Debate over Civil War Soldier Voting in California’s Partisan Press, 1863–1864

Abstract

California’s fall 1863 elections marked the first time the state attempted any sort of untraditional voting. Republicans asserted that Civil War circumstances necessitated extending suffrage to soldiers stationed away from home, but Democrats posited that absentee voting violated the state constitution and opened the door for fraud. This paper examines how California’s Republican and Democratic newspapers debated the issue from the state’s first official proposal for a solider suffrage law in January 1863 until December 1864, just after the presidential election. This research aims to answer the following questions: What arguments did the California partisan press use for and against soldier voting? And what do those arguments reveal about party newspapers in the state during the Civil War? The study not only provides insights into the nature of California’s Civil War press but also provides historical context for more recent elections in which absentee balloting was controversial.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 David A. Collins, “Absentee Soldier Voting in Civil War Law and Politics” (Ph.D. dissertation, Wayne State University, 2014); Donald S. Inbody, The Soldier Vote: War, Politics, and the Ballot in America (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 18–27.

2 Collins, “Absentee Soldier Voting,” 2, 4; Inbody, The Soldier Vote, 3.

3 Inbody, The Soldier Vote, 3–5.

4 Inbody, The Soldier Vote, 4–5; John C. Fortier, Absentee and Early Voting: Trends, Promises, and Perils (Washington, DC: The AEI Press, 2006), 6–7.

5 Jonathan W. White, “Citizens and Soldiers: Party Competition in Pennsylvania over Permitting Soldiers to Vote, 1861–1864,” American Nineteenth Century History 5, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 65.

6 Jennifer Ruth Horner, “Blood and Ballots: Military Voting and Political Communication in the Union Army during the United States Civil War, 1861–1865” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2006), 1–2.

7 T. Harry Williams, “Voters in Blue: The Citizen Soldiers of the Civil War,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 31, no. 2 (September 1944): 187–204.

8 Horner, “Blood and Ballots,” 1. See also Collins, “Absentee Soldier Voting,” 3.

9 White, “Citizens and Soldiers,” 50–5.

10 Oscar Osburn Winther, “The Soldier Vote in the Election of 1864,” New York History 25, no. 4 (October 1944): 450–2. See further explanation of the New York controversy and its implications in Johnathan W. White, “Canvassing the Troops: The Federal Government and the Soldiers’ Right to Vote,” Civil War History 50, no. 3 (2004): 291–317.

11 Collins, “Absentee Soldier Voting,” 19–20.

12 Arnold Shankman, “Soldier Votes and Clement L. Vallandingham in the 1863 Ohio Gubernatorial Election,” Ohio History Journal 82 (Spring 1973): 88–104.

13 Inbody, The Soldier Vote, 13–28; Fortier, Absentee and Early Voting, 6–7; Collins, “Absentee Soldier Voting.” According to Inbody, seven Confederate states also passed soldier voting measures, most of them before or soon after officially seceding; Inbody, The Soldier Vote, 15–18.

14 Collins, “Absentee Soldier Voting,” 27.

15 White, “Canvassing the Troops,” 293.

16 See Lynwood G. Downs, “The Soldier Vote and Minnesota Politics, 1862–65,” Minnesota History 26, no. 3 (September 1945): 187–210; Frank Klement, “The Soldier Vote in Wisconsin during the Civil War,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 28, no. 1 (September 1944), 37–47; Samuel T. McSeveney, “Re-electing Lincoln: The Union Party Campaign and the Military Vote in Connecticut,” Civil War History 32, no. 2 (June 1986): 139–58; Samuel T. McSeveney, “Winning the Vote for Connecticut Soldiers in the Field, 1862–1864,” Connecticut History 26 (1985): 115–24; Shankman, “Soldier Votes and Clement L. Vallandingham”; Walter N. Ternerry, “Votes for Minnesota’s Civil War Soldiers,” Minnesota History 36, no. 5 (March 1959): 167–72; White, “Canvassing the Troops”; White, “Citizens and Soldiers”; and Jonathan W. White, “Supporting the Troops: Soldiers’ Right to Vote in Civil War Pennsylvania,” Pennsylvania Heritage (Winter 2006): 16–24.

17 The most thorough treatment has been Collins’s dissertation, in which he compares the California soldier acts and ensuing challenges to those of the other Union states from a law and policy perspective; see Collins, “Absentee Soldier Voting.” Collins’s work does not address the political debates surrounding California’s voting laws.

