HOW AMERICAN SOLDIERS VOTED LAST TIME
Hesseltine, William B.
How American Soldiers Voted Last Time By WILLIAM B. HESSELTINE YoU are taking part," shouted Chairman Robert Hannegan to the New Dealers, ward heelers, Hagueites, Bourbons, and Communists...
...Though he was a civilian, he was tried by court martial and sentenced to life imprisonment...
...In Indiana, the election officials did not bother to check a soldier voter's qualifications...
...Their leader, too, is so cognizant of his significance in history that he has already donated and dedicated a historical library to his own memory...
...Among the Democrats was a middle western agrarian group which opposed a war for the benefit of Eastern industry...
...Internal quarrels between these factions were more significant than the campaign between the two parties...
...The Republicans—or "Unionists"—had no more unity...
...The "radical" wing—which supported a splinter movement until Lincoln made concessions to bring them back into line—wanted the war prolonged until the South was completely crushed, its "criminal" leaders hanged, and its economic system ruined...
...Commenting on that case, the Democratic New York World sarcastically remarked: "Soldier votes were 'needed' to • secure the adoption of it, and they were cooked un-^ aa exactly sufficient amount...
...In 1941, some sample packages, now housed in the Ohio State Arche-ological and Historical Museum, were opened and counted...
...iime Criterion At the beginning of the Civil War, the Administration showed little interest in letting the soldiers vote...
...Not all the soldiers' votes in 1864 were cast in the field...
...They know from ex-liffFRjnce how easily it can be kept under control...
...The issues between the parties were certainly not clear cut...
...But most of the opposition minded soldiers had had to copy, with pencils, the official list of electors—in proper order, with places of residence, and rightly spelled—on sheets of writing paper...
...Then the Republicans took care that Democratic newspapers did not circulate among the troops...
...The election in some of the doubtful states may depend upon the count of the soldier vote, and it is even conceivable that the final outcome of the 1944 election will not be known until a couple of slow-moving states count their soldiers' votes in December...
...Allan Pinkerton, chief detective for the War Department, reassured a nervous friend with the promise that the attempt to get soldiers to vote for McClellan wouldn't be allowed to get beyond control...
...That year the Republicans renamed themselves the "Union" Party in hopes of capturing the votes of Democrats who supported the Civil War...
...Our job," Chairman Hannegan instructed the Democrats in Chicago, ". . . is to work for as big a soldier vote as we can get...
...How American Soldiers Voted Last Time By WILLIAM B. HESSELTINE YoU are taking part," shouted Chairman Robert Hannegan to the New Dealers, ward heelers, Hagueites, Bourbons, and Communists assembled in Chicago "in the first wartime convention of the Democratic Party since 1864...
...One of New York's Democratic commissioners spent election day in Washington's Old Capitol Prison...
...To this charge the Indiana Gazette, an ardent "Union" journal, replied that "it is better that half a dozen Massachusetts regiments should vote, than that the state should fall into the hands of the opponents of the Administration...
...The votes-were overwhelming for Lincoln—far more, in fact, than Ohio's official count of 80 per cent...
...But the Democrats were as eager to save the union as the Republicans: they nominated Gen...
...Democrats complained that their commissioners were entangled in red tape...
...Each party, in 1864, furnished its voters with an "official" party ballot containing the names of its candidates and the Presidential electors...
...The elections of 1862 demonstrated the need for such action...
...They hoped, too, to smear the Democrats as a "disunion" party whose victory would warm the ice-bound heart of that arch-fiend, Jefferson Davis...
...Republicans, on the other hand, had no trouble...
...Partisan "reports" from the radical Committee on the Conduct of the War, filled with Administration propaganda, circulated by hundreds of thousands in the Army...
...The "Union" Party votes were all on the official ballots...
...The Republicans promptly capitalized on the situation...
...Lincoln was safely decfed anyway, and the tired election clerks had apparently assigned certain arbitrary figures to the soldiers in the field...
...Some "moderate" men followed Lincoln in a desire to get the war over with and peace restored on a decent basis...
...But few officers would undertake such an unpopular task...
...Most of the early volunteers in the Union armies—like most of the voters in 1860—were Democrats, and an overwhelming majority of Army officers were Democratic politicians...
...In fact, the election of 1864, in long historical perspective, was not especially important...
...Perhaps the reason neither Democrats nor Republicans in 1944 showed any interest in reviving memories of 1864 was that neither had too good a record...
...The states named their commissioners, and the Republicans got the passes...
...In that year, the Democrats won the New York governorship, gained control of several state legislatures, and increased their Congressional delegation...
...The ballots were counted, threaded on strings, wrapped in bundles, and shipped to the proper state election officials...
...They began a many-sided campaign to win the soldiers...
...The official returns gave Lincoln 116,887 and McClellan 33,74$ votes from soldiers in the field...
...One soldier wrote that the "60th Massachusetts regiment cast about 6000 votes for Gov...
...The Administration watched the soldiers carefully...
...In both these wartime elections the politicians had to give attention to the soldier...
...It was rather that neither party could find verj mcG^poiftlcal capital by raking the aahew0f that distant conflict...
...It was perhaps not strange that, with this remark, neither the Democrats or Republicans made any further reference to the 1864 campaign during their conventions...
...But official McClellan ballots were hard to get...
