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cscmc1 · #17 10-24-2008, 04:22 PM

Canvassing the troops, Pt. 8

Like the War Department, members of Congress also played an integral part in the canvassing of the troops. In response to a worried Republican who feared that many soldiers would not be able to vote, the Union Executive Congressional Committee for the Presidential Campaign of 1864--a body consisting of seven prominent Republican U.S. senators and congressmen--confidently responded that "we have attended to the necessity of soldiers voting." (81) Republicans in the federal government, in time of electoral crisis, believed that it was their responsibility to make sure that citizens and soldiers would be able to vote in the state and national elections. This federal intervention in 1864 was not a new idea, however. Some politicians had, in fact, supported an increased federal role in state elections since the early months of the war.

As early as October 1862 a few Republicans believed that the national government should aid the states in collecting votes from the field. Several prominent Minnesota Republicans wrote to Lincoln prior to the off-year elections fearing that if "our volunteers are not permitted to vote two semi-secessionists will be elected to Congress and a legislature elected that will send some man of similar proclivities next winter to the Senate." To remedy the situation, they wanted to send commissioners to canvass Minnesota soldiers and needed the commander-in-chief to ensure that their mission would be a success. (82)

After the Republican party lost many seats throughout the North in 1862, some Republican politicians began contemplating a larger federal presence in elections. U.S. Representative Thaddeus Stevens believed that "Congress can authorize" soldiers to vote in federal elections, establish residence of soldiers "wherever they are," and regulate "the mode" of elections. Even further, after Pennsylvania soldiers had not been allowed to vote in 1862, Stevens believed that Congress "could pass an act allowing those who have not voted at this election to vote and be counted in the canvass." Federal tampering with the election even to this extraordinary extent, he supposed, "would be constitutional," though he doubted it would be "politic." (83) Another Republican congressman who lost his seat in 1862 wondered if Congress could pass a law fixing a day when soldiers from all states could vote. (84) This last proposition was almost as unprecedented as Stevens' ex post facto-voting scheme. At the time of the Civil War the states determined their own election calendars, with the exception of the presidential election. Such a congressional intrusion into the timing of elections most likely would have been perceived by many Americans as unwarranted.

Because it was improbable that Congress could enact the kind of laws that these Republicans desired, it was up to the state assemblies to pass appropriate legislation that would allow soldiers to vote. (85) This was in keeping with the traditional view of political rights--suffrage was a privilege that men possessed by virtue of being state citizens. Nevertheless, by 1864 the Republican administration in Washington was willing to broaden the government's conventional role in elections when it came to canvassing the troops. Immediate political circumstances compelled Republicans to increase the responsibility of the federal government and caused Democrats to look to their party leaders in New York. Although these changes were probably never intended to be permanent, the expanded role of the federal government is significant because it demonstrates the lengths to which politicians were willing to go in order to win an election, even in the midst of a civil war. As the need to procure the army vote became evident to politicians of both parties, the need to bring the individual, state-centered political rights of soldiers under some sort of national control became apparent. Many Republicans believed that soldiers deserved to vote by virtue of their service in the Union army, not merely as a protection or extension of their state-conferred rights. Thus, it followed that the War Department should have jurisdiction over any problems that arose out of soldiers voting--which is exactly what happened in the case of the New York state agents who were arrested in Baltimore and Washington. (86) The right of suffrage did not become a federally sanctioned entitlement as a result of soldiers voting during the Civil War. Yet in the arrests and trials of the state agents, as well as the process of canvassing the soldiers in the field, the states conceded--or were forced to concede--part of their jurisdiction over a traditionally state-centered right.