When Cecil Countians headed to polling places on Nov 8, 1864, to cast ballots in the presidential election, tensions were high. The country had suffered through three long years of brutal Civil War fighting and many people had grown tired of the continuing bloodshed.
On Election Day, people confronted a sobering decision as this lack of decisive progress had given rise to a war opposition group, Peace Democrats. Derisively known as Cooperheads, they wanted peace at any cost. This faction nominated George B. McClellan, former commander of the Army of the Potomac, to challenge the incumbent, President Abraham Lincoln.
As the conflict continued, faith in the sixteenth president declined as bitter political winds battered the nation. Consequently, many Republicans argued that the country should delay the election for four years until it was “tranquilized and restored to its normal condition.” However, the sixteenth president pushed ahead, refusing to suspend balloting.
Democrats complained that the president was trying to steal the election with his “bayonet vote” while also suppressing suffrage. They were referring to the fact that many soldiers were deployed on the frontlines, so Maryland joined other states in passing a law that allowed mail-in voting for the first time. 1
Moreover, Nevada became the 36th state days before the election because Congress thought it might give Lincoln an electoral edge. Statehood had been rushed as it ensured three electoral votes for the incumbent and added to the Republican congressional majorities. Nevada became a state just a week before the election because Congress thought it might give Lincoln an electoral edge.
On Election Day, Lincoln won the national race in a landslide. In Cecil, the president carried the county by winning 54-percent of the 3,278 votes cast2. That is except for Fair Hill, where officials tossed the votes out. In this district where the Peace Democrats had a stronghold, a chaotic scene occurred on that Tuesday, the Cecil Whig reported. As men showed up at the polling place, loyal Republican men challenged their registrations with the election judges, presenting evidence sufficient to cause officials to disenfranchise twenty or more men for disloyalty.”3
Things progressed reasonably despite the challenges in Fair Hill, with no more than a few curses and threats, being made until 2 o’clock. However, at that hour, David Scott came before the judges to challenge a Cooperhead’s loyalty, and while an official swore him, the crowd led by a fellow named Mackey forced open the door, the Whig reported. “Mackey seized the witness by the throat amid the yelling ‘at the abolitionist’ but in the melee, Scott slipped through their hand and escaped so they fell upon F. G. Parke.” Having no military force to protect them and the violent mob threatening the lives of the witnesses the Judges closed the polls and refused to proceed with the election.”4
Judge McCauley simply wrote in his diary that “there was a riot at Fair Hill polls and the election closed at 2 o’clock.5
When the officials counted the returns, the Cooperheads “found they had put their foot in it.” In place of submitting to law and allowing the judges to determine who were entitled to vote and who were not, they took the law into their own hands and broke up the election,” the Republican newspaper explained. “They would still have had a majority of more than a hundred if the Fair Hill Poll had they not caused the poll to prematurely close, and the county would have gone for McClellan.”
Before the Civil War, the Elkton newspaper dubbed the Fair Hill District the “Gibraltar of Democracy,” as Democrats controlled politics there. However, that changed during the Civil War as the Copperheads “took out letters of administration to settle up the affairs of that [Democratic] party and transfer its effect to Jeff Davis. Now the editor thought of Fair Hill as the South Carolina of Cecil County as the “success of the southern confederacy was intensely popular in the district.
The Cecil Democrats version of events was that the election judges gave an additional turn of the screw, rejecting many votes. If it had been a full and fair vote, McClellan would have had the majority of two to three hundred votes in Cecil County. The fourth district was not counted at all and the votes which had been polled up to 2 o’clock were thrown out. Moreover, across the county, over one hundred Democratic voters were rejected by the judges.6
Both Elkton newspapers agreed that but for the premature closing of the polls in the 4th district, a place where “Little Mac” was popular, the county would have given a majority to McClellan. In concluding its assessment of the Fair Hill situation, the Whig added “they preferred voting for Jeff Davis to any other man for our next president, but since they were not allowed to cast their ballots for jeff, they intended to bestow them upon Mac.
On Nov 9th after all the returns had been received, Cecil County diarist, Judge McCauley wrote that Lincoln had carried the nation with a large majority. an “indicator that the Union will be preserved and the rebellion put down.”7.
Endnotes- Nina Strochlic, “How Mail-in Voting Began on Civil War Battlefields,” National Geographic, August 14, 2020, |PAGE|, accessed October 20, 2020, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/08/how-mail-in-voting-began-on-civil-war-battlefields[↩]
- “Cecil County Official.” Cecl Whig, Nov. 12, 1864[↩]
- “The Battle of Fair Hill, The Great Copperhead Charge.” Cecil Whig, Nov. 12, 1864[↩]
- “The Battle of Fair Hill, The Great Copperhead Charge.” Cecil Whig, Nov. 12, 1864[↩]
- James McCauley. Diary, Nov. 8, 1864[↩]
- “Cecil County Election.” Cecil Democrat, Nov.12, 1864[↩]
- James McCauley, Diary, Nov. 9, 1864[↩]
I love your blog and have been sharing some of it to r/cecilcounty on reddit.
Thanks for finally writing about > Stealing an Election Was the Charge –
Window on Cecil County's Past < Liked it!