 1864, and this was the lincoln administration trying to teach the soldiers that they needed to support emancipation, and then by 1864, also vote for lincoln, or at least not campaign against him. now, assistant secretary of war charles dana remembered years after the election that, quote, all the power and influence of the war department was employed to secure the reelection of mr. lincoln. and dana's recollection can be pretty well substantiated by evidence from the election time itself. secretary of war edmond m. stanton made very little effort to hide the partisanship behind the decisions that he made, and so, for instance, when he learned that one of his quarter master clerks was betting against oliver morton, the gub

gubernatorial incumbent, he said, i boosted him to captain in the great war. i published that in my book and wanted to bring it out today. democrats saw these sort of actions, and they believed stanton was doing these sorts of things to try to influence the army vote. and influence is a word i've seen from several accordance. and democrats learned they needed to keep quiet during the election rather than speak out publicly what their positions were. mr. colonel durbin ward here, he wrote a letter marked confidential where he claimed to be, quote, driven to be cautious because publicly speaking my opinions might cost me my commission. now, ward's concerns were not that far-fetched. stant oon dismissed dozens of officers in the union army in the months leading up to the presidential election, with at

least two of these missions targeting multiple democrats at once. when senator edmond d. morgan of new york informed stanton there were a number of quarter master clerks he wanted for president, he dismissed 20 of them. they would say, i want my job back and stanton replied, when a young man receives his pay from the administration and spends his evenings denouncing it in defensive terms, he cannot be surprised if the administration prefers a friend on the job. we do have to keep in mind this is pretty civil service. after i published my book, i actually discovered in another book another mass dismissal at the brick and navy yard. they are materialists related similarly to durbin ward. he wrote home and said, if i voice my political opinions, quote, i might be called a copperhead and perhaps a poor cuss like me might get shot. other forms of intimidation took

place as well. there were a number of soldiers who were stationed up at west point, and they went to a pro-mcclellan rally around september of 1864. when they got back, they were promptly arrest and had thrown into the guard house, and the very next day, they were made to dig the drainage ditch for the superintendent's water closet. that was their punishment for going to a campaign rally whereas lincoln soldiers received no such punishment. and soldiers were arrested for usi using emancipation speech during the campaign. edwin b. austin, of the 54th new york engineers, was court martialed and dismissed from the army in september 1864 for saying, he would, quote, stamp lincoln finer than hell, and if by giving my vote for abe lincoln i could save the government, i would be damned if i would give it.

and a missouri artillery man of alabama was quoted as saying, lincoln is a son of a bitch. that was the day right after the election. there was an officer from indiana, as you can see here, lieutenant edwin maffy of the indiana volunteers, and he was court martialed for saying during the campaign, quote, the emancipation proclamation is in direct violation of the constitution. so he's still bitter a year and a half later. now, these guys and others like them were court martialed, i believe, to teach other soldiers around them not to speak out in the same way. now, some of the most egregious political favoritism during the election campaign had to do with furloughs. i just realized -- one second. my page is stuck together. had to do with furloughs. not all states had permitted soldiers to vote. only 19 of the northern states had passed legislation

permitting them to vote, so some administration got soldiers sent home to vote. governor morton of indiana sent letters to both lincoln and secretary of war edmond stanton on october 12, 1864, asking for extended furloughs for any soldiers who had been wounded. remember, they might be ready to go back to the army, but morton said can we keep them in indiana a little bit longer so they can vote. the governor of delaware was even more forthright. he sent stanton a telegram saying, if we don't allow the soldiers to come back to delaware, the republicans are going to lose this election. and doctors in the army were even known to recommend extending furloughs for soldiers for this very reason. i found a physician from indiana who wrote about one particular wounded soldier, and he said, quote, his vote will be of as much or more value in the presidential lielection in it state than the service he might otherwise render the government. nerd, his ballots are much more important than his bullets.