18 Robert J. Chandler, “Fighting Words: Censoring Civil War Journalism in California,” California Territorial Quarterly 51 (Fall 2002): 5.

19 Gerald Stanley, “Civil War Politics in California,” Southern California Quarterly 64, no. 2 (July 1982): 118.

20 Leo P. Kirby, “Union Loyalty of California’s Civil War Governors,” California Historical Society Quarterly 44, no. 4 (December 1965): 316; Stanley, “Civil War Politics in California,” 118–19.

21 Stanley, “Civil War Politics in California,” 119.

22 Kirby, “Union Loyalty of California’s Civil War Governors,” 318; Stanley, “Civil War Politics in California,” 120–4.

23 Charles H. Coleman, “The Use of the Term ‘Copperhead’ During the Civil War,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 25, no. 2 (September 1938): 263–4.

24 Kirby, “Union Loyalty of California’s Civil War Governors,” 319; Stanley, “Civil War Politics in California,” 124.

25 Kirby, “Union Loyalty of California’s Civil War Governors,” 317.

26 Stanley, “Civil War Politics in California,” 125–7.

27 Helen B. Walters, “Confederates in Southern California,” Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly 35, no. 1 (March 1953): 43.

28 Walters, “Confederates in Southern California,” 44.

29 Imogene Spaulding, “The Attitude of California to the Civil War,” Annual Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California 9, 1/2 (1912–1913): 104–5.

30 Walters, “Confederates in Southern California,” 48–53.

31 Spaulding, “The Attitude of California to the Civil War,” 116–17; Walters, “Confederates in Southern California,” 46, 51.

32 Chandler, “Fighting Words,” 4.

33 Hazel Dicken-Garcia, Journalistic Standards in Nineteenth-Century America (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 97.

34 Dicken-Garcia, Journalistic Standards, 97; Si Sheppard, The Partisan Press: A History of Media Bias in the United States (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2008).

35 Chandler, “Fighting Words,” 5; Kirby, “Union Loyalty of California’s Civil War Governors,” 314.

36 Chandler, “Fighting Words,” 4–17.

37 Spaulding, “The Attitude of California to the Civil War,” 115–16. For a thorough discussion of newspaper suppression in the state, see Robert J. Chandler, “Crushing Dissent: The Pacific Coast Tests Lincoln’s Policy of Suppression, 1862,” Civil War History 30, no. 3 (September 1984): 235–54.

38 James Miller Guinn, History of California and an Extended History of Los Angeles and Evirons, vol. 1 (Los Angeles: Historic Record Company, 1915), 410–11.

39 Newspapers usually used soldier/soldiers voting or the soldier vote to refer to the issue, but occasionally they substituted suffrage or franchise (and the related enfranchise/disenfranchise) for voting rights; volunteer was the most frequent synonym used for soldier. The author used all of these terms in various combinations for searching.

40 Dicken-Garcia, Journalistic Standards in Nineteenth-Century America, 19.

41 Kirby, “Union Loyalty of California’s Civil War Governors,” 311.

42 Leland Stanford, “Message from the Governor to Gentlemen of the Senate and Assembly,” January 7, 1863, in Journal of the Senate of the State of California (Sacramento, CA: State Printing Office, 1863), 35.

43 “The Soldier Vote Frauds,” Placer Herald (Auburn, CA), January 24, 1863.

44 “Soldiers’ Votes,” California Republican (Sacramento, CA), March 13, 1863, reprinted in Los Angeles Star, March 28, 1863. This editorial also was quoted in part in “Soldiers Voting,” Daily Bee (Sacramento, CA), August 8, 1863.

45 William Ladd Willis, History of Sacramento County, California (Los Angeles, CA: Historic Record Company, 1913), 159.

46 Willis, History of Sacramento, 159; Chandler, “Fighting Words,” 9–10.

47 Chandler, “Fighting Words,” 15. Brown went on to become a prominent citizen and mayor of Seattle in the 1870s; Knute Berger, “The Untold Story of Seattle’s Racist Mayor,” Crosscut, August 12, 2015, https://crosscut.com/2015/08/the-untold-story-of-seattles-racist-mayor.

48 “Soldiers’ Votes,” California Republican (Sacramento, CA), March 13, 1863, reprinted in Los Angeles Star, March 28, 1863.

49 “Votes,” Daily Bee (Sacramento, CA), January 20, 1863.

50 Willis, History of Sacramento County, 151–9.

51 “Soldiers to Vote,” Daily Bee (Sacramento, CA), January 21, 1863.

