How the Civil War changed how we vote

When President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in the middle of the Civil War, he was not just changing the terms of peace, he was risking his own political future and forcing the nation to confront what its democracy really stood for. On this week’s episode, how the presidential election of 1864 changed the way we vote and who we are as a country. To access bonus episodes and listen to Throughline sponsor-free, subscribe to Throughline+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:27Speaker 01

  This is America in Pursuit, a limited run series from Throughline and NPR. I'm Ramtin Arablouei. Each week, we bring you stories about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the US that began 250 years ago this year. Today, we're going back to one of the most significant moments in US history, the Civil War, one of the bloodiest wars fought on American soil. At the heart of the war was the question of slavery and whether to abolish it. The Confederate South broke off from the Union because it wanted to keep slavery and the freedom to govern themselves. The Union in the North, led by President Abraham Lincoln, wanted to make slavery illegal and keep the United States together.

• 1:12Speaker 01

  A little less than two years into the bloody conflict, on January 1, 1863, President Lincoln made a bold proclamation.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  All persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  The Emancipation Proclamation was a major flex in federal power. Lincoln spells out new terms of peace. The fighting would only end when slavery ended. This was a risky move because the Union was gearing up for a presidential election, and not everyone in the Union agreed with Lincoln's hard-line views on abolition and how to fight the war.

• 1:59Speaker 03

  He's aware that by insisting on making emancipation a condition of peace negotiations with the Confederacy, he's giving political ammunition to the Democrats. The Democrats, the opposition, are saying, you're deliberately protracting the war to secure abolition. You could get peace if only you were prepared to think about reuniting the country on the Constitution as it once was, not on what you want it to be.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  So there was a lot at stake here.

• 2:30Speaker 03

  The election of 1864 is, in my view, the most significant election in American history, the most significant for democracy in American history.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  The election would take place in the middle of the war. It would test the young republic's ability to hold an election in times of duress and shape the outcome of the war.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  Today on the show, Rund and I bring you the story of how the 1864 election changed how we vote and who we are as a country. That's coming up after a quick break.

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• 4:53Speaker 03

  The war begins, I mean, secession is met by Lincoln's determination to hold the Union together to resolve the question of whether, as he put it, a constitutional republic, a democracy, a government of the people can or cannot maintain its integrity against its own internal foes.

• 5:14Speaker 03

  I'm Richard Carwadyne. I taught for a number of years in Oxford University. I'm the Rhodes Professor Emeritus of American History.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  After issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln briefly considers walking it back.

• 5:29Speaker 03

  He thinks of abandoning emancipation as a basis for peace. But, but, he decides it would be an ignominious surrender. He can't possibly yield on that. He said, and I quote, "It would be worse than losing the presidential contest."

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Lincoln doubles down on his ideals as he gears up for the 1864 presidential election, an election where...

• 5:56Speaker 03

  There are deep ideological and cultural divides.

• 6:02Speaker 03

  On the one side, you've got the Democratic Opposition, considering Lincoln and the administration and the federal army to be a tyrannical force, willing to crush individual freedom in a pursuit of reunion and an unnatural emancipationist racial order.

• 6:24Speaker 03

  On the other hand, you've got Lincoln and the National Union Party pledging themselves to seeing the war right through to its conclusion. They're offering a vision of a reunified nation no longer stained by slavery. The country would be, I suppose, true to the egalitarian principles of the Declaration of Independence. It would emerge from the war with a richer democracy.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Initially, things looked good for Lincoln and his party, the Republicans. They were winning on the battlefield, and the days of the Confederacy seemed numbered. They seemed to have the election in the bag. But as winter turned to spring, the Confederates began to push back hard, and the federal army faced some big losses.

• 7:09Speaker 03

  Things are looking so bleak, in fact. Lincoln's party chairman comes to Lincoln, he says, you know, you're going to lose Illinois, you're going to lose Indiana, you're going to lose Pennsylvania. These are key states, and if you lose those three states, then inevitably you're going to lose the election overall. Confederates, looking at this, were quite sure that the weariness of the war in the North would lead to the election of a new president who would be willing to sue for peace.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  And they hoped that the new president would be Democratic nominee, General George B. McClellan.

