Abstract
Over three million men fought in the American Civil War, two million of whom donned the Union blue. In recent decades, historians have provided a proliferation of scholarship on soldiers from the North and South, considering their motivations for enlistment, wartime experiences, and the aftermath of their service. Yet, for Union soldiers, Jonathan W. White proposes that there has been inadequate coverage of their politics, especially in relationship to the presidential election of 1864. Traditionally, according to White, historians have surmised that the high percentage of votes cast for Lincoln by Union soldiers indicated a strong preference for both “Honest Abe” and the Republican Party (1–4). The usual evidence for this comes from the overwhelming support Lincoln received in 1864 from the soldier vote. White argues, however, that these numbers, if not outright lies, only tell part of the story. Forty percent of Union soldiers did not cast a ballot for Lincoln in 1864. Rather, through examining a combination of actions—direct support for Democratic candidate George McClellan, resignation from the army, or purposeful abstentions from voting—White argues that the politics of a significant and neglected portion of Union soldiers requires scholarly attention.