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[Pre-order a copy of Daniel Greenfield’s first book, Domestic Enemies, by clicking here. Orders will begin shipping on April 30th.]
“They will vote early and often, and they will fight,” Charles Walsh, a top figure in the Democratic political machine who had unsuccessfully run for Sheriff of Cook County, promised.
The year was 1864 and Walsh, the “doorkeeper’ of the Illinois House, who lost an election to a Republican by less than 800 votes, had a plan to win a presidential election the Chicago Way.
It was simple.
Abraham Lincoln was so associated with Illinois that “Land of Lincoln” would become its name, but Chicago was a whole other matter. Could Chicago Democrats hope to win Illinois? The Democrats had bet big on Chicago by bringing the Democratic National Convention to town.
The Democratic convention adopted a platform claiming that “after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war”, it was time to negotiate a settlement. But the convention was also to be the opening round of what became known as the “Chicago Conspiracy” in which Democrats plotted treason, a coup and a unique way to win an election.
Even by the standards of a time when urban Democrat political machines would bring in prisoners and lunatics to vote, often more than once, and even waylay passerby, get them drunk and force them to vote Democrat (a practice known as ‘cooping’ that some historians claim led to Edgar Allen Poe’s mysterious death), Walsh’s plan was ambitious.
Previously, the Chicago Tribune had reported that, “the mayor of Chicago… released nearly all the inmates of the bridewell on condition that they would vote for him today.” But the Bridewell prison held mere hundreds of inmates and what it would take was the world’s greatest jailbreak.
Chicago needed some good Democrats and the Cook County Democrat bigwig knew where to get them. At Camp Douglas on the South Side of Chicago, tens of thousands of Confederate prisoners of war housed in poor conditions and suffering from a high death toll, like most large camps on both sides, had become a popular cause for Chicago’s Democrat ‘Copperheads’.
While previous efforts had been made to help some Confederate prisoners escape, the Chicago Conspiracy had a much better idea. Why not break them loose and have them vote Democrat?
The story of the Chicago Conspiracy is part of the lost history retold in my book, ‘Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against the Left’ which reveals the corrupt and violent origins of the American Left and the Democrats and what we can learn from that today.
Walsh’s plan may seem wild, but it was actually part of a nationwide Democrat conspiracy against the election featuring terrorism, race riots and simultaneous coups in major Northern cities that is retold in detail in ‘Domestic Enemies . In New York, local Democrats and Confederate agents had staged the Draft Riots, attacking black people and Republicans to seize power and then when that failed a campaign of domestic terrorism by attempting to set fire to Broadway hotels and theaters with thousands of people trapped inside.
But Chicago Democrats like Walsh were more practical. He stockpiled weapons, which his daughter would later claim were meant to be used “to protect Democrats at the polls.” These Democrat election defense weapons included “200 stands of arms, with all the necessary ammunition and two cart-loads of large revolvers, loaded and capped ready for use.”
The Democratic National Convention would provide a pretext for a large number of visitors to come to Chicago all at once. And Chicago’s proximity to Canada, where the real conspiracies were being hatched under British supervision by radicals too extreme for the Confederacy, like John Wilkes Booth, would make it a convenient jumping off point for changing history.
(The combination came together in Walsh’s fellow conspirator, Col. George St. Leger Grenfell, a British mercenary who lived with his own harem in a Muslim country before coming to America, being arrested and sentenced to death, having his sentence commuted through the intervention of the British government, and then managing to escape by boat and becoming a pirate.)
With enemy agents, likely from the Knights of the Golden Circle, the predecessors of the KKK, blending in with the arrivals to the Democratic National Convention, they would have plenty of time to coordinate with Walsh’s Democrat thugs “ready to shed blood”. Then they would liberate the tens of thousands of Confederates in Camp Douglas. And take them out to vote.
The plan was that “the rebels were to march into the city” and “take possession of the polls, voting in each precinct, and preventing the deposition in the ballot-box of any other than the McClellan ticket.” Such gangland voting tactics were not unusual in Tammany Hall and other Democrat urban political machines. Indeed one reason that was given for not allowing women to vote was that it was too violent due to Democrat gangs terrorizing anyone who voted differently.
But Chicago Democrats were thinking even bigger with the world’s greatest jailbreak by bringing in tens of thousands of heavily armed Confederate Democrats who would, in Walsh’s words “vote early and often, and they will fight.”
In typical Chicago fashion, Walsh linked fighting and voting together.
