The Briefing Room

General Category => Science, Technology and Knowledge => History => Topic started by: mystery-ak on August 25, 2020, 12:24:12 am

Title: Mail-in ballots were part of a plot to deny Lincoln reelection in 1864
Post by: mystery-ak on August 25, 2020, 12:24:12 am

By Dustin Waters
August 22, 2020 at 6:00 a.m. CDT

Traveling to Baltimore in the fall of 1864, Orville Wood had no way of knowing he would soon uncover the most elaborate election conspiracy in America’s brief history.

Wood was a merchant from Clinton County in the most northeastern corner of New York. As a supporter of President Abraham Lincoln, he was tasked with visiting troops from his hometown to “look after the local ticket.”

New York legislators had only established the state’s mail-in voting system in April with the intent of ensuring the suffrage of White troops battling the Confederate Army.

The results of the 1864 elections would heavily affect the outcome of the war. Lincoln and his supporters in the National Union Party sought to continue the war and defeat the Confederacy outright. Meanwhile antiwar Democrats, also referred to as Copperheads, looked for an immediate compromise with the Confederate leaders and the end of the abolition movement.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/08/22/mail-in-voting-civil-war-election-conspiracy-lincoln/ (https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/08/22/mail-in-voting-civil-war-election-conspiracy-lincoln/)