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[1] ADfS, DLC-RTL; LS, MdAA. On November 3, Governor Bradford answered Lincoln:
``Your letter of 2nd inst. in reply to mine of 31st ulto. reached me to-day after I had already read it in the Baltimore papers of this morning.
``Your Excellency has in this respect the advantage of me, for although, following your example, I shall send a duplicate of this to the Press, the probabilities
are, looking to recent events, that the military authorities will not allow its publication.
``When I wrote to you on Saturday last I had not been able to procure a Copy of the Military Order in reference to the Election and acted merely on the rumor of its character. When I saw it, as I did for the first time on Sunday I found it even more objectionable . . . and when I was shown on the same day a copy of your letter to Mr. Swann, in which you say you `trust there is no just ground for the suspicion' he had expressed and declaring that you felt (mortified that there could be a doubt upon this point of your (his) enquiry' &c., which point was a suggestion by Mr. Swann, that `the election about to take place will be attended with undue interference on the part of persons claiming to represent the wishes of the Government.' I rested satisfied that I should receive from you a prompt countermand of the Order in question. If the sending out one or more Regiments of troops distributed among several of the Counties to attend their places of Elections in defiance of the well known laws of the State prohibiting their presence; ordering Military Officers and Provost Marshals to arrest voters guilty, in the opinion of such officers, of certain offences; menacing Judges of Election with the power of the Military arm in case this Military order was not respected, is not an `undue' interference with the freedom of elections, I confess myself, unable to imagine what is.
``The purport of your Excellency's remarks in your letter to me is confined chiefly to a justification of the exclusion of disloyal voters from the Polls by means of the administration of an oath of allegiance; without stopping to analyse the particular oath in question it may be sufficient to say that this clause of the Order is by far the least objectionable of the three. If any who were once citizens of the United States have been guilty of such conduct as justly disfranchises them, let them take the consequences . . . But I insist that the Judges whom the State has provided are the exclusive Judges of the question of such citizenship and that they shall be allowed to exercise their own judgment upon that question, and I shall never cease to protest against any attempt of the Military power in a loyal State to control that judgment and especially against the use of any threats tending to coerce. . . .
``The first and third Sections of the Order are the most remarkable items of the arbitrary authority it assumes. . . .
``I am aware that your Excellency has so far modified the first of said Sections, . . . but . . . whilst the modification may relieve that part of the order of some of the most immoderate of its powers it still leaves these Officers the exclusive judges of who are guilty of violence or disturbances . . . opportunity for . . . abuse of power,---the probabilities of which you may the more readily estimate when I inform you that several of them are themselves candidates for some of our most important offices. . . .'' (DLC-RTL).