now, officers throughout the union armies granted these furloughs for republican soldiers to go home to vote while democrats were kept in the field, and i found evidence of this sort of thing in many states throughout the north. a pennsylvania election commissioner, for example, reported that, quote, the democrats were threatened to be sent to the front if they voted. while an illinois soldier noted that his regimen was polled, quote, to see how many would vote for lincoln if they got a chance to go home. now, we have to put ourselves in the shoes of these solsoldiers. a furlough was a huge inducement. some of these furloughs hadn't seen their wives and children for years. some of these soldiers had children who they never met because they were delivered after they left for the army. and so being able to go home and vote was a tremendous gift. and some soldiers were willing to sacrifice their political principles in order to get a furlough home to vote. i found a new hampshire

sharpshooter who wrote to his brother. he said, i shall be as black as the darkie to get a furlough home to vote. that was referring to the republican ticket as the black republican party. but not all soldiers could be bought off. new jersey, for example, did not enfranchise their soldiers, and i found a new jersey soldier who wrote to a friend. he was angry, and he said, i suppose i might have gotten home if i had said i would vote for old abe, but never. i would sooner stay here another year than come home and vote for him. now, for those soldiers who did vote in the field, democratic soldiers often claim that it was very difficult to vote the democratic ticket. and many complained that they got no democratic newspapers or campaign literature on that it was difficult to find ballots. in fact, one democratic officer from ohio was court martialed for distributing democratic newspapers in his camp. and, in fact, just last month, i found a letter -- you find these

things after you public a book -- i found a letter of an ohio politician. he said, i sent a whole bundle of campaign literature to the ohio regiments, but they were sent back still sealed and the officers of the regiment, he said, had written insulting things on the package, and i wish i knew what those insulting things were, but that's lost to history. now, this sort of testimony is corroborated by evidence from the soldiers themselves. when private rufus miller of the 75th ohio infantry was on election day looking for a democratic ballot, he couldn't find any in his camp. and he got angry and he ex claimed, i would rather vote for jeff davis than lincoln. them is my sentiments, by god. just for that angry exclamation, he was sentenced -- or he was court martialed. a new york soldier similarly groused, quote, such mean partisanship is shown for

lincoln that hundreds of soldiers have been literally prescribed from voting because they can't get mcclellan ballots. nerd, stanton's tactics to influence the army vote had been somewhat effective. now, this is a political cartoon, and i know you won't be able to make out the words from where you're sitting, but with all of its racist undertones notwithstanding, it captures the way many democrats viewed the election of 1864. to them this was an election about elevating an inferior race above a superior race, and you can see here a noble democratic soldier who lost a leg in battle being deprived of his right to vote by a slavenly characteristic soldier. this, from the democrat's point of view, was the republicans control the army and operations of the government. and so they saw themselves as being disenfranchised during this election. historians often point out that

lincoln won 78% of the soldier vote. but i don't think they've offered a satisfactory explanation of what that statistic means. certainly, many soldiers supported lincoln and supported emancipation and supported his reelection, there is no doubt about that. but i don't think the support was as universal or as consistent as most scholars think, and for that reason, i think the 78% statistic can be a little bit deceiving. clearly, as i think i've shown, some soldiers were intimidated or coerced into voting for lincoln. of equal, or maybe even greater importance, though, is understanding soldiers who chose not to vote. i believe that many democratic soldiers in 1864 chose not to vote for either party because they looked at lincoln and they said he was an abolitionist, and they looked at the democrats and she saw them as disloyal. after all, the democrats had called their effort in the field a failure. so voter turnout among the soldiers is something that