Then, in even more typical Chicago fashion, the Chicago and Confederate Democrats, after voting, would loot all the banks.
Unlike the Draft Riots, which at least succeeded in driving enough Republicans and black voters out of New York City so that the Tammany Hall machine was able to secure Democrat control of local elections, the Chicago Conspiracy, like the entire Northwest Conspiracy, failed badly.
The Democrat plan to either rig the 1864 election or, failing that, seize control of major cities and secede from the United States, fell apart. These conspiracies owed less to the South, where the Confederate leadership was less likely to entertain such madness, than to local Democrat political machines, like those of Tammany Hall and Cook County, and British agents who publicly opposed slavery, but covertly were thrilled to see America tearing itself apart.
(The unresolved hostilities from the British covert backing for the South would play out in the form of the Fenian raids into Canada and the threat of a potential third war with America that continued to linger long after the North and the South had bandaged the wounds of their war. And there was a good deal of irony in Canada harboring some of the Democrat radicals who had originally been among the most vocal proponents of invading and annexing Canada.)
While Democrats like Walsh appeared to be making a dangerous gamble in an era when men could still be shot for treason, they were only mildly inconvenienced by their conspiracies, unlike Southerners, many of whom suffered greatly during the war even when they opposed slavery.
Even right after Lincoln’s assassination, Walsh was only sentenced to five years in prison and was released much sooner so that he was out by 1865. Other prominent conspirators walked away entirely including a former Chicago mayor. So did the majority of the party thugs who proved the Democrats protected their own whether in the streets or in a court of law.
While the Chicago Conspiracy failed, it’s hard not to see it as a trial run for the modern party.
The original plan to “seize the polls” and “stuff the boxes sufficiently to secure the city, county and State” and then “to utterly sack the city, burning and destroying every description of property, except what they could appropriate for their own use” seems like just the basic strategy of what Democrats have done to Chicago, Illinois and the United States.
“God be praised. Chicago has redeemed herself,” the Chicago Tribune had celebrated the Republican victory in 1862 even though the Democrats had “flooded the wards with illegal voters and counterfeit tickets.” But it’s been a long time since Chicago has been redeemed.
The illegal voters are everywhere and Democrats have ushered in illegal invaders from all the nations of the world to march across the Southern border and stuff ballot boxes and loot cities.
What was once a Democrat conspiracy is now just Democrat policy.
The full story of the Democratic plot to rig the 1864 election is told in the final chapter of my book, ‘Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against the Left’.
‘Domestic Enemies’ is now available for pre-sale at the Freedom Center store.
Whoa! That is a fascinating article, Daniel! The similarity of these Civil War era thugs to today’s Democrats is striking (and disgusting)!
Except that nobody would have thought about referring to the Democratic Party in the 1860s as “the left.” Not the Democrats themselves, not heir opponents, not any semi competent historian.
The election of 1840 was actually run on the Whigs accusing Democrats of being radicals who wanted to seize private property and abolish religion.
But then you’d have to actually know history to know any of that.
https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA689725389&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=00088080&p=AONE&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7Ee42932b6&aty=open-web-entry
“Orestes Brownson wrote a radical essay on “The Laboring Classes.” Brownson had a life-long sympathy for the poor working classes. His essay’s Unitarian-Transcendentalist Christian arguments, and its proto-Marxist critique of the systemic evils of an economy that weighed heavily on the working class, created a widespread animated reaction in the political community during a presidential election”
Hmm, the Dems still want to seize private property and abolish Christianity!! Very interesting history, made even more interesting since the Dem Party Convention is once again in Chicago this year!!
Indeed.
People forget that the French Revolution was the ‘Communist revolution’ before the USSR. The difference was that it failed a lot faster. But it had many of the same goals.
Your misunderstanding of those times is the very reason why accurate history is so important, and revisionism is so destructive.
The similarity is genetic. The tactics haven’t changed. The Democrats have been consistent.
Historically, mass releases of prisoners by revolutionaries has been one of their frequent tactics.
The motives for the insurrection were quite different back then. The Left, as we know it today, did not exist here in 1864 and barely existed in Western Europe. And the cannon fodder were the Irish. The Draft Riots of 1863 in New York was in effect an Irish riot.
Great history! I remember there was great concern that Lincoln might lose the 1864 election. But Sherman taking Atlanta in September 1864 sealed the deal for Lincoln winning.
Nothing succeeds like success.
