The 1864 Union Soldier Vote
1
Voting as communication
When we consider the history of the vote in the United States, the gradual
expansion of suffrage comes to mind. Alexander Keyssar, in his comprehensive history,
argues that the move toward universal suffrage was shot through with racial and
economic tensions and subject to several significant reverses.
Although change in the
legal definition of who might become a voter is a compelling historical topic, the matter
of technological changes in the delivery or presentation of the vote has received less
attention. Michael Schudson has argued that the act of voting reflects historically specific
cultural understandings about citizenship; for example, the progressive reforms of the
early twentieth century expressed changes in the relationship of the individual to the
While Schudson has taken a long view, I address balloting and citizenship during a
specific historical moment marked by rapid changes in communication and transportation
technologies. During the United States Civil War, from 1861 to 1865, Northern partisans
fought over the role of Union soldiers in state and federal elections. Lincoln’s supporters
and his political opponents wrangled over whether and how the soldier could assert his
partisan identity under military service to the federal government. In this essay, I engage
the distinction between “ritual” and “transmission” views of voting to clarify the poles of
the debate over soldier voting and, in turn, establish an empirical starting point for
thinking more broadly about enduring tensions between notions of “public space” and
“public sphere” in communication theory. Soldier voting serves as a case study of the
rhetorical, administrative, and technical means by which the “public” is disengaged from
the physical limitations of the people comprising it. McPherson has argued that the Civil
War marked a turning point in the struggle between ideals of ethnic and civic nationalism
1
Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The contested history of democracy in the United States. New
York: Basic Books, 2000.
2
Michael Schudson, The Good Citizen: A history of American civic life, New York: Free Press, 1998
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