historians have never really taken seriously, but i think it can reveal a great deal about what the election meant. i found a corporal from michigan. his name was george buck. he was in the 20th mission of volunteers, and he sent mclellan a letter explaining what had taken laplace in his particular regimen. he claimed the power of the military had been used, he said, without stint to keep officers from voting democratic. while democrats were, quote, reduced to the ranks or a lace in the front in every engagement if they chose to vote democratic. we've seen that threat come from stanton's own mouth. buck said he knew of hundreds of soldiers who, quote, voted for lincoln under protest and hundreds more who did not vote at all. he implied that those hundreds more were democrats. as evidence, buck pointed out that in his regiment, there were more than 300 men who were qualified to vote, but only 188

ballots were cast. and based on my research, i think that somewhere just under 60% of the union soldiers who were qualified to vote actually voted for lincoln, which is significantly less than the 78% or 80% statistic that's usually thrown out there. now, the complaint about stanton's actions during the campaign did not only come from democrats. and here is a lincoln-supporting soldier who complained about the way democratic officers were treated during the election campaign. and he noted, quote, the petty tyranny and persecution which stanton practiced against subordinate officers. and he said, quote, any soldier who don't agree with the administration must be got rid of, no matter how honorably that soldier had served his country. and he said, you would scarcely credit the number of such cases as this, cases of petty spite rather fitting a bad-tempered child than a great and dignified

cabinet member, in that case referring to stanton. now, unlike the experience of democratic soldiers, it was much easier to vote the republican ticket in the field. i found a number of instances of minors who were allowed to vote because they were willing to vote republican. the most interesting one i found, though, involved a group of confederates. they had captured four union soldiers. they forced the union soldiers to take off their blue uniforms. they put on the blue uniforms. they took their soldier lincoln's ballots and they proudly rode into a union camp and cast their ballots for lincoln. they were never forced to take an oath before voting, and one said, quote, of course no one could object to us for voting for lincoln. all this suggests, i think, that there was a great amount of pressure, and in some cases, even coercion for soldiers to toe the republican line.

i found a soldier in massachusetts who was a democrat who wrote home to his parents and said this. if i was a civilian, i would say what i thought about it, meaning the election. but at present, i think i better keep silent. so what is the meaning of all of this? first, i don't think that the intimidation and coercion is what carried the election or the soldier vote for lincoln. this morning i had a piece come out in the "new york times" union blog, and i knew this piece would provoke a lot of comments. i didn't pick the title for this piece, the times did, and they said, soldiers take the union vote. this is not how lincoln won the soldier vote, but i do think it's an important component in understanding how the election of 1864 took place. it was a mostly free vote, but it was not an entirely free vote. and i think that understanding this can broaden our understanding of both politics

during the civil war and also questions of civil liberties and war time. these were citizen soldiers and it can help us understand that civil liberties issues don't simply pertain to civilians but they can also pertain to soldiers. second, i don't think the soldiers' support in the lead-up to the election was nearly as universal or thumping as most historians have assumed. and this is where i differ with professor weber. and i can only very briefly summarize my arguments here. i lay them out much more fully in the book. but i think the reality is that soldiers waivered in the months leading up to the election. some of them supported lincoln for a time, then turned against him and went back. they were depressed when the war was going badly, and i think just like voters at home, they felt the highs and lows of the national mood. in my research for this book, i read hundreds of collections of soldiers' letters, and i was astounded by how many just said, i'm not going to vote this fall. and that was before the fall of

atlanta. they just didn't think it was worth their time. for many of them, even, i found people who had to be persuaded by their family at home. we all know there is lots of accounts of soldiers telling their friends and family at home, you got to vote for lincoln. nobody has ever looked for the reverse but the reverse is there. one incident in particular that i love is this mission soldier named mac ewing. this fellow voted for lincoln in 1860, and in the summer of 1864, he writes home to his wife and says, i would be ready to support van der slodingham at t point. she wrote back and said, what's wrong with you? you have to vote for lincoln. and prior to the vote of 1864, he writes back and says, you're right, i'll vote for lincoln. so my thesis or theory is it's

