A Regular Republican Ticket, with Banks for Congress
A party-printed ballot for the 1866 Massachusetts state election, topped by an eagle and running Nathaniel P. Banks of Waltham for Representative to Congress.
TranscriptionThe ticket
REGULAR REPUBLICAN TICKET. [Illustration: eagle with banner reading "E. PLURIBUS UNUM"] For Governor, ALEXANDER H. BULLOCK, OF WORCESTER. For Lieut. Governor, WILLIAM CLAFLIN, OF NEWTON. For Secretary of the Commonwealth, OLIVER WARNER, of Northampton. For Attorney General, CHESTER I. REED, of Taunton. For Auditor of Accounts, HENRY S. BRIGGS, of Pittsfield. For Treasurer and Receiver General, JACOB H. LOUD, of Plymouth. For Councillor, District No. 6, THOMAS TALBOT, of Billerica. For Senator, Middlesex District No. 1, MOSES A. DOW. For Representatives to General Court, Middlesex District No. 2, JAMES M. STONE, HENRY T. DELANO. MIDDLESEX COUNTY OFFICERS. For Clerk of Courts, BENJAMIN F. HAM, of Winchester. For County Commissioner, LEONARD HUNTRESS, of Tewksbury. For Representative to Congress, District No. 6, Nathaniel P. Banks, of Waltham.
The story on the paper
Before the Australian secret ballot reached Massachusetts, you voted by ticket: a strip of paper printed by each party, listing its candidates from Governor down to county commissioners. A voter picked one up outside the polls and handed it in. Nothing on this ticket says which election it is for, but the candidates fix it precisely: Alexander H. Bullock of Worcester was elected Governor in November 1866, and Chester I. Reed of Taunton was first running for Attorney General that year.
The name at the bottom mattered most in Waltham: "Nathaniel P. Banks, of Waltham," running for Representative to Congress from the sixth district. Banks had come home from the war and Congress in 1865 and was re-elected that November. Two years later this same bobbin boy of the Waltham mills was one of the House managers of the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson.
The engraved eagle and "E Pluribus Unum" at the top were standard party branding, meant to make the ticket look official enough to trust with a vote.
The people named in it
Nathaniel P. Banks (1816-1894)
The Waltham bobbin boy turned Speaker of the House and Civil War general. In the fall of 1866 he was running for his second postwar term in Congress from the Massachusetts sixth district.
Alexander H. Bullock (1816-1882)
Three-term wartime and Reconstruction Governor of Massachusetts, 1866-1869, who signed the state's first legislation integrating its militia.
- Type
- Printed ballot ticket
- Date
- Massachusetts state election, November 1866
- Place
- Waltham, Massachusetts