{"id":813,"date":"2024-10-22T14:03:56","date_gmt":"2024-10-22T14:03:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-american\/?page_id=813"},"modified":"2024-10-22T14:11:55","modified_gmt":"2024-10-22T14:11:55","slug":"when-lincoln-faced-rigged-elections","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-american\/essays\/when-lincoln-faced-rigged-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"When Lincoln Faced Rigged Elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

This op-ed by Matthew Pinsker appeared in the New York Daily News on September 29, 2020.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Abraham Lincoln was one Republican who always worried about Democrats stealing elections.\u00a0 \u201cI now have a high degree of confidence that we shall succeed,\u201d he wrote in 1858, \u201cif we are not over-run with fraudulent votes to a greater extent than usual.\u201d\u00a0 Put that sentiment in all caps, and it might well come straight out of President Trump\u2019s twitter feed.\u00a0 But the stark difference between these two political leaders lies in how they handled such threats.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Lincoln expressed his cynicism in private at the end of his Illinois senatorial campaign against Stephen A. Douglas, just after they had concluded their famous debates.\u00a0 It was part of an urgent warning directed at the Republican state party chairman<\/a>.\u00a0 While campaigning in the western region of the state, Lincoln had encountered surprising numbers of Irish immigrant railroad workers or what he sardonically called \u201cCeltic gentlemen\u201d who appeared to have been sent down from Chicago as part of a Democratic scheme to flood doubtful districts with fraudulent voters.\u00a0 Lincoln even surveilled some of these men, following them into local \u201cdoggeries\u201d or saloons, seeking to figure out exactly where they were headed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This was a particular problem because the rules for senatorial contests in those days were different.\u00a0 State legislatures, not the general public, selected US senators so any campaigns for senate resembled an Electoral College, where certain doubtful or swing districts meant all the difference in the outcome.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The nervous Republican candidate wanted his state party to take immediate action.\u00a0 He even offered what he termed \u201ca bare suggestion\u201d about hiring a \u201cdetective\u201d who might \u201cat the nick of time, control their votes.\u201d\u00a0 Historians have long debated exactly what Honest Abe might have meant by this suspicious-sounding proposition.\u00a0 But regardless, the party leadership ignored Lincoln\u2019s bare-knuckled advice and instead issued bland instructions about the necessity of poll watching.\u00a0 \u00a0Sure enough, the Republicans lost nearly all of the central and western swing districts and thus the election.\u00a0 Lincoln never became a U.S. senator.\u00a0 But he did not despair.\u00a0 \u201cThe fight must go on,\u201d he told party activists.\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cThe cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered at the end of one, <\/em>or even one hundred <\/em>defeats,\u201d he assured a supporter.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That kind of resilience and faith in the democratic process was characteristic of Lincoln.\u00a0 But so was his ongoing paranoia about nefarious Democratic election rigging.\u00a0 Two years later, after Lincoln won the presidency in November 1860 (with only a plurality of the popular vote), he still worried about cheating.\u00a0 He warned his advisors in January 1861 that the \u201cmost dangerous point\u201d for the Republicans would actually occur when Congress was supposed to assemble for the official electoral count.\u00a0 \u201cIf the two Houses refuse to meet at all, or meet without a quorum of each, where shall we be?\u201d he asked sternly.\u00a0 I don\u2019t believe that Lincoln ever met Mitch McConnell, but he certainly seems to have anticipated figures with such devious parliamentary talent.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Of course, Lincoln did get successfully inaugurated in March 1861.\u00a0 But nearly an entire section of the country refused to accept his election and waged war to undo it.\u00a0 The country then suffered through four years of hell, losing what in today\u2019s terms would be the equivalent of about 7.5 million men.\u00a0 Naturally, such a long, terrifying war frustrated Northerners.\u00a0 Lincoln was re-nominated by his party, but there was a period of grave doubt late in the summer of 1864 when morale just seemed to collapse.\u00a0 Some Republicans conspired to dump Lincoln from the national ticket and even his closest advisors were warning him that his reelection appeared to be \u201can impossibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That was the moment when the president drafted a now-famous secret memo<\/a> promising that if he lost in November he would \u201cco-operate\u201d with the incoming president even before the March\u00a0 inauguration because he believed there was no other way \u201cto save the Union.\u201d\u00a0 This was a document Lincoln intended to show his Democratic opponent after the election in order to convince him that he was serious about securing a peaceful transfer of power.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Fortunately, it was something he never had to face.\u00a0 Two and a half months later, after he had won the contest and filed away that memo, Lincoln explained how he had persevered. \u201cWe cannot have free government without elections,\u201d he said simply<\/a>.\u00a0 American democracy has never been easy and our greatest leaders, like Lincoln, have never been pure.\u00a0 But regardless of the strain, they have managed to keep faith in \u201cgovernment of the people, by the people, for the people.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

President Trump has clearly not kept this faith.\u00a0 It is not enough anymore for Republicans to shrug their shoulders or roll their eyes at such heresy.\u00a0 At this moment of grave doubt, they must stand with Lincoln\u2019s legacy and speak with one voice.\u00a0\u00a0 Only then will Trump listen.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t follow norms, or embrace American civic values, but he will always bow before his base \u2013a Republican base that owes far more to Abraham Lincoln than to him.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Matthew Pinsker holds the Pohanka Chair for Civil War History and directs the <\/em>House Divided Project<\/em><\/a> at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This op-ed by Matthew Pinsker appeared in the New York Daily News on September 29, 2020.   Abraham Lincoln was one Republican who always worried about Democrats stealing elections.\u00a0 \u201cI now have a high degree of confidence that we shall…<\/p>\n

Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":373,"featured_media":0,"parent":178,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-813","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-american\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-american\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-american\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-american\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/373"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-american\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-american\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/813\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-american\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-american\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}