The 1864 Union Soldier Vote
2
Tentatively, I suggest that soldier voting provides a forum for
thinking through one possible condition for civic nationalism: the transfer of the
electorate from public space to public sphere through a process of re-imagining the nature
of the vote as a communicative act.
What is a vote? First, the vote is a decision made by the citizen, and the ballot is
the vehicle by which this particular fact reaches the state. In this sense, voting is simply
the transmission of a piece of information: its significance lies in its content or message
rather than the form it takes. In its second role, the act of voting fulfills what James
Carey has called a ritual function. The circulation of information amongst a group
articulates the common ground upon which the group continues to cohere.
transmission perspective, the electoral apparatus serves as a conduit for the transfer of
information from the voter to the public at large. From a ritual perspective, the process of
voting enacts a public by ritually engaging its members and bringing them into
relationship to one another. Elsewhere, Carey wrote that the early American public,
despite its “fatal imperfections,” was “not a fiction or abstraction.” Rather, the “public”
was comprised of a specific group of people in a particular social formation.
words, the public was composed of corporeal bodies in sensory proximity to one another.
Daniel Dayan adds, “Publics can belong in the public sphere and in a public space.
Crowds are to be found in public spaces only. Is there a difference? Yes. A public
sphere involves a circulation of discourses. A public space involves a circulation of
bodies.”
At the core of the absentee voting debates lay a question whose answer we
3
James McPherson, “Was blood thicker than water? Ethnic and civic nationalism in the American Civil
War.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 143 (1): 102-108.
4
James Carey Communication as Culture: Essays on media and society. New York: Routledge, 1992.
5
James Carey, “The Press, Public Opinion, and Public Discourse.” In James Carey: A Critical Reader.
Eds. Eve Stryker Munson and Catherine A. Warren. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
228-260, quote on 236.
6
Daniel Dayan, “Mothers, midwives, and abortionists: Genealogy, obstetrics, audiences, and publics.”
Audiences and Publics: When cultural engagement matters for the public sphere. Ed. Sonia Livingstone.
Convention