really the fall of atlanta that solidifies the soldier vote for lincoln. it's that that buoys them home and also soldiers in the field. and related to this point -- we cannot underinvestigate -- i forgot my lincoln slide. we can't under estimate the performance of the dem kragt platform in nominations in understanding soldier behavior in 1864. many soldiers wanted to vote for mclellan, but they couldn't bring themselves to include a ticket of a copperhead by. i found some that wrote home saying, i worry that mclellan might get killed during service. then what happens? petty and his friend control the white house. so i think the democratic party pushed a lot of soldiers into either not voting or voting for

lincoln. and ultimately, those soldiers who voted for lincoln were voting for him not because of his position on emancipation, necessarily, but because they believed that lincoln would restore the union. i don't get into this in my book, i wish i had. this might help explain why white soldiers' support for reconstruction and black rights is not stronger than we wish it was. and it might be because they just winter as supportive during the war as most scholars have maybe thought that they were. now, lest you think i'm negative on the lincoln nomination, i love lirng ncoln, by the way. here's a quote.

allowing soldiers to vote in 1864 was a great premonition. never had so many soldiers been away from home during an election was exorbitant. during the war of 1812, two states allowed soldiers to vote, pennsylvania and new jersey, but new jersey repealed its law by 1815. so when the civil war began, there was only one state that had a law on the books that permitted soldiers to vote. and the problem that pennsylvania ran into was there was a tremendous amount of fraud. in 1861, pennsylvania soldiers were allowed to vote in pennsylvania and virginia. and there was an immense amount of fraud. i found one regiment from philadelphia that cast a 900-vote majority on a candidate from philadelphia even though there were 100 men in the regiment in philadelphia. both republicans and democrats challenged the law in the

legislature and the state courts. by may of 1862, the supreme court had soldiers voting unconstitutional. but with so many millions of men away from home, many of them being qualified voters, the north began to realize, we've got to allow soldiers to vote. after all, they're fighting for the nation. how can we deprive them of the full rights of citizenship? so by the end of the war, you have 19 northern states that permit soldiers to vote. this is a tremendously important political innovation, and it sets the precedent for absentee balloting which becomes normal in the 20th century. and finally, the republican policy of permitting soldiers to vote had wide-ranging implications. if voting is based on service to one's country and 200,000 african-american men are fighting in the union armies, then surely they, too, deserve the right to vote. and i would submit to you today that the 14th and 15th amendments really become possible in large measure

because the precedent was set during the civil war that those serving their country also deserved the right to wield the ballot. so with that, thank you so much and i'm happy to entertain questions. [applause] i'm terrified, but michael, i'll let you go first. >> john, did you find any evidence that william e. chandler was authorized by lincoln to write a pamphlet about how the democrats had opposed soldier voting in the field? >> yeah, chandler published a pamphlet that laid out state-by-state all of the -- it was intended to show the republicans supported your right to vote and the democrats opposed it, and this was gratuitously circulated among the soldiers. and my sense is that chandler was commissioned -- or encouraged by the lincoln administration to write this pamphlet. what's interesting is that if

you look at the history of soldier voting legislation, it was bipartisanly opposed in 1861 after the pennsylvania elections. and if you look at newspapers in the wake of the election and then in the wake of the supreme court of pennsylvania striking down the law, both sides say, we can't allow soldiers to vote, they're not going to be free to think for themselves, and we -- you know, we can't afford to open up the ballot box to fraud. what ends up happening is -- and democrats then, in a few states, began to proposal loe allowing soldiers to vote, mainly in the midwest. then the election of 1862 comes around, and as you know, the republicans got trounsed in that election. they lost the

mid point of the war it becomes a republican issue. yeah? >> how does the voting actually operate. were officers in charge of voting, running the voting, or did states send registrars out to the units? >> great question. how did the voting actually operate? that varied from state to state. so, some states did absentee voting in the way we do it today. you fill out a ballot, put it in an envelope and mail it home. and the most famous state to do that is new york. in fact, now i've talked about some of the things on the republican side. the democrats were no, you

