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RE-ELECTING LINCOLN: THE UNION PARTY CAMPAIGN AND THE MILITARY VOTE IN CONNECTICUT SamuelT. McSeveney A NUMBEROF IMPRESSIVE STUDIES have enriched our understanding ofthe wartime presidential election of 1864, in which President Abraham Lincoln defeated General George B. McClellan, the Democratic party nominee . Lincoln, who had captured die presidency in 1860 as a Republican, won four years later as the candidate of the National Union party, which had been created during the Civil War to attract the support ofsympathetic Democrats and others who would find it difficult to vote Republican. For the most part, scholars have approached this presidential contest from the perspective ofthe opposing parties' national leadership.1 This is understandable , particularly with regard to the Union party of 1864. The Civil War had enlarged both the size ofthe national government and the scope of its activities, and had mobilized die nation's manpower and resources in support of die war effort, diereby providing increased, and in some respects unprecedented, opportunities for Republicans to involve federal officeholders, contractors, and military forces in political contests. The changing military backdrop against which politics was played out further contributes to this national focus on the Lincoln-McClellan race. The initial failures of Federal armies during 1864 appeared to threaten the Republican-Unionist cause, indeed, the North's war effort; later Federal military successes fairly assured the success ofboth. All the same, preoccupation with national political and governmental leaders and bodies risks neglecting an important dimension of mid-nine1 On the presidential campaign and election of1864, see William Frank Zornow, Lincoln ù the Party Divided (Norman: Univ. ofOklahoma Press, 1954); Harold M. Hyman, "Election of 1864," in History ofAmerican Presidential Elections, ed. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (New York: Chelsea Home Publishers, 1971), 2:1155-1244; Joel H. Silbey, A Respectable Minority: The Democratic Party in the Civil War Era, 1860-1868 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), 118-57; and James A. Rawley, Turning Points of the Civil War (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1966), 169-204. Civil War History, Vol. XXXII, No. 2, ©1986 by The Kent State University Press 140CIVIL WAR HISTORY teenth-century American politics. During that era and beyond, political parties relied on state and local party organizations to generate support for their national candidates. Analysis of the activities of the leaders of the Union party in a Northern state during the political campaign of1864 offers an opportunity to examine them under the intense pressure of wartime circumstances. Connecticut lends itself to such a case study: it ranked among the more closely contested Northern states in wartime elections; the diligence ofJames G. Batterson, chairman ofthe Union State Central Committee, extended to his preserving campaign correspondence and related materials.2 Political, no less than military, campaigns require resources and planning , and during late July 1864, fully three and one-halfmonths before the presidential election, Connecticut's Union State Central Committee met in New Haven to gird for the contest. (The rival parties would not have to concern themselves with lesser autumnal races in Connecticut, which held gubernatorial, state legislative, and congressional elections during die spring.) The committee determined campaign assessments for a broad range of state, county and federal officeholders, both elected and appointed. Governor William A. Buckingham was assessed one thousand dollars, other state elective officers from one to two hundred dollars. The state printer, railroad and bank commissioners, clerks of county courts, and sheriffs, among odiers, were tapped for contributions offrom twentyfive to one hundred dollars. Connecticut Republicans serving in the United States Senate and House of Representatives were to donate one hundred dollars each, and Secretary ofthe Navy Gideon Welles, a native of the state, five hundred dollars. United States collectors of internal revenue , assessors, and provost marshals were to be assessed varying amounts and instructed ' to dun their subordinates. Postmasters and collectors of ports were to contribute on sliding scales. Lesser port personnel, even the lowly keeper ofthe buoy at New London, could not escape the net cast by the state committee.3 Federal officeholders in Connecticut and elsewhere were subject to assessment not only by their state committees, but by the 2 John Niven, Connecticut for the Union: The Role of the State in the Civä War...

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