[EL] Questions about the Electoral College and the Civil War

[Ackerman, Bruce]

Dear Derek:

On your second question. The confederacy took the view that the North, not the South, had seceded from the Union. Its Constitution explicitly envisioned Border and Northern states “returning” to the “true” ante bellum arrangement , emphasizing the sovereign autonomy of the states, as expressed in the Electoral College (among other places).

I dimly recall that I may well have made this point in volume 2 of We the
People, when dealing with Reconstruction. But in any event, I clearly recall that this point was clearly expressed in the drafting of the Confederate Constitution.

Best

Bruce Ackerman

Sent from my iPad

On Mar 25, 2019, at 5:49 PM, Derek Muller <derek.muller at gmail.com<mailto:derek.muller at gmail.com>> wrote:

Dear listserv members,

Recent discussions about the Electoral College caused me to revisit a couple of longstanding questions I've had about the Electoral College and events around the Civil War.

First, Abraham Lincoln received just 39.8% of the popular vote total (which assuredly would have been smaller if South Carolina had held a popular election rather than having its legislature choose electors). Lincoln received zero recorded votes in several southern states (just like John Fremont in 1856 and John Hale in 1852). But, of course, there weren't state-printed ballots. Voters brought their own tickets to the polls. So, was there literally not a single voter in these southern states who'd cast a ballot for a slate of Republican or Free Soil electors? (I suppose regionalism and a lack of party-building makes this possible.) Or did the state simply refuse to count any stray ballots cast for such candidates? I'm just interested in any historical research as to the total absence of votes for Lincoln in the South in 1860.

Second, the Confederate Constitution is mostly a light edit of the original Constitution with some pro-slavery additions and a few other changes. The President and Vice President would be elected to one six-year term, and term limited to that one term. But the Confederate Constitution preserved the Electoral College. Jefferson Davis won unanimously in the only election. But there were stray votes cast in the popular election held in North Carolina for other candidates other than Davis. So, is there evidence of why the Confederacy chose to preserve the Electoral College (which had just failed these states' interests in the election of a plurality-of-the-popular-vote candidate Lincoln)? Out of mere convenience and default? And what happened in North Carolina?

Sorry for a listserv-wide email, but I haven't seen details about these stories before, so I thought I'd ask here....

Best,

Derek

Derek T. Muller
Associate Professor of Law
Pepperdine University School of Law
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