• 7:42Speaker 03

  Who was, of course, a very well-loved, professional soldier.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  McClellan had served under Lincoln, but as a candidate, his main position was that the war needed to end ASAP, and the Confederate states needed to be reunited with the Union. Emancipation be damned. In other words...

• 8:00Speaker 03

  There would be a dishonorable peace that would not see the end of slavery.

• 8:11Rund Abdelfatah?

  Meanwhile, heated political debates were happening in town squares on the home front and among soldiers on the war front. For many soldiers, abolition was the key issue in this election, whether they were for it or against it.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Most soldiers in the Union, or federal army, leaned Republican, which, remember, was Lincoln's anti-slavery party. And that was partly a reflection of where these soldiers came from. Many were from places where having a voice wasn't a given, and they came to the US hoping that right was guaranteed.

• 8:47Speaker 03

  When you look at the makeup of the federal armies, you'll see that there are significant numbers of immigrant troops, of troops that have been recruited indeed from Europe, certainly Irish and German troops, who understand that they have come to a country that offers something different. And if you allow their Confederacy to succeed, you are ending what Lincoln called the last best hope of earth, but it's what they understand to be the last best hope of earth, too.

• 9:19Rund Abdelfatah?

  The last best hope of Earth. That promise of freedom, of representation for all, which might chart a new path for the world.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  It's also important to note that nearly 10% of the federal army were black soldiers.

• 9:35Speaker 03

  I quote you a letter from a black soldier serving in the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry. He describes McClellan and the Democrats, and I quote, "As ever the chief instruments in giving aid and assistance"

• 9:47Speaker 06

  to the common enemy of the country. "Inaugurators of this bloody conflict on the rightful domains of freedom." Is this the people's candidate? McClellan? The secret advocate of dissension, disloyalty, treason, and the ardent lover of human slavery?

• 10:10Rund Abdelfatah?

  But here's the thing. Regardless of where soldiers fell politically, most of them shared one important thing in common. They couldn't vote.

• 10:22Speaker 03

  There's only one state in 1861, when the war starts, that has actually granted soldiers the right of voting in the field, of absentee voting.

• 10:34Speaker 03

  When you've got a million men in arms in the Union Army by the high point of the war, this is a huge proportion of the voting public that you're disfranchising unless you make special arrangements for them.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  As the war went on, pressure was building to give soldiers the right to vote.

• 10:51Speaker 03

  Those pressures come overwhelmingly from the Republicans.

• 10:56Rund Abdelfatah?

  Why them?

• 10:57Speaker 03

  Lincoln and the Republicans become aware of just what kind of loyalty they have within the federal forces.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  Which meant if they gave soldiers the vote, it would likely help them win the election. So Lincoln tried to make some special arrangements.

• 11:13Speaker 03

  He wrote to his generals, saying, "It would please me if you would allow the soldiers to return for the fall elections."

• 11:23Speaker 01

  But the reality was, most soldiers weren't going to be able to get furloughs to go home and vote. After all, it was the middle of a war, and there was only so much the federal government could do.

• 11:34Rund Abdelfatah?

  So, as always, it fell to the states to decide if and how those soldiers would vote.

• 11:43Speaker 03

  I mean, what had to happen was, of course, legal change, statutory change.

• 11:48Rund Abdelfatah?

  States began passing laws to give soldiers the vote. Some instituted absentee voting, which is still around today.

• 11:56Speaker 03

  You allow the soldiers in the camps to submit a ballot into ballot boxes that were taken to the camps by state election commissioners. And then on polling day, the soldiers deposit their tickets under the supervision of the commanding officer and the commissioners.

• 12:16Rund Abdelfatah?

  Other states instituted something called proxy voting.

• 12:20Speaker 03

  Where you allow someone that you designate to cast your vote for you in your home precinct.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  But it's easy to see how that might not go according to plan.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  An imposter could pretend to be the proxy. A commanding officer might intimidate soldiers into voting for a certain person or keep them from mailing their ballots. And the envelope marked "soldiers' vote"

• 12:43Speaker 03

  could easily be opened and a different ballot be submitted inside.

• 12:50Rund Abdelfatah?

