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"How free ballot is protected!" An 1864 editorial cartoon accusing Republicans of voter fraud.
flipFlip to General George B. McClellan, by Christian Schussele, 1862.
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The artist charges the Republicans with electoral corruption and extremism in their efforts to defeat Democratic presidential nominee George B. McClellan. Oblique reference is also made to Lincoln's supposed advocacy of equal rights for blacks. A ragged black soldier points a bayonet at a maimed white Union veteran, preventing him from placing his vote for McClellan in an already stuffed ballot box. The former says, "Hallo dar! you cant put in dat you copperhead traitor, nor any oder 'cept for Massa Lincoln!!" McClellan ran on the Peace Democrat or Copperhead ticket. The one-legged, one-armed soldier replies, "I am an American citizen and did not think I had fought and bled for this. Alas my country!" A worried election worker wearing spectacles tells his heavy-set colleague, "Im afraid we shall have trouble if that soldier is not allowed to vote." But the second responds, "Gammon, Hem just turn round. you must pretend you see nothing of the kind going on, and keep on counting your votes." Two townsmen converse in the background beneath a sign "Vote Here."

Credit: Library of Congress

During the Civil War, soldiers" votes in Pennsylvania were critical in the Congressional elections of 1862 and the presidential election of 1864. In this anti-Republican editorial cartoon from 1864 a Republican election worker tells another to "turn around" as he rejects a vote for Democratic presidential candidate George B. McClellan from a Union officer, who has lost an eye, arm, and leg in service to his country. On the left, an African American soldier, caricatured as a whiskey drinking thug, tells the officer, "You cant put in dat you Copperhead traitor, nor any oder ‘cept for Massa Lincoln." The soldier replies, "I am an American citizen and did not think I had fought and bled for this. Alas my country!"

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