Election Day

Until a registry law be enacted by our Legislature the gravest abuses of the elective franchise will occur at every election held in the river towns of our State.  At Dubuque the recent election for municipal officer was the occasion of the most barefaced frauds.  About twenty deck hands from a steamer in port were marcher up to the polls and voted the Democratic ticket in a body.  A citizen was knocked down for challenging one of their votes.

“A skiff mounted on wheels,” says the Times, “and loaded with Mahony men, went up to the fifth ward, yelling for Mahony, Jeff. Davis and the Merrimac.  The loyal Germans pitched into them, and warmed their jackets for them beautifully.”

At night the streets became a perfect Pandemonium.  “Mahony’s crew were all as drunk as hogs.”

On a somewhat smaller scale such were the scenes that transpired on election day and evening in this city.  The Mahonyites here gloried in their victory, they hurrahed, got drunk and fairly Bedlamized the place.

Irishmen met brother Irishmen on the street corners and had a word to say as to how “dacently they used the Dootch to bate their own man and elect Darmoody and old Harve!”

It was sickening, yet the Democrat, like the Herald of Dubuque, gloried in it, and it was set down as a great Democratic victory and goes over the country so heralded.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Saturday Morning, April 12, 1862, p. 2