  Thing is, even in states where soldiers could vote, questions hung over these new ways of voting and raised concerns about the legitimacy of the election.

• 13:00Speaker 03

  Both sides claim malpractice and fraud.

• 13:07Speaker 03

  You have Democrats claiming that the War Department is delaying the delivery of soldiers' votes back home, that where they're known to be McClellan votes, they are being held up by the War Department. Even claims that the ballots are being extensively altered by removing McClellan's votes from the envelopes and substituting Lincoln ballots, weighting the scales very powerfully in favor of the Republicans and the administration.

• 13:31Speaker 07

  The men who would vote the McClellan ticket were kept here and only A's men were sent to their states to vote. All of the McClellan men were kept here. I suppose I might have gotten home if I would have said I would vote for A, but never. I would sooner stay here for another year than to come home and vote for him.

• 13:52Speaker 03

  But the Republicans too could point legitimately to the arrest of several Democrats in Washington and Baltimore for forging McClellan ballots designed to swing the vote in New York State. So, you know, so both parties are at it. But it's the Republicans who are able to present themselves most powerfully and most convincingly to the army that they are the friends of the democratic rights of the soldiers.

• 14:18Speaker 07

  I cast the first vote I have ever cast for the election of Lincoln. In doing so, I felt that I was doing my country as much service as I have ever done on the field of battle.

• 14:30Rund Abdelfatah?

  November 8th, 1864, Election Day.

• 14:35Speaker 03

  The day itself passed off peacefully enough, but there is this strong sense of tension, a sense of high excitement, determination to be heard on the day, to stand up for your rights as voters regardless of what your commanding officers might want or regardless of what the other party's campaigners might want.

• 15:01Rund Abdelfatah?

  The votes were counted. Among the soldiers, Lincoln got three votes for every one McClellan got. Before long, it was clear that Lincoln had won the election.

• 15:13Speaker 03

  Yes, there's fraud, yes, there's manipulation, yes, there's partisanship, there's malpractice, but I think ultimately there was enough of authenticity and good practice in the absentee balloting in the war for the result itself not to have been a distortion.

• 15:32Rund Abdelfatah?

  A few days later, Lincoln addressed the nation.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  The present rebellion brought our republic to a severe test, and a presidential election occurring in regular course during the rebellion added not a little to the strain.

• 15:56Speaker 03

  I mean, he knew that the electoral process in wartime had its shortcomings, but what it showed was just how deeply embedded the idea of representative government had become in the United States over the years since the revolution.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  The election, along with its incidental and undesirable strife, has done good, too. It has demonstrated that a people's government can sustain a national election in the midst of a great civil war. Until now, it has not been known to the world that this was a possibility.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Amidst a bloody war, with all the messiness and drama that came with the election, democracy managed to preserve its most fundamental pillar: voting. Thousands of soldiers had voted for the first time. The 1864 election laid the groundwork for expanding voting rights.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  That's it for this week's episode of America in Pursuit. If you want to hear the full-length Throughline episode, check out How We Vote. And be sure to join us next Tuesday when we talk about what came after the Civil War and emancipation.

• 17:20Speaker 07

  What is going to happen to nearly 4 million African-Americans who had been enslaved in the South? Are they going to have basic rights, or are they not going to have basic rights?

• 17:33Speaker 01

  We'll bring you the story of the 14th Amendment and the debate over who is an American and what rights come with that. That's next time.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  This episode was produced by Kiana Moradam and edited by Christina Kim, with help from the Sulaiman Production Team. Music, as always, by me, Ramtin Arablouei, and my band, Drop Electric. Special thanks to Julie Kane, Irene Noguchi, Beth Donovan, Casey Miner, and Lindsay McKenna. We're your hosts, Ramtin Arablouei...

• 18:05Rund Abdelfatah?

  ...and Randa Abdel Fattah. Thank you for listening.

• 18:14Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Midi Health. Most women never get real answers about their hormone health. Midi is changing that. Built by women for women, Midi connects you with clinicians who specialize in hormone health with virtual care covered by most major insurance plans. Getting started is easy. Sign up with Midi and book your first visit with a clinician right away. Understand your hormones. Visit joinmidi.com to book your first visit. That's join M-I-D-I dot com.