Researchers Discover Original Abraham Lincoln Election Dispute Letter

Remarkable Letter Written by Lincoln on the Eve of 1864 Presidential Election Is Found in National Archives

[January 31, 2008]  COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- Should a wartime president interfere with the way a presidential election is being conducted, especially considering that his vice presidential running mate made the election rules and is requiring loyalty oaths from voters? In a remarkable letter recently discovered at the National Archives in College Park, Md., President Abraham Lincoln refuses to become involved in the dispute, explaining, "I decline to interfere in any way with any presidential election."

A researcher working for The Papers of Abraham Lincoln recently found the four-page letter, written by Abraham Lincoln on the eve of the 1864 presidential election. The document had been lying undisturbed in an unusual location in the National Archives facility. The Papers of Abraham Lincoln is currently searching National Archives records for documents written by or to Lincoln, and researcher A.J. Aiseirithe found the document while searching through the "Records Relating to International Claims" in the "Records of Boundary and Claims Commissions and Arbitrations."

"The discovery of such a significant letter in an obscure series of records underscores the importance of conducting a comprehensive search," said Daniel Stowell, editor of The Papers of Abraham Lincoln. "Our researchers target records that encompass the antebellum and Civil War periods and look at every piece of paper in order to identify letters and petitions written either by or to Abraham Lincoln."

"This document is extraordinary in many ways. As a busy wartime president, Lincoln rarely wrote letters longer than a page or two," said Rick Beard, director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, sponsor of The Papers of Abraham Lincoln. "He apparently felt so strongly about this issue that he not only wrote out an extended letter, but he also signed his full name, rather than the usual ‘A. Lincoln' which appears at the end of so many of his communications."

Dr. Paul Bergeron, the editor emeritus of the Andrew Johnson Papers and an authority on Tennessee history, sees the letter as "a fascinating document" from President Lincoln at a "remarkable and significant moment in the unfolding election drama in Tennessee and the nation." In this response to the Conservative Unionists from Tennessee, Bergeron recognizes Lincoln's "keen, even hard-nosed, political sense and his consistent loyalty to Andrew Johnson."

The letter, dated Oct. 22, 1864, was written in response to a protest by 10 Tennessee Unionists who were electors for Democratic candidate George B. McClellan. They protested Andrew Johnson's orders for conducting the presidential election in Tennessee, especially his decisions regarding how the election should be conducted and who was eligible to vote. They particularly opposed the "most unusual and impracticable" test oath required of voters. Johnson was both the Union candidate for vice president and the governor of Tennessee.

In his response, Lincoln denied any knowledge of the subject until the day before the protest was presented to him. Upon giving the subject "such brief consideration as I have been able to do in the midst of so many pressing public duties," Lincoln concluded, "I can have nothing to do with the matter, either to sustain the plan as the Convention and Governor Johnson have initiated it, or to revoke or modify it as you demand." The Constitution gave the president no duties regarding the presidential election in any state, and Lincoln saw "no military reason" to interfere. Lincoln saw no "menace of violence or coercion towards any one" in Johnson's plan.

Lincoln concluded that conducting a presidential election in the usual fashion was not possible in the current condition of the state during the height of the Civil War. Whether to count the electoral votes selected by the voters of Tennessee was a question for Congress, not the president. Lincoln signed his full name at the end of the letter.

A representative of the National Archives has reported that the newly discovered letter will be placed with other Lincoln documents in the Treasures Vault. A preservation copy of the document will replace the original in the "Records of Boundary and Claims Commissions."

The Papers of Abraham Lincoln is a long-term project dedicated to identifying, imaging, transcribing, annotating and publishing electronically all documents written by or to Abraham Lincoln during his entire lifetime (1809-1865). It is a project of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum and the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, co-sponsored by the University of Illinois at Springfield and the Abraham Lincoln Association. The project receives funding from state, federal and private sources.

[Text from Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum news release received from the Illinois Office of Communication and Information]