President Lincoln understood that his chances of reelection in November hinged on military success in a war now in its fourth year. By the summer of 1864, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had settled in for a prolonged siege against the Confederates near Petersburg, Va., and Gen. William T. Sherman was making slow progress toward Atlanta. Confederate Gen. Jubal A. Early, meanwhile, had led his troops to the very gates of Washington, D.C. in July, and had attacked a fort guarding the capital city. The war effort seemed to have stalled for the Union, and the public blamed President Lincoln.Even getting re-nominated was not a given. We may today think of Lincoln as a god, but in 1864, he appeared to be just another failed politician. We want to think of him as this brilliant man and the best president ever, and he was, but in spring 1864, that is not even how his own party viewed him. The biggest problem was the Radical Republicans, a hardline faction within the Republican party that held the belief that Lincoln was incompetent and therefore could not be re-elected. They had already formed a party called the Radical Democracy Party, for which a few hundred delegates had convened in Cleveland, Ohio, on May 31, 1864. They had even nominated a presidential candidate in the hope that it would drive the main party to nominate someone else.In modern politics, we tend to think of a two-term president as standard. But in 1864, the last president to have been re-elected was Andrew Jackson in 1832; after him had been 8 one- term (or less) presidents. And before Jackson, the previous 2-term president was James Monroe, who ran unopposed.  So the odds on that basis alone were stacked against him.Lloyd W. Klein considers the U.S. presidential election  of 1864. Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson 1864 campaign poster.The Republican Party ConventionThe Republican Convention was held the first week of June, and the delegates who were loyal to Lincoln were so certain that they could not win election that they made a couple of major decisions about their platform and alliances. Moreover, they witnessed one of Lincoln’s cabinet who tried to get the nomination for himself.The Republican fringe group demanding a stronger position against slavery split off to form the “Radical Democracy” party and nominated John C. Frémont as their candidate. Frémont supported combat without compromise, believed that Congress should strictly control Southern reconstruction efforts, and urged the confiscation of Confederate property. Fremont had been the first Republican nominee in 1856, just before Lincoln, who had to remove him for incompetence if not corruption early in the war.Republicans loyal to Lincoln created a new name for their party at the convention in order to accommodate the War Democrats who supported the war and wished to separate themselves from the Copperheads, or Peace Democrats. The convention dropped then-Vice President Hannibal Hamlin, a Radical Republican from the ticket, and chose War Democrat Andrew Johnson as Lincoln's running mate. The National Unionists hoped that the new party and the Lincoln–Johnson ticket would stress the national character of the war. In a modern sense, they went after the “swing vote”.Salmon Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury, tried to use his connections within the Radical Republican group to get the nomination. In early 1864 he began a surreptitious campaign for the nomination but hastily ended it after pamphlets intended for private distribution were leaked to the press. He had threatened to resign 3 times during the 4 years of the first term in an effort to embarrass Lincoln. After the convention, he threatened a fourth time and this time Lincoln accepted the resignation.President Lincoln ran for a second term but replaced Vice President Hamlin on the ticket with Andrew Johnson, a War Democrat. This critical segment of the Democratic Party supported the war effort and the Republicans sought to gain their support in the 1864 election. Lincoln and his running mate supported a quick end to the war, the abolition of slavery and reconstruction of the southern states following the end of hostilities. Lincoln’s opponent, General George McClellan, ran as the nominee for the Democratic Party, which wanted to end the war and accommodate the Confederacy.  The Blind MemorandumIn August 1864, President Lincoln believed he was facing defeat in the upcoming presidential election.  There were no polls as we have today; politicians had to sense what was happening and talk with local men to understand what was going on. And what Lincoln heard must have been disturbing.Republican insider Thurlow Weed told Lincoln in mid-August 1864 that “his re-election was an impossibility.” Republican party chairman Henry J. Raymond expressed much the same sentiment to Lincoln on Aug. 22, urging him to consider sending a commission to meet with Confederate President Jefferson Davis to offer peace terms “on the sole condition of acknowledging the supremacy of the Constitution,” leaving the question of slavery to be resolved later.These are signatures of Lincoln’s cabinet members on the reverse of the “Blind Memorandum” dated August 23,1864.  Abraham Lincoln Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.It was in this context that Abraham Lincoln wrote the following memorandum on Aug. 23, 1864:“This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he can not possibly save it afterwards.  — A. Lincoln” Lincoln folded the memorandum and pasted it closed, so that the text inside could not be read. He took it to a cabinet meeting and instructed his cabinet members to sign the outside of the memo, sight unseen, which they did. Historians now refer to this document variously as the “Blind Memo” or “Blind Memorandum” because the cabinet signed it “blind.” In so doing the Lincoln administration pledged itself to accept the verdict of the people in November and to help save the Union should Lincoln not be re-elected.It would be hard to imagine a more profound document in American history, and the fact that this could be so obscure astounds me, and makes me start to compare our contemporary climate. As much as we today think our upcoming election has significant implications, its hard to even compare it to what Lincoln was experiencing. The Democratic Party OppositionThe Democratic Party still was a strong political force in the North. In August 1864 there were a lot of northerners who were tired of the war and its inconclusive results. The idea of fighting to end slavery, today taken for granted, wasn’t as popular as we might think.  The Emancipation Proclamation and the recruitment of black troops had changed the country, and not everyone liked it. The Democratic Party was generally unified in its opposition to emancipation.Many civil war histories suggest that the victories at Atlanta and the Overland Campaign changed public opinion from the summer of 1864, and surely they did. But a good part of the reason Lincoln was re-elected was that the Democratic Party self-destructed in the campaign.Had the Democrats a unified message the soldiers could support, Lincoln might have had serious trouble. But the Democrats were divided. The war democrats wanted to continue the war but seek peace soon while the peace democrats wanted to stop fighting immediately.  Ending slavery wasn’t a priority. Ending the war was.Meanwhile, the Democratic Party had not yet met to make its nomination. This conflict was resolved by nominating a war democrat McClellan with a peace position plank. The Democratic platform declared the war a failure and urged that “immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities,” which McClellan could not fully support. Moreover, once the Democrats nominated George B. McClellan for president on August 30 they saddled him with a “Copperhead” peace Democrat.There were two factions that existed among the Peace Democrats. For much of the war the Copperheads, led by Clement Vallandigham, had dominated them. The Copperheads declared the war to be a failure and favored an immediate end to hostilities without securing Union victory, either via re-admitting all the Confederate states with slavery intact and legally protected, or by formally recognizing the Confederacy as a sovereign nation and attempting to re-establish peaceful relationships.But then the Democratic Party blundered. The convention adopted proposals by Copperheads like Vallandigham and Wood calling for a cease fire and a negotiated settlement to the war; but then they selected George McClellan as their candidate.In 1863, the Peace Democrats started to splinter between the Copperheads and their more moderate members. Moderate Peace Democrats such as Horatio Seymour proposed a negotiated peace that would secure Union victory. They believed this was the best course of action because an armistice could finish the war without destroying the South. The Copperheads continued to advocate allowing the Confederate states to rejoin with slavery intact, however, believing that to do otherwise would merely lead to another Civil War sooner or later.Its often said that politics is the art of compromise, and at this moment, that was what was tried, but it didn’t work out at all. McClellan was the front runner, so a compromise was struck On the first day of the convention, a peace platform was adopted. McClellan was personally opposed to a peace platform. McClellan supported the continuation of the war and restoration of the Union, but the party platform, written by Vallandigham, was opposed to this position. He inserted a plank calling for immediate peace negotiations.This was the essential problem at the convention. General McClellan remained very popular and was the obvious choice for the role. But the Copperheads were against it. They tried to induce Horatio Seymour, the Governor of Ne York, to run. But the day before the convention, Seymour announced he would not run. Vallandigham knew he was too divisive. Several men were sounded out for the role, including former President Pierce, all of whom declined. Thomas Seymour of Connecticut received the most votes in opposition.Representative George H. Pendleton, was the vice presidential candidate. He ran against 7 others, and won on the second ballot. Pendleton, a congressman from Cincinnati,  was closely associated with Vallandigham. He was known to oppose the 13th Amendment and the concept that a state could be compelled to stay in the Union. The Candidate McClellanMcClellan ran against Abraham Lincoln, a sitting president, our greatest president, as the war was being won; and garnered 45% of the popular vote. Not only isn’t that pretty under the circumstances of voting against a sitting president in a war (the US has NEVER done this), but the Democratic Party of the 19th century was a fundamentally Southern party.  In other words, McClellan got 9/20 votes in a Northern population, running on a platform of stopping the war and reversing emancipation.Lincoln thought if elected McClellan would be forced by the Copperheads into an early truce. Once he was nominated McClellan repudiated the Democratic Party platform. As a result, whatever message intended to be sent to separate their views from Lincoln was garbled. McClellan’s campaign flailed as his repudiation of the peace plank in the Democratic platform provoked further tensions within his party.McClellan had different views about race and southern aristocracy then are accepted in modern society and that Lincoln had then: but he was not a traitor, and he did want to win the war, not lose it. McClellan emphasized the fact that he previously led the Union military effort in the War and that he was and remained committed to "the restoration of the Union in all its integrity" and that the massive sacrifices that the Union endured should not be in vain. His central argument was that he could win the war sooner and with fewer casualties