Quote:
Originally Posted by WRnative
How did a new 19th century technology help Lincoln obtain the two-thirds vote needed in the House of Representatives to pass the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which abolished slavery?
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A $60,000 telegram transmitting an "electronic Constitution" enabled Lincoln to shepherd Nevada into the Union fold as the 36th state. Nevada's statehood helped Lincoln muster the slim, 2/3s majority needed in the House of Representatives to pass the 13th amendment. How much we take modern communication technology, even air express, for granted!
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But, Lincoln thought about the weekly military reports that tallied the thousands of Civil War casualties. “It is easier to admit Nevada,” he told Charles Dana, his Assistant Secretary of War, “than to raise another million soldiers.” The math was simple in Lincoln’s mind, for a new state could cast three electoral votes, votes he needed for reelection. “It is a question of three votes,” said Lincoln “or new armies.”
Nevada, he reasoned, was his best chance to vote for him and his Republican party. While Nevada wasn’t as populated, it was pro-Union, since many of the residents came from the North, and it was also pro-Republican in the truest sense of the word: It believed that power resided in the federal government, and that the federal government should intervene with economic policies. Nevada had also been a team player. It guarded the
Overland Mail route, which allowed the East to communicate with the West via stagecoach, and also Nevada contributed hundreds of millions of dollars from its mines, offsetting the cost of the Civil War....
Over the weeks of wrangling at the convention, the name Nevada was settled on. On September 7, 1864, the citizens of Nevada voted 8 to 1 on their new constitution, approving it. Now, the task was to get a copy of the state constitution to the president. There was little over a month to get it to Washington. Given the means of delivery, there was just enough time.
One common way of getting a long document across the country was by boat. After a courier reached the Pacific Ocean at San Francisco, which took a couple of days, they would board a ship that headed to the Isthmus of Panama. They then crossed it by mule, and then continued on by boat up to Washington, D.C. The other way to get a document across was the stagecoach. In the 1850s, the Overland Stagecoach was created. It took over 20 days to reach the Missouri River from the West; from there a message could be carried by train, taking about a week. Nevada’s Territorial Governor Nye sent several copies of the document both by land and by sea, and waited to hear the good news from Lincoln with a proclamation of statehood....
[Nevada Territorial Governor] Nye was charismatic and known for his “winning friendly face,” but his countenance changed rapidly when a telegram arrived the evening of Tuesday, October 25, 1864. The head of the California Pacific Telegraph passed on a telegram to him, which said, “The President has not received a copy of your constitution.” The deadline for the materials was just a few days away. There wasn’t enough time to mail it to the President. If Nye was going to get 175 pages of this official document to Abraham Lincoln, he was going to have to use the new technology that was just installed three years prior — the telegraph.>>
https://time.com/5832758/abraham-lin...very-telegram/
The article details the immense task of sending an over 16,000 word document by telegraph, including the need to retransmit the document several times.
<<When these electrical impulses finally reached the last leg of their journey, they were sent to the telegraph office of the War Department. This transmission was of such importance that intelligence from the warfront was put on hold for five hours to make way for Nevada’s telegram. Hodge’s and Ward’s message took two days to get to Lincoln and the cost of sending the message was $4,303.27 ($60,000 today). Nevada’s electric constitution reached Lincoln on the evening of October 28 and he proclaimed it a state on the 30th.>>
While Lincoln eventually didn't need Nevada's electoral votes to become President, Nevada's single vote in the House to pass the 13th Amendment a few months after the 1864 election was crucial.
<<With this victory behind him, Lincoln now worried about the vote on the abolition of slavery act in the House of Representatives. This act had already passed in the Senate, but it had failed to get the majority of votes in the House the year before. Lincoln wished Nevada’s sole Representative, Henry G. Worthington, a swift and safe journey from the West so he could cast his single vote. Worthington arrived in time to cast his vote on January 31, 1865. The resulting count was 119 yeas, 56 nays, (with 8 abstains). The amendment passed with Worthington’s vote as one of the two that put the number of “yea” votes safely in the majority. Those two votes were precious like gold to Lincoln.>>
Not mentioned in the story, the Union's capture of Atlanta generally is deemed to have powered Lincoln to victory. Union voters saw a victorious end to the immensely costly war at hand, and didn't want to risk forfeiting the goal for which so many great sacrifices had been made.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1864_U...ntial_election
Gen. Phil Sheridan's famous ride to salvage victory from what might have been a Lincoln-crushing defeat in the Battle of Cedar Creek also was extremely important in Lincoln's reelection.
https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.co...heridans-ride/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle...dan's_Ride
The poem that helped reelect Lincoln:
https://ironbrigader.com/2017/10/12/...the-civil-war/
Gallant horses were much admired by 19th century Americans.
"Lincoln," starring Daniel Day Lewis, portrays Lincoln's efforts to pass the 13th Amendment; if you haven't seen it yet, don't miss doing so. While the movie does reveal Lincoln's determined vision and skills as a politician, I don't remember it discussing how he put the Nevada card in his pocket to be played when needed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_(film)
Nevada likely became a state years earlier than would have otherwise occurred.
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