Harry Gilmor and several of his men rode down the Valley Pike to “take a look at Sheridan’s camp.” Avoiding Union patrols and Jessie Scouts, several handpicked men from the 2nd Maryland Cavalry, also known as Gilmor’s Raiders, traveled north for two days to glean intelligence at the behest of Early. Gilmor’s men operated independently of Mosby and were one of Early’s favorite reconnaissance units. The Southerners dressed in Union blue avoided fighting since they were mainly “a party of observation,” unless the right opportunity arose and the Raiders had the edge over the enemy; as Gilmor noted, “We gave them a turn, just to keep our hands in.” On that dark and rainy fall night, the riders spotted a column of Federal cavalry. One of Gilmor’s men, wearing a blue overcoat, rode up to the rear of the column and offered his canteen to an officer. Stunned, the Federal officer drew his sword and ordered, “Take your place in the ranks.” Gilmor’s man “politely touched his hat, saying that he did not belong to the squadron, but was one of Blazer’s Scouts.”1 The irregular nature of Blazer’s operations, and use of enemy uniforms, made imitation the highest form of compliment and the perfect cover story. The Confederate then convinced the officer that if the Federal dropped back a little, he would fill his canteen. Thirsty, the man complied—and soon found a cocked pistol in his face and an audience with Gilmor as a prisoner.
After resting and sending the prisoner back to Southern lines under guard, Gilmor and a smaller group of his men once again donned Union blue overcoats and set out for Sheridan’s camp near Winchester, where they passed through pickets and “ascertained to a certainty that no troops had gone to Grant.”2
On a new mission, the doppelgangers suddenly found themselves face-to-face with the real deal: four of Blazer’s Scouts. Wearing a blue overcoat that matched theirs, Gilmor convinced the Scouts they were part of Major General Alfred Thomas Archimedes Torbert’s cavalry as the group rode toward camp to vote in the presidential election. Gilmor smiled and made small talk. He asked, “I suppose you will vote for Lincoln?” Blazer’s men replied in the affirmative and showed the Confederate irregulars their “tickets” to cast ballots. The Marylander motioned, and on his silent signal, the Scouts had pistols in their faces, surrendering without firing a shot. Gilmor took the tickets and nonchalantly rode into the lions’ den of thousands of Union troops. “We took their papers and tickets to Sheridan’s camp, and there voted for Lincoln! This gave us every facility for gaining information, for of course no one could object to us after voting for Lincoln!”3
Not only did Blazer’s men and Gilmor’s Raiders vote in arguably the most consequential election in history, but the Jessie Scouts, including Arch Rowand, also did. He fondly wrote to a fellow Scout years later, “Each of us having two years’ experience as Scouts. And I may say we are both hard-shelled republicans. I voted for Abe Lincoln in 64, at Martinsburg, when I was nineteen, and have never strayed from that path since.”4
Because of the massive number of Union soldiers in the field and away from their home states, absentee ballots were allowed for the first time in the 1864 presidential election. The Union Army permitted many men to go on furlough and return to their home states to vote. Others voted in their camps and mailed in their ballots. The mail-in ballots were controversial, and fraud was suspected. Orville Wood, a county official from upstate New York, would uncover one of the most elaborate electoral conspiracies in American history.
Traveling from upstate New York to ensure that the votes of his county’s soldiers were being counted properly, Wood arrived in Baltimore to monitor the mail-in ballots. While visiting convalescing soldiers at Fort McHenry, one of America’s most sacred sites, the home of the “Star-Spangled Banner,” Wood’s “suspicions were aroused.” Soldiers were “checker playing” with the ballots. The ballots required a series of forged signatures. To gain access to the process and the trust of the supervisor involved in the conspiracy, Wood insinuated that he was a Democrat and McClellan supporter. “McClellan received 400 votes and Lincoln 11. [Wood] expressed surprise at the small number of votes polled for Lincoln, when Mr. Ferry [the supervisor] said that, when Union votes came into that office, they were all right when they went out, and that they were doing more here than he thought of.”5 Wood played into the scheme and was brought into the fold by Ferry, personally taking part in the fraud by altering thousands of ballots to make them votes for McClellan. Wood brought evidence to authorities, exposing the entire operation. Ferry provided a full confession of his illicit activity in a military court, and a military commission was called by General Abner Doubleday to rectify the process. The committee’s bombshell findings came out just before the election.
