Notes

1. The presidential election of 1864 took place on November 8, seven days after Pabor dated "The Eve of the Election." On November 9, the New York Times declared Lincoln's victory over Democrat candidate George McClellan as a "glorious result" and "the Union triumphant."
    
   In August 1864, however, Lincoln had been convinced that his administration had no hope of reelection. The war dragged on with little Union success, and public opinion turned against what was perceived to be a war for abolition (James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The American Civil War [London: Penguin, 1991], 769). The next two months, however, saw Republican prospects brighten. In late August, the Democratic Party built a "peace plank" into their presidential platform, which condemned the war as "nothing more than 'four years of failure'" and demanded peace, then reunion (Michael Burlingame, Lincoln and the Civil War [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011], 102). The position alienated many Northern Democrats and angered Republicans. In Pabor's poem, the declaration constitutes nothing less than a betrayal of both the Union cause and the soldiers who fought and died for it; loyal citizens had a responsibility to fight against Copperhead "traitors" with their votes.
    
   Good news from the battlefield gave Northern morale a tremendous boost in early September. The fall of Atlanta caused "a perfect revolution in feeling" (John Nicolay, quoted in Burlingame, 103). Still, the outcome of the election was by no means decided—especially in Democratic strongholds like New York City, where a massive McClellan rally took place on November 5. The rhetorical questions in "The Eve of Election" suggest that the speaker at least is sure that his Republican brothers will triumph in "the moment of peril." Identified as having been written for the Standard, the poem invites voting readers of the paper to identify themselves as these knowing "brothers."
   
2. William Edgar Pabor (1834–1911), wartime postmaster of Harlem, New York (New York Tribune, April 1, 1861, [8]). In the 1850s and 1860s his poems were published in Godey's Lady's Book, Graham's American Monthly Magazine, and Peterson's Magazine, as well as the National Anti-Slavery Standard. He served as secretary of the Twelfth Ward Republican Association and produced poems and song sheets for Lincoln's presidential campaigns in 1860 and 1864. In 1870 Pabor moved to Colorado, where he helped to establish Greeley, Fort Collins, and Colorado Springs (Faith Barrett and Cristanne Miller, eds. Words for the Hour: A New Anthology of American Civil War Poetry [Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005], 388).