The Fathers and Saviors of Our Country: A Presidential Sale

12mo (165 x 64 mm). (Minor creases, staining, pencil and ink inscriptions on recto and verso.)

Following the secession of eleven states from the Union after Abraham Lincoln's election to the presidency, Missouri found itself in a quandary. The state had just elected a pro-secessionist governor who actively sought to join the newly-established Confederate States. Governor Claiborne Fox Jackson conspired to capture the St. Louis Arsenal and transfer its arms to the Confederacy; this plan was thwarted when Secretary of War Simon Cameron sent federal forces to back up soldiers at the Arsenal. After a bitter back-and-forth between Jackson and Captain Nathaniel Lyon, Jackson fled south and declared himself governor of a Confederate government-in-exile.

Thanks to this sequence of events, Missouri remained bitterly divided throughout the Civil War, despite remaining officially part of the Union. Anyone who wished to cast a vote in the 1864 election in Missouri was required to take an oath of loyalty to the Union first, a requirement that greatly advantaged the Republican ticket. While Lincoln and Johnson ran on the Union Party ticket, the present ballot is headed "Radical Ticket," likely a pejorative against Lincoln's policies towards slavery.