ABSTRACT
In 1863, the Democratic Party in the North presented a serious challenge to Abraham Lincoln's administration. Although the election relied principally upon the fidelity of the two parties' voting populations, the election's most critical influence came from a sector of Connecticut's large non-voting population, the 12,000 soldiers who then served in the Union army. Because the state constitution denied soldiers the right to vote by absentee ballot, Connecticut's boys in blue used local newspapers to voice their political opinions while absent from the polls. Through their sustained correspondence campaign to local newspapers, Connecticut soldiers contributed to a potentially violent political environment that the two-party system could not easily contain. Fearing that a treasonous Southern sympathizer like Seymour would mislead Connecticut's citizens, Republican soldiers mounted an intense letter-writing campaign. In the wake of the Union disasters at Chickasaw Bayou, Stones River, and Fredericksburg, the citizens of the North saw little hope for victory in the spring of 1863.