than Lincoln & Grant. The CampaignBy the summer of 1864, the Civil War had gone on for over three years. Over 250,000 Union soldiers had been killed, with many more injured permanently. Victory was not yet in sight. Democrats knew that many of the policies of Lincoln were not popular, including many of those we take today as the reason for the conflict, such as emancipation, the military draft, the use of black troops, and violations of civil liberties. Democrats further suggested that the Republicans were advocating in favor of miscegenation and trying to destroy the traditional race relations. They believed they could win, and Lincoln thought that too.As if on cue, Lincoln’s fortunes began to change. General Sherman scored a tremendous victory when Atlanta fell to the Union on September 2. McClellan therefore had an ambiguous message against an articulate potus who suddenly was winning battles.Had the battlefield events gone against the Union, the election would have been much closer. The capture of Atlanta and Hood's burning of military facilities as he evacuated showed that a successful conclusion of the war was in sight, weakening support for a truce. Without the fall of Atlanta early in September, it’s easy to see how the voters might not have flocked to Lincoln. Finally northern opinion had come around to freeing the slaves and winning a war that had produced so much destruction so that there needed to be a definitive conclusion and a new beginning. In essence, this is what Lincoln was calling for in his Gettysburg Address, which we today take as almost a divine document, but in its essence, was realistically the start of the 1864 presidential campaign.As late as August 23, Lincoln considered it “exceedingly probable” that he would not be reelected. He thought the copperheads would force McClellan into accepting a negotiated settlement, so he made his Cabinet secretly promise to cooperate with McClellan if he won the election to win the war by the time that McClellan will be inaugurated. Election ResultsHistory books gloss over the closeness of the popular vote. They cite that Lincoln received over 90% of the total electoral votes (212 versus 21 for McClellan). But a 10% margin is relatively close under the circumstances. McClellan won 48% of the total vote in a bloc of states stretching from Connecticut to Illinois (Lincoln's home state); Lincoln underperformed in 1864 relative to 1860 in several crucial U.S. states (such as New York, Pennsylvania, and Indiana); and that the Republicans lost the Governorship in his (McClellan's) home state of New Jersey. We might well ask if any fool could have come that close. Which makes me wonder, if he wasn’t that stupid, are the accounts of him as a poor general really accurate?As it is, the popular vote was split 55%-45%, a good but not landslide victory. President Lincoln defeated General McClellan in the election winning twenty-two states to McClellan’s three. Lincoln easily carried the popular vote and won the greatest share of the electoral vote since James Monroe won re-election unopposed in 1820. Lincoln's win made him the first president to win re-election since Andrew Jackson, and the first two-term President unaffiliated with the Democratic-Republican Party or the Democratic Party since John Adams. The National Union ticket was the first and only winning ticket composed of members of two separate parties.Had McClellan and the Democrats had a plausible, unified peace position that didn’t appear to be total capitulation, they might have had a better shot. He only lost by 10%, which isn’t really a landslide.Senators Charles Sumner and Henry Wilson from Massachusetts wanted the Republican Party to advocate constitutional amendments to prohibit slavery and guarantee racial equality before the law. Initially, not all northern Republicans supported such measures. Eventually, these would be passed, but at the time, they were considered radical. The problems Andrew Johnson would face as president were starting in 1864.Fremont might have been a serious third-party “spoiler”, had the newspaper New York World chosen to champion his candidacy (think: FOX News). But then. Frémont was appalled at the Democratic platform, which he described as a "union with slavery". After three weeks of discussions, Frémont withdrew from the race in September 1864. In his statement, Frémont declared that winning the Civil War was too important to divide the Republican vote. He then struck a bargain with Lincoln to remove Montgomery Blair as postmaster general, so he withdrew from the race. Blair had very conservative views on race and slavery.The 1864 presidential campaign was bitter. More than for just a candidate, voters cast their ballots to determine questions underpinning the broader fate of the Union: Should the war be continued, or should a peace settlement be negotiated? How would the outcome of the war define the role of blacks in a post-war society?The bloody conflict between North and South loomed over every aspect of American life. The electorate was so divided that some argued the election should be postponed until the war was over. The fact that there was an election in the midst of a civil war is one of the great achievements our country has ever had. Our commitment to fair and free elections, and that the people decide, is our greatest ideal.Because of the Democrats’ peace platform, the election became a referendum on the war itself. The election tide turned with Union victories during the autumn of 1864 and the masses of soldiers who cast their ballots for Lincoln. The entire concept of soldiers, in the field, voting for who their leader would be, and even if the should be continued, was entirely revolutionary at the time.Lincoln was highly popular with soldiers and they in turn recommended him to their families back home. The following states allowed soldiers to cast ballots: California, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin. Out of the 40,247 army votes cast, