With President Trump’s illness disrupting his campaigning and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic afflicting Americans across the country, some commentators have wondered whether the 2020 election should be postponed. But the election of 1864 and President Abraham Lincoln’s insistence that it be held, even amid civil war, provides a resounding answer: No. Indeed, Lincoln believed that holding a fair election under even the most challenging circumstances was needed if self-government was to survive.
From the very beginning of the Civil War, Lincoln insisted that he was willing to fight to ensure the survival of republican government. “Our popular Government has often been called an experiment,” he told Congress in a special message on July 4, 1861. It was now for the American people “to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets.” Once ballots had “fairly and constitutionally decided” a contest, resorting to anything “except to ballots themselves at succeeding elections” could not stand. This, Lincoln wrote, “will be a great lesson of peace, teaching men that what they can not take by an election neither can they take it by a war.”
Lincoln had long believed that government by consent was worth sacrificing for. He would later immortalize his ideas at Gettysburg when he said that the Civil War was being waged so “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Ironically, his appeal to the bullet between 1861 and 1865 was an attempt to maintain the ability of the American people to appeal to the ballot.
For four long, bloody years, Lincoln waged a military conflict against the Confederates to the South while simultaneously fighting a political war against Democrats in the North. Indeed, month after month, and year after year, the Northern states held elections just as if they were in peacetime. According to historian Mark E. Neely Jr.: “The Civil War lasted 48 months, and in at least half of those months major elections occurred in the North. On average, then, the North witnessed a major election every other month of the war.”
To be sure, these elections were not always “free and fair.” In some instances, Union soldiers interfered with civilian election officials to control the outcome of the election; in other cases, party operatives (of both parties) participated in fraud and coercion, or changed the rules by which elections were held. Leading Democratic politicians and newspaper editors could even find themselves jailed for “disloyalty.”
Democrats decried the tactics of the Lincoln administration, but they were generally powerless to do anything about it. In November 1863, for example, Democrats in Delaware protested the presence of federal troops at their polling places by refusing to vote in a special congressional election. Most Democrats stayed home on Election Day — in fact, only 13 Democratic votes were counted! They allegedly hoped that the election would be considered void, but the House of Representatives accepted the result and the Republican candidate claimed his seat in Washington.
In the lead-up to the presidential election of 1864, some Democrats predicted that Lincoln would refuse to relinquish power even if he lost. A Cincinnati editor wrote privately that the Republicans “will proclaim themselves in power during the war. … I believe that Lincoln will not give up the idea of accomplishing the great idea of the war, though he may be compelled to resort to the levy en masse,” or national conscription. Others made similar charges publicly in the pages of Democratic newspapers.
In response to these sorts of accusations, Lincoln insisted that he had no intention “to ruin the government.” In October 1864, he explained to a group of visitors at the White House: “I am struggling to maintain government, not to overthrow it. I am struggling especially to prevent others from overthrowing it.” Lincoln was firm that “whoever shall be constitutionally elected therefor in November, shall be duly installed as President on the fourth of March; and that in the interval I shall do my utmost that whoever is to hold the helm for the next voyage, shall start with the best possible chance to save the ship.”
Lincoln explained that turning over the levers of power to the rightful winner was “due to the people both on principle, and under the constitution. Their will, constitutionally expressed, is the ultimate law for all. If they should deliberately resolve to have immediate peace even at the loss of their country, and their liberty, I know not the power or the right to resist them.” Whatever the voters decided on Election Day, Lincoln said, “I am resolved to stand by them.”
Lincoln’s private writings and conversations affirmed his intention to relinquish power if the election went against him. On Aug. 19, 1864, Lincoln met with Frederick Douglass to discuss ways to free as many enslaved people as possible before he was out of office. Four days later, on Aug. 23, he wrote a private memorandum that pledged his administration to work with the Democratic president-elect to win the war and restore the Union should he lose in November. “This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be reelected,” he wrote. “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 ground that he can not possibly save it afterwards.” Lincoln sealed this document and then had each of his Cabinet members sign it (they did not know what they were signing). He was essentially pledging them to work with their opponent after the election was over for the good of the country.
Fortunately, the war took a turn for the better in September and October 1864 and Lincoln sailed to victory. Nov. 8, 1864, stands out as one of the most remarkable days in American history. Never before — nor since — had the nation held a presidential election in the midst of a terrible civil war. And on that day, Lincoln was vindicated. In the electoral college, he won 212 votes to 21 for the Democratic candidate, George B. McClellan.
Lincoln never wavered in holding the election. In fact, he believed that holding the election was a “necessity.” After all, he was fighting to prove to the world that ordinary people could maintain the rule of law and govern themselves as a free people. Two nights after the election, on Nov. 10, a large gathering of people met outside of the White House to serenade him. “We can not have free government without elections,” Lincoln told the crowd, “and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.” He then urged the audience, “Let us, therefore, study the incidents of this, as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be revenged.”
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of that November evening was that African Americans made up one-third of the audience outside the White House. One Washingtonian remarked that Lincoln “can be proud of the fact” that so many “colored men” came out to congratulate him. Black men may not have been able to vote in most states that year, but they recognized the significance of holding the election. It offered the hope of greater equality in the future.
With his firm insistence that Americans vote, Lincoln established the principle that no circumstances could justify failing to hold a regularly scheduled presidential election. Crucially, this commitment included adjusting the means of election to include absentee voting, an important electoral innovation that gained broad usage for the first time during the Civil War.