Voter fraud and the Lincoln-Douglas debates

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Abraham Lincoln, electorate, George McClellan, Illinois, Illinois Central Railroad, Lincoln-Douglas debates, Stephen Douglas, voters, voting, voting fraud

As it does today, the idea that people will vote when they have no right to — and thus, potentially, misdirect the will of the people — shadowed the 1858 election for U.S. Senator in Illinois, the one that produced the iconic Lincoln-Douglas debates.

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Abraham Lincoln and his Republican cohorts feared the collusion of two forces, the railroads and

A 1958 postage stamp commemorating the Lincoln-Douglas debatesd the Irish.

Their fears had some merit.

The Illinois Central Railroad Company had been the recipient of political favors from Sen. Stephen Douglas, who had sponsored legislation that funded railroads through publicly held land. The Illinois Central would certainly want to protect its advantage by supporting his campaign for re-election.

Lincoln and the Republicans feared that support would take a nefarious form.

According to Allen Guelzo, author of Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America, Lincoln and the Republicans envisioned the Illinois Central “sending road gangs of Irish Catholics down the line, dropping them off in strategic districts days or weeks before the election to perform grading and repairs, and to turn up on Election Day to vote as though they were permanent residents.” (208-209) Lincoln himself said as much, without naming the Irish, in one of this speeches.