know -- they didn't all have their hands clean in the election of 1864. just north of here in baltimore, there were democratic state agents from new york who had been sent to baltimore to collect soldiers' ballots and then put them in envelopes and send them home en masse. the rationale is the ballots would actually be cast at home, so new york was able to pass this law. even though their constitution didn't allow absentee voting. there were two stated agents, democrats in baltimore. they were caught stuffing democratic ballots into soldiers' envelopes, making up names of soldiers and sending these home to be cast. incidentally, both of those were tried before a military tribunal and sentenced to, i think -- it's been a long -- it's been ten years since i've looked at this case, but i think they got ten years or life in prison for stuffing these ballot boxes. democrats came to the white house and protested and said, they've not violated any federal law. they violated the state law of new york that permitted absentee

balloting and tried to get it moved into a civil court, which didn't happen. agents were picked up in d.c. as well. they ended up getting acquitted by the military tribunal. that's how some of the states did it. you send state agents to go distribute ballots and then you mail them home. other states set up polls in the field. one of the first images i showed was pennsylvania soldiers voting in the field. that's the way pennsylvania law worked. they did the way elections were run at home. people would serve as poll watchers and poll officials to collect the ballot box -- or the ballots. they often had to improvise. they didn't have ballot boxes. for instance, the 28th pennsylvania volunteers used a cigar box to collect ballots. if you go to the pennsylvania state archives in harrisburg, pennsylvania, they still have a lot of these ballots. and you can tell the way they voted. all they did was they took pieces of paper, wrote for

mcclellan, for lincoln, ripped them up into squares and passed them out and the soldiers would walk down the company street to their officer's headquarters and cast their votes in some sort of makeshift ballot box. yeah? >> so, wasn't there some states where you had to go home? i read lincoln was encouraged to be liberal with the granting of leave. >> the governors of delaware and indiana. not all states permitted soldiers to vote. with the exception of massachusetts, they were all democratically-run states. those soldiers, if they were going to vote, they had to get home. if they were going to get home, they had to be granted a furlough. you had the governor of those states writing to lincoln.

they didn't want it to appear the lincoln vote based on the soldier vote. there were several somehow pennsylvania soldiers who could have voted in the field but stanton furloughed them for appearance's sake so their vote would count with the voters at home and then it would look like the home vote won the election, not the soldier vote. yeah? >> how do you know how the soldiers voted? >> great question. how do we know how the soldiers voted. for soldiers that voted by absentee ballot, like new york soldiers, we don't know because they were sent home, opened up by a friend or family member, they had an official legal document that authorized that person to then cast the ballot. then the ballot was cast as part of the home vote. for the soldiers who voted in the field, they kept tallies and then sent them to their secretaries of state. so, a lot of these records are still in existence at state archives. within the records of the secretary of state. and so, for instance, when i was an undergrad, penn state very

generously gave me $600 to spend a week as a senior in college at the pennsylvania state archives. and i went through all the poll books, or as many as i could in a week. and you can see how the soldiers voted in each company and from each location where they were voting. the other place that the records survive, some regiments kept a record. you know, a lot of soldiers wrote home and said, our regiment voted and it was this many for lincoln, this many more mcclellan, so they survive in correspondence. then newspaper reporters and even in the official records of the war of the rebellion, that big 128-volume set. it lists for some regiments how they voted. yeah, liv? >> can you tell us a little more about the mind set of republican soldiers. your evidence has suggested implicitly it's not just that soldiers were victims of pressure from on high but the soldiers were also exerting pressure on each other and forcing this, you know, notion there should be some added

