Lincoln’s System of Controlling Elections

It was said that in early 1864 Lincoln feared for his reelection — in February Bremen diplomat Rudolf Schleiden mentioned in a dispatch to his country that Lincoln said to Judge Thomas, of Massachusetts, that he would be satisfied if his successor was elected from the Republican Party. If that did not take place the President feared that he would spend the rest of his life in jail for repeated violations of the Constitution.”
Bernhard Thuersam, www.Circa1865.com   The Great American Political Divide

Lincoln’s System of Controlling Elections

“After the presidential election of 1864 Lincoln wanted to contend that his plans [for reconstruction] and proceedings had received a mandate from the people. But the voters had had no opportunity to choose between the two Republican positions. After the Wade-Davis Manifesto, Davis – a malignant and ambitious man, said a Wisconsin paper – and a handful of anti-Lincoln Radicals met in convention and nominated John C. Fremont for the presidency on a completely Abolitionist-Radical platform.

The Fremont candidacy brought confusion and concern in the Lincoln camp [and might] throw the election to Democrat George B. McClellan [and the Radicals] recognized the necessity for a united front and deserted Fremont. The Union League clubs poured out Lincoln pamphlets and rallied to the President. Eventually Lincoln made a bargain with the Fremont supporters and the Radical candidate reluctantly withdrew from the contest.

The contest in 1864 was between Lincoln and McClellan . . . Perhaps, if the Democrats had nominated their ablest man, Horatio Seymour, the question of executive power and Lincoln’s rotten boroughs in the South might have been debated on the hustings.

Although the election of 1864 gave no decision on the methods of reconstruction, it proved again Lincoln’s power to control elections. The system of arbitrary arrests, military control of polling places, and soldier voting, first applied in the Border States and then extended into the North, had saved the Republican party in 1862 and 1863. The election of 1864 saw a new extension of the system and demonstrated its continuing value in winning elections.

In September, with the adjustment of thee Fremont aberration and with a successful new draft into the army going off without riot and disturbance . . . Then, in October came elections in Indiana and Pennsylvania, and it became evident that the system that had won in Ohio the year before was still useful.

In Indiana, Governor Oliver P. Morton, efficient and aggressive, was running for re-election. His adjutant-general harried the Democrats during the campaign; an agent-provocateur enrolled Democrats in a secret society and then turned the names over to Morton; and on the eve of the election Morton flamboyantly arrested a handful of ratty conspirators, whom he charged with treason.

[Morton] used the situation as an excuse for sending soldiers to the polls. Troops from Sherman’s army came home for the election and the Nineteenth Vermont, passing through, stopped long enough to vote for Morton.”

(Lincoln’s Plan of Reconstruction, William B. Hesseltine, Peter Smith, 1963, pp. 123-125)