Heading: (Civil War)
Author: Koiner, Gideon
Title: Letter from a Virginia Democrat before 1860 presidential election
Place Published: (Brogneran?) Waynesboro, Virginia
Publisher:
Date Published: Nov. 2, 1860
Description:

Autograph Letter Signed. 4 pp. + mailing envelope. To his brother, Jonathan Koiner, Flat Woods, Braxton County, Virginia

Southern Democrat Breckinridge and northern Democrat Douglas split the Democratic vote in the 1860 election. But divided as they were, Douglas carried only a single state - Missouri - while Breckinridge won all of the deep South, including Virginia and the border state of Maryland. Lincoln was the winner with only 40% of the vote. That led to the dissolution of the Union which the Koiners had feared. In the conflict that followed, two of the Koiner brothers served in the Confederate Army and survived the War.

Koiner, whose family had a small farm in what is now West Virginia, had just returned from a trip to visitea cousin in Pennsylvania, returning south via New York, Philadelphia, and Hagerstown, Maryland where "the Breckinridge party had a barbecue and fireworks at night". Then on to his home where, four days before the presidential election, he found his father and older brother "very uneasy about a dissolution of the Union. They are down on Breckinridge. For my part, I believe the B. party is the only true Democrat Party and think if I vote" - another discontented brother refused to cast a ballot at all - "I will vote for him...I do not believe Douglas will carry one state of himself, consequently, a democrat could not gain any thing by voting for him...." He made no mention at all of the Republican Lincoln.

Very good.