Emancipation, the Union Military, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln (Conflicting Worlds: New Dimensions of the American Civil Warfare)

The Union military’s overwhelming vote for Abraham Lincoln within the 1864 presidential election has led many Civil Warfare students to conclude that the troopers supported the Republican Occasion and its effort to abolish slavery. In Emancipation, the Union Military, and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln, Jonathan W. White challenges this reigning paradigm in Civil Warfare historiography, arguing that the military vote is just not a dependable index of ideological motivation or political sentiment. Though 78 % of troopers forged ballots for Lincoln, White contends that this was not due wholly to a political or social conversion to the Republican Occasion. Moderately, he cites beforehand ignored mitigating components comparable to voter turnout, intimidation on the polls, and troopers’ selections in different elections that very same yr.

Whereas recognizing that many within the army modified their views on slavery and emancipation through the struggle, White suggests {that a} appreciable variety of troopers who voted for Lincoln nonetheless rejected the Republican platform or disagreed together with his views on slavery. For them, like many northerners, a vote for the Democratic ticket was thought-about to be treasonous and an admission of defeat. Utilizing beforehand untapped court-martial data from the Nationwide Archives, in addition to manuscript collections from throughout the nation, White convincingly revises many generally held assumptions concerning the Civil Warfare period and offers a deeper understanding of the Union military.