The debates
are over. The political commercials are (thankfully) in their last runs. The
presidential campaign action now moves to GOTV - Get Out The Vote - and the
ground game to get supporters to the polls.
This year
the presidential campaigns - particularly the Obama campaign - have focused
substantial resources on a final GOTV push. But it pales when compared to another
son of Illinois’ GOTV in 1864.
Abraham
Lincoln was convinced he would not be re-elected. Ten weeks before Election Day
he asked his cabinet to sign the outside of a sealed document they were not
allowed to read. Inside the president had written, "This morning, as for
some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not
be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President
elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he
will have secured his election on such grounds that he can not possibly save it
afterwards."
The week
after Lincoln passed the paper around his cabinet meeting, the Democratic Party
nominated General George McClellan as their candidate for president. "The
People are wild for peace," New York's powerful Thurlow Weed had
previously written Secretary of State William Seward, adding, "I told Mr.
Lincoln that his re-election was an impossibility."
The
president who described himself as, "more of a politician than anything
else," responded with proven political tactics. Winning elections was
about getting your supporters to the polls. Abraham Lincoln believed his
support resided in the men who were bearing arms to preserve the Union. It was
difficult for many of those soldiers to vote, however. In 1864 only 17 states
had changed their procedures to allow soldiers to cast absentee ballots from
the field. In five states - Indiana, Illinois, Delaware, New Jersey, and Oregon
- soldiers could only vote in person at home.
Thus,
Lincoln wrote General William Tecumseh Sherman, "The State election of
Indiana occurs on the 11th of October, and the loss of it to the friends of the
government would go far towards losing the whole Union cause. The bad effect
upon the November [federal] election, and especially the giving the State Government
to those who will oppose the war in every possible way, are too much to
risk...Indiana is the only important state whose soldiers cannot vote in the
field. Any thing you can safely do to let soldiers, or any part of them, go
home and vote at the State election, will be greatly in point."
Although Lincoln’s
request of Sherman specifically stated that the furloughed soldiers "need
not remain for the Presidential election [the following month]," Indiana
governor Oliver Morton wired the president the day after the state election
(and the governor's reelection), "I most earnestly ask that their
furloughs be extended by a special order until after the Presidential
Election." The president wired Gov. Morton in response that he had
specifically told Sherman those furloughed did not have to remain for the
November election. "I therefore can not press the General on this
point." Then, having established the record of being good to his word,
Lincoln deftly opened the door to granting the governor's wish: "All that
the Sec. of War and Gen. Sherman feel they can safely do, I however, shall be
glad of."
Governor
Morton seized upon the opening. In a telegram to the president and secretary of
war he observed, "It is my opinion that the vote of every soldier in
Indiana will be required to carry this state for Mr. Lincoln in November."
There were similar exchanges from other governors.
It was not, however, just a matter
of non-absentee states that concerned Abraham Lincoln. Thirteen of the 17
states that allowed voting from the field segregated those votes from the
"home vote" at local polls. The president worried about the impact on
the credibility of an election delivered by the vote of men under his command.
Therefore, his administration worked to furlough soldiers in key electoral
states so they could return home to cast their vote as a "home vote"
rather than an "army vote."
The result of this effort was
illustrated by General George Thomas's order, a week before the election:
"By direction of the honorable Secretary of War you will grant furloughs
to the 15th instant to all enlisted men belonging to regiments from the
following States, who are in hospitals or otherwise unfit for field duty:
Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Connecticut, and
Massachusetts...Transportation to be ordered to and from their homes." All
told, thousands of soldiers were furloughed to return home to vote in
battleground states.
Lincoln's GOTV worked. The president
carried 55 percent of the popular vote and all but three states. In the
hindsight of history Lincoln probably would have won without this extraordinary
effort. Making history in real time, however, provides no such hindsight
opportunity. On November 6, 2012 the presidential campaigns will be practicing just
what Abraham Lincoln did in November of 1864, delivering votes to the polls.
_____
This is adapted from my book "Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails: The Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War (HarperCollins 2006)
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