Other forms of election fraud or vote tampering were also attempted. Mosby and other Confederate irregulars received orders to capture ballot boxes to disrupt the election, but most of their efforts failed. Seven out of ten Union troops would vote for Lincoln and to continue the war.6
Despite a promising start with the success of the election influence operation, the Northwest Conspiracy insurrection hatched from Montreal sputtered before the election. The Sons of Liberty, for a second time, got cold feet and did not unleash their insurrection before the election. The armed rebellion would have involved tens of thousands of Copperheads and thousands of freed Confederate prisoners of war whom the Confederate Secret Service planned to unleash in the Midwest. Hines plotted to execute the Northern leadership of several states: “The State governments of Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois will be seized and their executive heads disposed of,” he had written Seddon the previous June.7 Battlefield success at Winchester, Cedar Creek, and Atlanta had altered the course of the war and, with it, hearts and minds at the ballot box and damped the ardor of many Copperheads. In the early fall, a government agent penetrated the Sons of Liberty, which led to the arrest of some of its prominent members, an event that “totally demoralized the Sons of Liberty.”8 Thomas Hines had to pull another remarkable vanishing act as Federal detectives surrounded the Chicago house he operated from, forcing him to hide in a mattress box spring for nearly a day as they fruitlessly searched the dwelling. He escaped shortly thereafter. Spending a month on the run en route to Richmond, Hines dodged Union detectives, broke his sweetheart out of a convent, and found time to have a honeymoon in Cincinnati before returning to Richmond on December 12.*
In testimony in Federal court, witnesses revealed that secret groups with ties to the Confederate Secret Service undermined the government through various seditious oaths: “I promise and swear that I will bring all loyal Democrats into this Circle of Hosts. I further promise and swear that I will do all in my power against the present Yankee-abolition-disunion administration; so, help me God.” A similar offshoot was disclosed in Federal court in Des Moines: “I will resist draft either by State or Federal authorities; and I will do all in my power to unite the States of the Northwest with the Southern Confederacy.”9 Despite the setbacks, the Confederate Secret Service’s influence operations to control the narrative by funding elements of the Northern press proved successful. The Secret Service also influenced the peace platform for the Democratic Party and encouraged the armistice, which would have likely ended the war had it not been for crucial victories in Atlanta and in the Shenandoah Valley. Weeks later, Jacob Thompson would write a letter to Jefferson Davis asserting that the shadowy group’s efforts were not in vain. Union fear of a “fire in the rear” through the threat of insurrection and prisoner-of-war camp raids extracted a large cost to the Union for a small investment in gold and personnel on the part of the Secret Service: “The apprehensions of the enemy have caused him to bring back and keep from the field in front at least 60,000 to watch and browbeat the people at home,” wrote Thompson. Despite the setbacks, the Secret Service did not give up on the Copperheads and funded and supported a new group of leaders, the Order of the White Star.10
On Tuesday, November 8, 1864, Americans voted. Even though the Electoral College votes reflected a landslide for Lincoln of 212 to 21, the popular vote was much closer, 55 percent to 45 percent.11 Despite the recent Union victories, remarkably almost 2 million Americans—45 percent of voters—still cast ballots for the Democrats and against the war, illustrating how precarious the situation remained. A shift of 80,000 votes in key states would have generated a McClellan victory.12 Union general Benjamin Butler stated, “Votes in three great states could change the late presidential election. ” Most importantly, Butler stressed, “a single disaster or a single victory … may turn your majority.”13 The Confederates’ roll of the dice and near victory at Cedar Creek might have been that event, but Federal military successes had shifted the will of the country. Sherman’s capture of Atlanta after the Confederates abandoned the city and the decisive naval Battle of Mobile Bay, which sealed off the port from blockade runners, helped turn the tide. However, Sheridan’s victory in the valley, the Third Battle of Winchester, led by the Jessie Scouts, and the Battle of Cedar Creek, offered the bookend that would tip the scales in favor of Lincoln.
With their election interference operations blunted by the Union victories, the Confederate Secret Service was compelled to seek radical, violent covert operations to change the course of the war. Almost a month before the election, on October 13, the commissioners had composed a letter in coded cipher to Richmond: “We again urge the immense necessity of our gaining immediate advantages. Strain every nerve for victory. We now look upon the re-election in November as almost certain.… Our friends shall be immediately set to work as you direct.”14 The ciphered letter intimated a new course of action. Planning for one such operation had gained momentum in mid-October.
* Thomas Hines later put himself through law school and would emerge as the chief justice of the Kentucky Court of Appeals.