3-011-649 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Election Day in New York: a polling-place among the "Upper Ten", 1864. Crowds at a polling station on 8 November, '...the day of the Presidential election, as well as of the State elections...[The scene is] the upper part of the city, near the fashionable avenues...[of] the aristocratic quarter. Here the poll is taken...in the office of a veterinary surgeon, attached to a livery stable. At any time from sunrise to sunset (which is the time allowed for depositing votes) knots of the richer class of New York citizens - the Upper Ten Thousand, as they are called, are to be seen congregated at this point, anxiously discussing the chances of the rival candidates. Mixed with these, however, a sprinkling of the rougher element is here and there conspicuous. There are, indeed, two or three young men in the crowd who might, on any other day, be seen parading Broadway in rather swell costume, but who have, on this occasion, come out as...pugilistic partisan bullies, attired after the fashion usually affected by those members of the 'Lower Twenty' who 'travel on their muscle.' They have red shirts on, without any collar or cravat; pilot coats, and heavy cowskin boots pulled over their trousers...which shows them to be members of some Fire Company'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.