Textbook
James M. McPherson, Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction, 3rd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001), 319.
Democrats called on voters to repudiate the Republicans before Lincoln could issue the final emancipation proclamation on January 1. In New York, where Democratic gubernatorial candidate Horatio Seymour hoped the election would catapult him into national prominence, party organs announced that "a vote for Seymour is a vote to protect our white laborers against the association and competition of Southern negroes.' Midwestern orators proclaimed that "every white man in the North, who does not want to be swapped off for a free Nigger, should vote for the Democratic ticket. Many observers regarded the outcome of the elections as a sharp rebuke of the Republicans and of emancipation. Democrats scored a net again of thirty-two sets in the House.