Papers Of Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln to Norman B. Judd, 20 October 18581
Rushville, Oc^t 20. 1858Hon: N. B. JuddMy dear Sir:
I now have a high degree of confidence that we shall succeed, if we are not over-run with fraudulent votes to a greater extent than usual–2 On alighting from the cars and walking [thru?] sqares at Naples on Monday, I met about fifteen Celtic gentlemen, with black carpet-sacks in their hands– I learned that they had crossed over from the Rail-road in Brown county, but where they were going no one could tell– They dropped in about the doggeries, and were still hanging about when I left– At Brown

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County yesterday I was told that about four hundred of the same sort were to be brought into Schuyler, before the election,3 to work on some new Railroad; but on reaching here I find Bagby thinks that is not so–

What I most dread is that they will introduce into the doubtful districts numbers of men who are legal voters in all respects except residence and who will swear to residence and thus put it beyond our power to exclude them–4 They can & I fear will swear falsely on that point, because they know it is next to impossible to convict them of Perjury upon it–

Now the great remaining part of the campaign, is finding

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a way to head this thing off– Can it be done at all?

I have a bare suggestion– When there is a known body of these voters, could not a true man, of the "detective" class, be introduced among them in disguise, who could, at the nick of time, control their votes? Think this over– It would be a great thing, when this trick is attempted upon us, to have the saddle come up on the other horse– I have talked, more fully than I can write to M^r Scripps, and he will talk to you–

If we can head off the fraudulent votes we shall carry the day5
Yours as everA. Lincoln

1Abraham Lincoln wrote and signed this letter.

2Lincoln is discussing Illinois’s local elections of 1858. He was very attentive to the local elections, particularly with respect to the balance of power in the Illinois General Assembly, and aided the Republican Party by traveling throughout the state and delivering public speeches in support of the party’s platform and its candidates. Aside from his interest in the elections as a leading member of the party, Lincoln was also highly attuned to their outcome because he was running in the 1858 Federal Election as the Republican candidate to supplant Democratic incumbent Stephen A. Douglas in the U.S. Senate. At the time, members of the General Assembly voted for and elected the state’s representatives in the U.S. Senate. See the 1858 Illinois Republican Convention.
Lincoln was concerned about Democratic voting fraud throughout the 1858 campaign season, and wrote Judd and at least one other political ally about these concerns.
Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 1:458; Allen C. Guelzo, “Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape of 1858,” The Journal of American History 94 (September 2007), 392, 394; Abraham Lincoln to Norman B. Judd; Abraham Lincoln to Norman B. Judd; Abraham Lincoln to Gustave P. Koerner.

3This is another reference to Illinois’s 1858 local elections.
Republicans in Illinois sought to exploit Douglas’s connection to Catholicism--Douglas’s second wife, Adele, was a Catholic, and two of his sons were being educated at a Jesuit school in Washington, DC-- and the Democratic Party’s dependence on Irish Catholic votes to enhance Lincoln’s electoral chances. Republican stump speakers raised the specter of a “Celtic invasion” of Illinois electoral districts, suggesting that Irish Americans building the Illinois Central Railroad would commit voter fraud on Douglas’s behalf, to convince old Whigs to vote for Lincoln candidates to the General Assembly.
Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008) , 207-11; Robert W. Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 676.

4Per the 1848 Illinois Constitution, all white male citizens over the age of twenty-one years who resided within the state of Illinois for at least one year prior to any given election were entitled to vote in said election. Residency was key, however, and the constitution also specified that, “no such citizen or inhabitant shall be entitled to vote except in the district or county in which he shall actually reside at the time of such election.”
Ill. Const. of 1848, art. VI, § 1.

5If Judd replied to this letter, his response has not been located. There is also no known extant correspondence between Lincoln and John L. Scripps between the date of this letter and the remainder of 1858. Lincoln wrote Judd again on October 24, noting that he had not heard anything new about fraudulent voters by then. The next extant correspondence between the two was a letter Lincoln wrote Judd on November 15—after the local elections had taken place. Judd also wrote Lincoln on November 15.
In the end, in Illinois’s local elections of 1858, Republicans won a majority of all votes cast in the state, but pro-Douglas Democrats retained control of the Illinois General Assembly and Douglas ultimately won reelection to the U.S. Senate. Although there were widespread reports of Democratic voting fraud in the state elections, no solid evidence emerged in the months following the elections that widespread voting fraud actually occurred.

Despite his loss, Lincoln’s participation in the Senate race—and in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates in particular—propelled him to national prominence and helped him win the presidential contest of 1860.
Abraham Lincoln to Norman B. Judd; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:546, 556-57; Warren Independent (IL), 29 October 1858, 2:3, 5; Daily Islander and Argus (Rock Island, IL), 2 November 1858, 2:5; Alton Daily Courier (IL), 15 November 1858, 2:2; Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America, 289; Allen C. Guelzo, “Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape of 1858,” 414.