Mail-in ballots - a plot to deny Lincoln reelection in 1864

[David Lockmiller]

Mail-in ballots were part of a plot to deny Lincoln reelection in 1864, Washington Post, August 22, 2020

The judge advocate addressed the tribunal, saying that Donahue had engaged in one of the most gigantic frauds ever attempted in America — “a fraud which, if it shall be successful, will, in my opinion, have produced a disruption of our entire country, and our war for the preservation of the Union will be practically at an end and futile.”

In the months following Lincoln’s victory — he won 221 electoral votes to McClellan’s 21 — anti-abolitionist newspapers attacked his legitimacy, calling the trial another aspect of a conspiracy conducted by the president to ensure his reelection.

The commission that oversaw Ferry and Donahue’s trial recommended life in prison for the two men who sought to corrupt the election by mail. The president, who would soon be slain, approved.