Election Under Occupation
Background
In 1861, after the election of President Abraham Lincoln, the Southern states seceded from the Union to preserve slavery. Fighting between the two began rather quickly and after a string of early success, the new southern Confederacy began their attempts to legitimize the new country. This ranged from their own currency, to conducting their own trade and foreign relations, and especially their new Constitution. It was similar to the one they just left, with regular elections (though the President served every 6 years) and a new reapportionment of House seats. This Provisional Congress was bicameral which meant that it had both a House (up every 2 years) and a Senate (staggered similar to how we do it now). The new 13 states decided on using the 3/5ths rule where 1 free person counted as a whole person and each slave only received 3/5th of a vote and one representative would be given for ever 90,000 of that total and the new House was 106 seats. The new reapportionment is broken out below by what they had the previous decade, what they would have had after 1860, and now what they had in the Confederate States of America.
While a lot of voters sent back the representatives they voted in in 1860 when they were Southern Whigs or Democrats, there was almost uniform agreement on secession and no parties really formed. There were some referred to as “proto-parties” and members of the Confederate Congress were assigned to this based on whether or not they were an ardent defender or critic of President Jefferson Davis and his administration. These are appropriately nicknamed “Pro-Administration” and “Anti-Administration.”
Following early military victories, the anti-Davis contingent was small and the Congress did not do very much legislating. The core of the opposition came from an opposition to a wartime draft, or conscription, and these members sought to add lots of exemptions to serving, most of which were vetoed by Davis. Very quickly the tide turned as the Union pushed into Tennessee, Arkansas, and captured New Orleans. As the number of deserters rose and more territory fell into the other side’s hands and put economic pressure on the unoccupied parts, the Anti-Administration faction continued to argue against conscription and a controversial bill was passed exempted legacy slave overseers which was pilloried in the press but a successful rebuke of Davis’ cabinet and wishes. As war fortunes faltered in early 1863, the anti-Davis sentiment picked up steam and Congress successfully did not renew President Davis’ suspension of habeaus corpus, adding momentum to a Congress newly reasserting itself in domestic policy. Inflation skyrocketed though as the Congress authorized new bonds and taxes and competed to target economic relief for their own home states. A year later the regular elections were slated to be held and even though the Union had made massive inroads into the territory, the CSA was committed to holding them. A now unpopular Congress would have to pass some tax relief and go against its earlier large bill and brought back the suspension of habeaus corpus in order to win over some voters. Going into this election, Congress had reasserted itself to a new degree but became more polarizing and was seen as squabbling for their own interests. Davis’ campaign for his allies focused on national unity and taking necessary measures to fight the war, such as personally signing off on the support staff for each general or having his personal pick of the cabinet.
How I Labeled the Representatives
Representatives were labeled due to a variety of sources, sometimes local newspapers but other times summaries collected by civil war historians on sites and in books. If I used a source more than once, I listed them at the bottom. Most of the Anti-Administration were explicitly called that in the source because they ran on that campaign or there are multiple specific instances where they opposed Jefferson Davis’ policies during the election season. At the end of explicitly labeling the ones I could find; I was left with about 13 unknowns that did not have enough information to make a call either way. However, by that time I had hit 41 Anti-Administration members, which was the total number outlined in American Civil War: The Definitive Encyclopedia of Document Collection and since the Anti-‘s had lots of examples of fighting Davis, these were all labeled as Pro-Administration. I did not include any of the nonvoting territorial delegates and if a member passed away before they were seated, I looked at the following special election. I also chose to focus on the House because the Senate only had a net gain of 2 seats and was not as personally interesting.
The Occupation
The map below shows the occupation status by US House district in the Confederacy at the close of the last session of the first Congress, in late 1863. This point in time is right after the election date and is the closest to an overlaid map I could find. Districts in dark blue were fully occupied while light blue indicates that the Union was disrupting activities there. The whole election took 6 months to count as absentees from the front trickled in, and the new class would not be sworn in until May of 1864. For occupied districts, those voting were largely refugees and soldiers and at least in the vote totals I had compared to states like Georgia, saw much lower participation rates.
As you can see, only a little under half of the districts were completely unoccupied as the Union had control over the Northern border states and along the Mississippi. The most recent strike into Tennessee meant that while the coasts were intact (though blockaded), it was the interior that was most under threat.
