Mail-in ballots were part of a plot to deny Lincoln reelection in 1864

chron.com

37 points·benryon··4 comments

Interesting and relevant story, if true. Apparently this story is part of a Washington Post series called "Retropolis: The past, rediscovered". I can't find any information on the WaPo website about the author, Dustin Waters, but I didn't look too hard. Waters doesn't cite the historical sources he uses. I guess we're supposed to believe him because of the stellar reputation of the Washington Post.

He does mention the name of the man who uncovered the ploy, Orville Wood. Also the names of the main perpetrators: Moses Ferry of Baltimore, Edward Donahue, H. Cromdell. He mentions a trial, of which there must be a record, and an article about it published in the New York Times the day after the trial.

All true. The problem is that Waters is not a credible source for this information. He read it somewhere else, hopefully in a reputable source, but didn't cite the source in his article. In my opinion, that's not trustworthy behavior.

That is standard practice for news media.

Even if a source is cited, you should remain suspicious. The source might not justify the reporting.

Even if you see video with your own eyes, you should remain suspicious. The video could be missing important context, as it was in the George Floyd case. There, the news media privately saw the bodycam video (which paints a very different picture) but continued to push a misleading account of the event.

If you trust anything from New York Times or from CNN, you should trust this too. It's at least as credible, if not more so.

It's an interesting story, because we see history repeating. The postal worker union has already endorsed a candidate. Here we see a postal worker sneaking off to destroy campaign materials: https://twitter.com/SheriffTNehls/status/1276646406682484736

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