Noting that the Democ-Rats oppose our Military from voting but wants votes from Rapists and Child Molesters were not surprised that DNC and their Crimes against the American People that’s why the Democ-Rats want Open Borders and Democrat Registration stands set up on the Borders. their the Traitors selling America out while the M.S. Media Botom Feeders cover up for their Crimes
Biden’s sycophants will accuse republicans of doing something such as colluding with the Dominican Republic.
History was fabulous. Very enjoyable. This MO of power pig is actually the human being that the people need to fear, not capitalists, not some group. Not anyone they pick because it’s their prestidigitation. Their way to get the focus on anyone but themselves and make people emotional so they will buy whatever they are selling.
Part of our biggest problem is many people can’t even conceive of how evil these people are. They think they are voting issues rather than being manipulated.
That’s one of the main tricks behind referendums in California: misleading the voters into thinking they are voting on an issue when they are really being manipulated.
Worse yet, they won’t believe it when the truth is shoved in front of their faces. Were they to accept the truth they would be jerked out of their comfort zone and forced to admit what dumb asses they have been.
Nowadays all the DNC needs is the criminal’s name & a freshly printed mail-in ballot..
Any idiot who claims democrats don’t cheat, have to explain why leftists fight so hard for no voter I.D. and for no signature verification.
The democrats and Tammy Hall made it too dangerous for women to vote. I think I’ve already seen this movie.
You think Republicans wanted women to get the vote either? It was only in the far West, where women were scarce, that leveraged the right to vote. It was no coincidence that the only female member of Congress prior to passage and ratification of the 19th Amendment was Jeannette Rankin, from Montana.
I failed spectacularly, but I was trying to say democrats, in the past and present, make a world unsafe for women. Women voting, or not, was not my point.
Amazing story. Looking forward to reading your book — to everyone reading your book — and watching it change the conversation in our country.
Thank you so much. I hope you enjoy reading it.
Excellent point about the French Revolution being the start of it all. I’m seeing that more and more when I read history that touches on that period.
It wasn’t just NYC. The North in general HATED black people, and they wanted them to stay as slaves in the South and the Northern slave states that stayed in the Union. The Draft Riots were a revolt against the Emancipation Proclamation, and northern Whites didn’t want blacks taking their jobs. And the Proclamation itself was made in response to the North’s defeat in the Battle of Fredericksburg – a defeat so devastating for the Union that the Confederacy was in a position to march on Washington and win the war.
Pretty much all the northern states had Fugitive Slave Laws on the books. Lincoln’s home state of Illinois banned blacks from living there due to a black code and other discriminatory edicts, and Lincoln himself voted for those anti-black laws when he was a state congressman.
Political analyst Alexis de Tocqueville and other observers from Europe all agreed that Slavery was a far more brutal practice in the North than it was in the South, with New Jersey being considered the worst of the slave states. And yes, New Jersey was a slave state, and they were the last to outlaw slavery – in January 1866.
NYC was at issue because a whole lot of its money came from the export trade. It also had key backers of the Democratic Party living there.
The perspectives on slavery in the North varied. We’re talking about an area that covered some pretty different parts of the country at the time.
The Draft Riots were a coordinated campaign aimed ultimately at the election. The Emancipation Proclamation, like the Floyd death, was a propaganda pretext for doing what they had intended to do all along.
A bit more research about the NY draft riots may be in order.
The Democrat has not changed and never will.
Oh, they have.
Both the GOP and Democrats are statist parties. We have a progressive, Hamiltonian GOP, and Democrats who became Hamiltonians as they were subsumed by former Whig Party members.
They have and they haven’t.
The Democrats eliminated much of their Southern base and really narrowed down to their New York and other urban political machines. As I document in the book, this started early on in 1800, but the party has shrunk to representing a corrupt urban political machine base and its allied radicals, and no one else.
Wow. the more things change, the more they stay the same…
All political parties evolve. Of course, the Democrats of today are vastly different from 1864.
Let’s not forget the Black Panther voter intimidation case of 2008. It was a done deal until newly installed Barack Obama’s DOJ dropped the charges. Yeah, Obama is a Chicago politician.
When it comes to the democrats, the more things change the more they stay exactly the same.
There were always thugs around to do some voter intimidation.
Good point That’s another historical invariant. There are always enough thugs around …
The Democ-Rats always have been the friends of Rapists and Robbers that’s why they want t o disarm us so we wont be able to protect ourselves from their biggest voters