...Ohio soldiers voted in Indiana, and a trainload of Michigan soldiers, passing through the state on election day, stopped at various places to vote...
...Before 1864, 14 states made provision for letting soldiers.LVOta-4...
...In the campaign, the Republicans charged the Democrats with being defeatists and near-traitors, and the Democrats accused Lincoln and his party with incompetence and with prolonging the war for partisan purposes...
...In 1863 soldiers in the field had reversed tba ftu^k ian vote for Wiscsssin^ Chief "justice, and in 1864 they tretermined the outcome in several Wisconsin county elections...
...McClellan, a Democrat, had political ambitions, that he was popular with the soldiers, and that Democrats were smugly expecting to elect him President in 1864...
...The Administration failed to support him with men and supplies, and when his campaign failed a Congressional committee denounced him as incompetent and the War Department removed him from command...
...A mutual agreement to respect each other's family skeletons was probably the best policy...
...They were, they said, the true friends of the soldiers...
...What the ancient ballots did reveal, however, was the difficulty a McClellan voter had to undergo to exercise the suffrage...
...The most important result of the soldiers' voting was in Maryland where the civilians defeated a new constitution and the army vote adopted it...
...Almost instinctively the Administration cohorts knew what to do in the situation...
...First, they launched a "smear campaign" to discredit the Democratic general...
...In an Army of nearly a million, only a little over 150,000 cast ballots...
...In some of the states, however, the soldier vote might have saved the Administration party...
...Un&sf-the circumstances, the manner in which .t»§ 1864 administration worked for a big §Q]d>ir vote may prove instructive...
...Their campaign workers traveled freely through the camps, and one indefatigable worker reported that he had £is^iDuted nearly a million documents to soldier*- xrom Maine to Louisiana...
...Those were the official returns...
...Actually, few soldiers voted...
...He had tried to get through the lines without a pass...
...The Democrats are highly conscious of history: their convention oratory was so full of historical reminiscence that it seemed, at times, they were running Woodrow Wilson against Herbert Hoover...
...A few soldiers had managed to obtain the proper "tickets...
...Before long, too, it became apparent that only "right minded" men were being promoted...
...Some who did were promptly removed by the War Department...
...In states whe*e Dfinsw-fratg controlled the legislature—notably Indiana and Illinois—the bills giving votes to soldiers did not pass...
...Does anyone think that the Administration is going to allow the state of Indiana to fall into the hands of its enemies at a time like this...
...Pennsylvania soldiers also got election furloughs, and it was understood that anyone who got a furlough had promised to vote for Lincoln...
...It merely proved, they said again, that the Democrats were rebels at heart, fully in sympathy with thft beasts who followed isff-Bavfs...
...Although it had no influence in the national campaign, in some places the soldiers' vote upset local contests...
...In preparation for the 1864 election, the Republicans began to demand that the states pass soldier voting laws...
...A few years ago, some of the original packages of soldier votes were found in the capitol building of Ohio...
...It was not, of course, due to ignorance...
...Then the Democratic ranks contained politicians from particularly malodorous city "rings," a number of Wall Street operators, and a considerable body of the old liberal element which had once voted for Jackson...
...Pinkerton On Guard Under the laws, each party was to have equal rights of access to the soldiers...
...Moreover, both the leader and his cohorts have made a slogan out of an 1864 remark about changing horses in the middle of the stream...
...The...
...Perhaps, in the light of th^ro64 experience, it is not surprising that 1944'- Republicans are not very enthusiastic *»*jUt the soldier vote...
...Nor was it ignorance of history that kept Republicans silent about 1864...
...What the actual count might have been will never be known...
...Sherman lost so many soldiers to the polling places that he complained of a conspiracy "to break up the army until the election is over...
...They had never, it was evident from the creases in the paper wrappers, been opened since they were wrapped in the Army camps...
...Very early in the war it became evident that Gen...
...The Adjutant general's office issued rules for the canvass- -^ach state central committee might designate one agent for each army corps who would be given a pass to the camps...
...George B. McClellan on a platform which declared the war a "failure" and they promised to win the war and save the union quicker and better than the Republicans...
...The Democrats immediately . began to seek Army officers who would distribute campaign literature in the camps...
...Morton last Tuesday...
...These were the '^Cggnerheads" who were roundly denounced tig alleged rebel sympathies...
...It was remarkable that so many soldiers took the trouble to vote for McClellan...
...tRe field...
...One overzealous Democratic commissioner was charged with substituting McClellan ballots for Lincoln votes in soldiers' envelopes...
...Those Family Skeletons Obviously, neither party in 1864 had a monopoly on political virtue...
...One feature of the 1864 campaign, however, holds some interest in 1944...
...Both were composed of discordant elements held together in unstable balance...
...The counters in could only guess that the election o#ftlals in 1864 had never bothereito tsiiy the ballots...
...Election Furloughs The sample count revealed nothing...
...In Indiana and Illinois many of the soldiers came home to vote...
...Others had cut their ballots from newspapers...
...Political orthodoxy rather than military merit became the prime criterion for advancement, and ambitious officers vied with one another in proclaiming their allegiance to the Republicans...
...On election day the soldiers voted under the supervision of their regimental and brigade officers...
...Rusty needles still held the cotton thread upon which the yellowed ballots of the Union armies had been strung...
Vol. 8 • October 1944 • No. 42
