Updated March 6, 2026 at 12:29 PM EST
To mark the 250th anniversary of the United States, we鈥檙e cataloging 25 objects that define the country鈥檚 history.
Voting by mail became a major political flashpoint during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, but controversies over remote voting . The U.S. first rolled out mail-in ballots on a large scale during the Civil War. A simple paper envelope helped Union soldiers cast their ballots from the battlefield, sparking familiar debates about fraud and fairness.
Here & Now鈥檚 Robin Young spoke with Daniel Piazza, chief curator of philately at the Smithsonian Institution鈥檚 National Postal Museum, about the significance of sent from a Union army field hospital in Atlanta. It contained a tally sheet recording the votes of Highland County, Ohio, in 1864.
3 questions with Daniel Piazza
Can you give us some background on the election of 1864?
鈥淭he 1864 presidential election was a very bitterly contested one. [Former President Abraham] Lincoln was the Republican, the incumbent. The election is coming in the middle of a war that鈥檚 dragged on for three years at this point. The northern Democrats had nominated George McClellan, whom Lincoln had fired several years earlier as commander of the northern armies. And so there was a lot of not only political bad blood between the parties, but also personal bad blood between the candidates.
鈥淵ou had a large chunk of the electorate 鈥� in 1864, that鈥檚 free males over the age of 21 鈥� who are away from their home district in the field. And various state legislatures started passing acts to allow these soldiers to vote in the field. But no one knew how this military vote was going to go, whether for Lincoln or for McClellan. And both sides felt the other was trying to stuff the ballot box and influence the outcome of the election.
鈥淚t鈥檚 interesting. With these historical vignettes, I think we imagine we invented everything in the 21st century, but these are very old stories.鈥�
How did the mail-in voting process work?
鈥淚t worked in a number of different ways. In most cases, the elections were conducted in the camps by officers of the Army unit. But this wasn鈥檛 mail-in voting as we think of it today: individual ballots being mailed back. These are kind of mini elections being held in the Army camps, and then the results were being tallied by the officers and sent back to the county boards of election.
鈥淎nd many claimed fraud at the time because of the fact that often the soldiers鈥� officers counted and tallied the votes, so they knew how the men under their command were voting. And the candidate for president, one of the candidates for president, was their active current commander in chief. So some may have felt pressure to vote Republican, even if they鈥檇 have preferred the Democrat.鈥�
What do you think when you see these envelopes?
鈥淭hey鈥檙e really little windows into the past. I think that letters and mail, because of their scale, because of their size, and because of the personal handwriting that鈥檚 often found on them, you can have a very personal and intimate experience with letters in mail that I think makes the historical story come alive.
鈥淚t鈥檚 also a constant reminder that we know how the story ends, but the people of the past didn鈥檛. They didn鈥檛 know what the outcome was going to be. We can look it up now and say, 鈥極f course, Lincoln won the 1864 election by a large margin.鈥� But no one knew that that was going to be the outcome at the time. This sort of restores that sense of suspense at the outcome and lets us put ourselves in their shoes and understand that they didn鈥檛 know how it was gonna turn out. We do, of course. But they didn鈥檛 know.鈥�
This interview was edited for clarity.
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produced and edited this interview for broadcast with . Walkey also produced it for the web.
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