How The Parties Did
Though still informal, the Anti-Administration group saw their minority rise from only 26 seats to 41 seats, a sizable minority but still behind the 65 Pro-Administration representatives. This group was not always on the same page and the anti-Davis coalition spanned the ideological spectrum. There were a lot seeking peace on either favorable or unfavorable terms. North Carolina had a sweep of new Anti-Administration representatives such as James Thomas Leach (NC-3) and Thomas Charles Fuller (NC-4) who were essentially Unionists but won because of a split field. In the Disrupted Alabama’s 3rd, voters elected W. R. W. Cobb who was just straight up running under the Unionist banner and was actually not seated in the Congress. There were more hardcore Anti-Administration representatives such as Georgia’s new reps who were opposed to Davis acting as a tyrant or being unfair by putting the economic burden on the unoccupied states. Henry S. Foote (TN-5) despised Davis and his cabinet, and was anti-Semitic to Secretary of State Judah Benjamin and worked to block all nominees and legislation. Foote was so hated he was once attacked in the chamber by fellow representatives who were allegedly wielding “[their] fists, a Bowie knife, a revolver, and an umbrella.” Then there were those that switched sides such as Aaron H. Conrow (MO-4) who became disillusioned after too many men who were supposed to be garrisoned at home were sent to the front or Charles Jacques Villeré (LA-1) who turned on Davis after his brother was removed from combat duty after leading a massacre that caused a public outcry. The Pro-Administration side was mostly old incumbents with a few exceptions like Benjamin Lewis Hodge (LA-5) who replaced an Anti-Administration incumbent who decided not to run again. The Pros were also a bit more disjointed, ranging from the average successionist to Duncan Farrar Kenner (LA-3) who secretly told the French and British on Davis’ behalf that they would agree to free the slaves in exchange for European help. While some opposed conscription or the suspension of habeaus corpus, they generally followed what Davis wanted from amendments to cabinet appointments to not overriding vetoes.
The below visual shows the party alignment of each representative by state and occupation status. The top left is the map of above where there was Union occupation but now a dot has been placed to show what party their member belonged to. Gray is Pro-Administration; red is Anti-Administration and the one lone blue dot is the Unionist. Directly below that map is one that shows the statewide breakdown of the seats with the size of the pie chart representing the total number of seats. And lastly to the right is a bar chart showing the share of seats that are represented by the party depending on the occupation status.
What stands out here is that in the 2nd congress, the unoccupied areas were half opposed to Davis’ administration. Going into this project, I have assumed that the territories under the control of the Union would disapprove of the conduct of the war and want new leadership but it turned out to be the opposite. From what I had read, it’s because Davis pushed for more nationalization and more focused on the war effort which appealed to people who wanted a strong centralized push against the Union and needed to grant Davis the war powers to do that. Meanwhile, the unoccupied areas had the luxury of opposition, where they were both taking the brunt of the resources needed to counterattack, but also could focus on other issues not related to immediate recapture such as tariffs, criticizing Davis in the press, and appointments and patronage. These reps were also focused on why they had left the Union in the first place and opposed power consolidation in the Confederacy and wished to continue to have more autonomy than a full out war of attrition demanded.
The next chart looks at the turnover rate in Congress, as over 46% of incoming representatives were brand new to the Congress. Light green indicates that they were elected in 1863 while dark green meant that they were an incumbent before, whether elected in 1861 or by a special election.
Here we see turnover was higher in the Unoccupied areas with more than half of the incoming reps being new to the congress. In occupied districts, however, two thirds of incumbents were sent back for another, and final, session.
Conclusion
While the war was going poorly for the South, actions by Confederate leadership to redirect focus towards centralization and fighting the war allowed the Jefferson Davis administration to win favor in occupied districts under Union control and probably helped preserve the majority as the unoccupied areas bristled under increased control and sent Davis critics to Congress for a litany of reasons. Unoccupied areas had significantly larger turnover between 1861 and 1863 and made good on their progress to halt the late Davis agenda. This look at how elections conducted under occupation can show that the leadership challenges are more than logistical and focus on balancing the interests between the land currently in your opponent’s hands and the core areas that need to keep your country afloat and that there are electoral penalties for favoring one over the other, even in a new country that is very ideologically similar and does not have formal parties.
Sources:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40023975
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40583188
https://civilwartalk.com/forums/biographic-profiles-we-will-remember.252/?l=H