52 “Message of Gov. Seymour of New York, in favor of allowing Solders to Vote,” Placer Herald (Auburn, CA), June 6, 1863.

53 Los Angeles Star, February 7, 1863.

54 John W. Robinson, “A California Copperhead: Henry Hamilton and the Los Angeles Star,” Arizona and the West 23, no. 3 (Autumn 1981): 213.

55 Robinson, “A California Copperhead.”

56 Los Angeles Star, February 7, 1863.

57 “Soldiers’ Votes,” California Republican (Sacramento, CA), March 13, 1863, reprinted in Los Angeles Star, March 28, 1863. California had a large Chinese population, but the white residents considered them inferior and unworthy of civil rights; see Sudhanshu Bhandari, “Discrimination and Perseverance amongst the Chinese in California in the Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth Centuries,” China Report 47, no. 1 (2011): 1–24.

58 Robert J. Chandler, “The California News-Telegraph Monopoly, 1860–1870,” Southern California Quarterly 58, no. 4 (Winter 1976): 461; for a detailed explanation of the San Francisco vigilance committee and their development of the People’s Party, see Robert M. Senkewicz, “Religion and Non-Partisan Politics in Gold Rush San Francisco,” Southern California Quarterly 61, no. 4 (Winter 1979): 351–78.

59 H., “Our Legislative Correspondence,” Daily Alta California (San Francisco), January. 25, 1863. Chandler labeled the Alta California as independent but noted the newspaper became more Unionist after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter; see Chandler, “Fighting Words,” 6.

60 “The Soldiers’ Vote,” Daily Bee (Sacramento, CA), August 24, 1863.

61 “Unconstitutional,” Daily Bee (Sacramento, CA), March 18, 1863.

62 Warren Thornton, “History of the Appeal-Democrat, 1860–1976,” Sutter County Historical Society News Bulletin XV, no. 2 (April 1976): 8–31. Later the California State Printer under Governor Stanford, Avery entered the California newspaper business as editor of the anti-slavery North San Juan Hydraulic Press, which he traded for the Daily Appeal; Ernest R. May, “Benjamin Parke Avery: Including a Review of the Office of State Printer, 1860–1872,” California Historical Society Quarterly 30, no. 2 (June 1951): 125–49.

63 See Daily California Express (Marysville, CA), March 30, 1863.

64 “Our New Start,” Daily Appeal (Marysville, CA), October 29, 1861, and “To the Readers of the Appeal,” Daily Appeal, November 17, 1863. For an example of endorsements, see Daily Appeal, August 14, 1863, in which the Republican slates for state and county offices are labeled as the “Union Ticket.”

65 “The Votes of the Soldiers,” Daily Appeal (Marysville, CA), March 18, 1863.

66 “The Votes,” Daily Appeal.

67 “The Soldiers’ Vote,” Daily Alta California (San Francisco), September 4, 1863.

68 Folsom Telegraph, quoted in “Soldiers’ Votes,” Daily Bee (Sacramento, CA), July 28, 1863 (emphasis in original).

69 An Act in Addition to an Act Entitled an Act to Regulate Elections, Chap. CCCLV, 1863 Cal. Stat. 549–53.

70 Act to Regulate Elections, 549.

71 Act to Regulate Elections, 552.

72 “Important Election,” Daily Bee (Sacramento, CA), August 13, 1863.

73 “Important Election,” Daily Bee.

74 “The Democracy Triumphant,” Los Angeles Star, August 22, 1863.

75 See “The Vote” and “Vote of the State,” Los Angeles Tri-Weekly News, September 30, 1863; Los Angeles Tri-Weekly News, October 9, 1863, and December 16, 1863; “The Soldier’s Vote,” Daily Appeal (Marysville, CA), October 3, 1863; Daily Appeal, October 27, 1863; “Low’s Majority,” Daily Bee (Sacramento, CA), September 5, 1863; “The Soldiers’ Vote,” Daily Bee, October 1, 1863; “The Soldiers’ Vote,” Daily Alta California (San Francisco), September 4, 1863.

76 “The Soldiers’ Vote,” Daily Bee (Sacramento, CA), September 3, 1863.

77 “Secesh” was short for Secessionist. “Union Vote,” Los Angeles Tri-Weekly News, September 21, 1863. See also “Soldiers’ Votes,” Daily Bee (Sacramento, CA), September 22, 1863; “The Soldiers’ Vote,” Daily Appeal (Marysville, CA), October 15, 1863.