incentives, if you will, to vote republican. so, for those republican soldiers who exerted pressure on behalf of voting for lincoln, what might have motivated them? why would they have felt it was justified to exert that kind of pressure? give us a sense of the states, the election -- >> sure. i think a lot of it for the sole deshgs especially for the republicans. again, there's no doubt there are some -- there are many republican soldiers who support emancipation and support lincoln through the whole election. i don't deny that. for a lot of them, it's for the sake of the war. it's for the sake of the union. they believe lincoln's the guy to win the war and that mcclellan's not going to be able to do it because of what they would often say, the company he kept. so, there's no doubt. there are tons of union soldiers who are ardent for lincoln throughout and ute use their influence writing letters to families, writing letters to nupdz and also doing other things. i found one guy who wrote a letter to his aunt and he said, i'm going to do everything i can for lincoln. he described a democrat coming

into distribute ballots and campaign literature. he describes in this letter to his aunt, everything that he did to scare this election commissioner away from the -- he said, we tolerated him as long as we could and then we got rid of him. you find some things where -- again, voter fraud is something that is just part of life in the 19th century, i think. and you find instances of republicans bragging they voted multiple times. professor webber mentioned earlier the election of 1863, when in october 1863 clement valanahan ran against bruff. i say historians misunderstood that because bruf was a war democrat. on the tickets the republicans chose a democrat to won. in that election i found soldiers who write home and they brag, i voted a number of ballots for bruf.

and that -- now, that's not going to explain why va lan ham won 90% of the vote. it wasn't all the soldiers. i should point out in that elections the voter turnout among soldiers was extraordinarily low. fewer than a third,fy recall correctly, of the ohio voters voted in that election. again, you might have some who sit? -t out because they don't like the candidates. yeah? >> i mean, i'm curious, why when they were fighting a war would so many not vote by voice? >> i think that -- i think in the 19th century -- today voter turnout is often low and it's because of apathy, at least that's my view. i think in the 19th century there was much -- much broader idea of, you can exercise your franchise by not voting. and for a lot of these soldiers, one of the phrases that comes up a lot in the letters is the lesser of two evils. you find these soldiers saying, you know, do i vote for the

abolitionist or the traitors? i got to vote for the lesser of two evils. but for many, i think that they had a serious idea of you exercise your franchise by not voting. if you really can't bring yourself to vote for either candidate, you choose not to vote. when you look at the election in the camps, never was it easier to -- to vote. i mean, i'm going to -- i'm going to make an embarrassing confession on national television here. so i live in virginia. and if you followed the polls before the election last week, it looked like it was not going to be a close election. and there's a lot of construction going on on my street. and the polling booth in my neighborhood is about 0.7 of a mile away. i knew it would be a huge pain to get there because of all the construction. and i had to take my daughter to day care and i just didn't feel like sitting in traffic for five minutes. and i almost didn't vote last week because i thought, it doesn't matter. it would be a pain. and i think that oftentimes people don't vote because, you know, it's inconvenient. and certainly in the 19th

century to vote in -- if you live in a rural area, you might have to travel some distance to be able to vote. in the elections in camp, you just had to walk 100 yards, at most, to vote, no-n most cases because you were in camp and the elections were held in the companies of each regiment. so you're not traveling far. so, i think that if soldiers are making a conscience decision not to vote, just based on how easy it would have been for them to vote. yeah? and don't hold that against me, by the way. i voted. dy my civic duty. >> new jersey, one of the states that did not allow soldiers to vote, i'm wondering was the margin of mcclellan's victory in new jersey so close, if soldiers had been allowed to vote, might it have changed the victory? >> i don't know. that's a very good question. i wish i could answer. i don't know what the margin was. we'll have to google that later. well, thank you so much. [ applause ]

>> you're watching american history tv. all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. sunday at 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. matt wasnewski use artifacts and photographs to trace the women of history in the house beginning with the election of janette rankin in 1917 and ending with the story of margaret chase smith. sunday at 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. eastern time here on c-span3. mechanics on american history tv, historian michael burlingame talks about the abolitionist support abraham lincoln. the more radical favored john c. fremont as republican candidate over lincoln until fremont withdrew from the race. this left the majority of abolitionists with no choice but to support