78 “The Vote,” Daily Appeal (Marysville, CA), October 24, 1863; Daily Appeal, November 7, 1863.

79 “The Vote for County Officers,” Daily Bee (Sacramento, CA), November 5, 1863.

80 “Soldiers’ Votes,” Daily Bee (Sacramento, CA), October 8, 1863.

81 California Republican, May 16, 1863, and June 20, 1863, both quoted in “Soldiers Voting,” Daily Bee (Sacramento, CA), August 8, 1863.

82 White, “Canvassing the Troops,” 301–2.

83 “Fraud Upon the Ballot Box,” California Republican, re-printed in Placer Herald (Auburn, CA), August 8, 1863.

84 “Fraud Upon the Ballot Box,” California Republican, re-printed in Placer Herald, August 8, 1863.

85 “The Soldier’s Vote,” Daily California Express (Marysville, CA), September 11, 1863.

86 Robert J. Chandler, “California’s 1863 Loyalty Oaths: Another Look,” Arizona and the West 21, no. 3 (Autumn 1979): 225–6.

87 Shasta Courier, August 11, 1860; “Lantham’s Resignation—Appointments by the Governor,” Daily Alta California (San Francisco), January 14, 1860. Chandler mentions the Colusa Sun as Democratic paper; “California’s 1863 Loyalty Oaths,” 221. According to several Colusa historical sites, Smith founded the Colusa paper in January 1862; see, for example, http://genealogytrails.com/cal/colusa/history1.html. See also “Charles Rufus Street,” https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/43537875/charles-rufus-street.

88 “Additional Political Intelligence,” Sacramento Daily Union, July 13, 1857; “The Next Legislature,” Trinity Journal (Weaverville, CA), January 2, 1858; “Democratic Doctrine,” Red Bluff Independent, May 15, 1863; “Democratic State Central Committee,” Los Angeles Star, May 30, 1863.

89 “A Trifling Subject,” Daily California Express (Marysville, CA), August 26, 1863; “Jesse O. Goodwin and his Secession Letter,” Weekly Colusa (CA) Sun, August 22, 1863.

90 “The Soldier’s Vote,” Daily California Express (Marysville, CA), September 11, 1863.

91 “The Soldiers Vote,” Daily California Express (Marysville, CA), September 8, 1863; “The Soldier’s Vote,” Daily California Express, September 11, 1863.

92 Daily Bee, September 11, 1863; “About Soldiers’ Votes,” Daily Bee (Sacramento, CA), November 27, 1863.

93 Guinn, A History of California, 410–11. For more on Alonzo Waite, who later started the first newspaper in nearby Downey, California, see https://www.thedowneypatriot.com/articles/looking-back-on-downey-newspapers.

94 “Election Returns” and untitled item, Los Angeles Tri-Weekly News, September 21, 1863.

95 “Election Returns,” Daily California Express (Marysville, CA), September 11, 1863.

96 “Wiser Than the Law,” Daily Bee (Sacramento, CA) August 10, 1863; also see William W. Freehling, Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816–1836 (New York: Harper & Row, 1966).

97 Daily Appeal (Marysville, CA), November 11, 1863; “Ran Away,” Daily Bee (Sacramento, CA), December 12, 1863.

98 “About Soldiers’ Votes,” Sacramento Bee, November 27, 1863; “Important Decision,” Daily Appeal (Marysville, CA), December 1, 1863.

99 “The Vote,” Daily Appeal (Marysville, CA), October 24, 1863.

100 Bourland v. Hildreth, 26 Cal. 161 (1864).

101 Bourland v. Hildreth.

102 Bourland v. Hildreth.

103 Bourland v. Hildreth.

104 Bourland v. Hildreth.

105 “Democratic Victory,” Placer Herald (Auburn, CA), February 20, 1864.

106 Obituary for Tabb Mitchell, Placer Weekly Argus (Auburn, CA), February 15, 1879.

107 “Democratic Victory,” Placer Herald (Auburn, CA), February 20, 1864.

108 “Declared Unconstitutional,” Sacramento Union, February 8, 1864.

109 “Shall Our Soldiers Be Wholly Disenfranchised?” Daily Bee (Sacramento, CA), February 16, 1864.

110 “Unconstitutional,” Daily Bee (Sacramento, CA), February 8, 1864.

111 “Our Judiciary,” San Jose Mercury, February 25, 1864.

112 “The Soldier Vote Unconstitutional,” Placer Herald (Auburn, CA), February 13, 1864.

113 “The Right of Soldiers to Vote,” Daily California Express (Marysville, CA), February 10, 1864.

114 “A Righteous Judgment,” Los Angeles Star, February 20, 1864.

115 Napa Echo, quoted in “Copperhead Slather,” Daily Appeal (Marysville, CA), February 17, 1864, and in “Copperheads on the Decision,” Los Angeles Tri-Weekly News, March 7, 1864.

116 “The Late Decision,” Daily Appeal (Marysville, CA), February 10, 1864. For more on Smith taking the helm of the Appeal, see “To the Readers of the Appeal,” Daily Appeal (Marysville, CA), November 17, 1863, and “Passing of A.S. Smith,” Daily Appeal (Marysville, CA), January 21, 1905.

117 “Passing of A.S. Smith.”

118 “The Law Unconstitutional,” Daily Appeal (Marysville, CA), February 9, 1864.

119 “Shall Our Soldiers Be Wholly Disenfranchised?” Daily Bee (Sacramento, CA), February 16, 1864.

120 “The Soldier Vote in California,” Daily Alta California (San Francisco), October 12, 1864.

121 T.H.M., “Letter from the Californian Battalion, Serving with the Army of the Potomac,” Daily Alta California (San Francisco), March 22, 1864 (emphasis in original).

122 “Shall Our Soldiers Be Wholly Disenfranchised?” Daily Bee (Sacramento, CA), February 16, 1864. See also “Condition of the State,” Daily Bee, October 26, 1863, and “About Soldiers’ Votes,” Daily Bee (Sacramento, CA), November 12, 1863.

123 “A New Soldier’s Bill,” Daily Appeal (Marysville, CA), February 14, 1864. See also “The Soldiers to Vote,” Daily Appeal, March 17, 1864.

124 An Act to Provide for the Support of the Privilege of Free Suffrage during the Continuance of the War, Chap. CCLXXII, 1864 Cal Stat. 279.

125 Support of the Privilege of Free Suffrage, 279.

126 “The Soldier Vote in California,” Daily Alta California (San Francisco), October 12, 1864. See also “The Decision,” Daily Appeal, October 12, 1864, and “Soldiers’ Vote,” Daily Bee (Sacramento, CA), October 13, 1864.

127 Mariposa Free Press, quoted in Daily California Express (Marysville, CA), February 25, 1864.

128 “The Soldiers Vote—The Supreme Court Set at Defiance,” Daily California Express (Marysville, CA), February 17, 1864.

129 Colusa Sun, quoted in the Daily Appeal (Marysville, CA), May 11, 1864.

130 “Soldiers’ Vote,” Daily Bee (Sacramento, CA), July 30, 1864.

131 “The Soldier Vote in California,” Daily Alta California (San Francisco), October 12, 1864.

132 Kirby, “Union Loyalty of California’s Civil War Governors,” 313; Walters, “Confederates in Southern California,” 43.

133 “The Vote for County Offices,” Daily Bee (Marysville, CA), November 5, 1863.

134 “Election Returns,” Placer Herald (Auburn, CA), December 3, 1864.

135 Winther, “Soldier Vote in the Election of 1864,” 457. New Hampshire was just below California with 2,756; Vermont had the fewest soldier votes with 292.

136 “Vote of the State,” Daily Bee (Sacramento, CA), November 21, 1864; “Vote of the State,” Daily Appeal (Marysville, CA), December 9, 1864; “The Vote of California,” Placer Herald (Auburn, CA), November 26, 1864; “Election Returns,” Placer Herald (Auburn, CA), December 3, 1864.

137 Jeffrey B. Rutenbeck, “Editorial Perception of Newspaper Independence and the Presidential Campaign of 1872: An Ideological Turning Point for American Journalism,” Journalism History 17, nos. 1/2 (Spring/Summer 1990): 13–22.

138 Senkewicz, “Religion and Non-Partisan Politics in Gold Rush San Francisco,” 375.

139 “A New Volume of the Appeal,” Daily Appeal (Marysville, CA), January 1, 1862.

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Notes on contributors

Erika J. Pribanic-Smith

Erika Pribanic-Smith is an associate professor at University of Texas Arlington. Executive director and former president of American Journalism Historians Association and former chair of the AEJMC History Division, Pribanic-Smith specializes in research on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century partisan and dissident journalism.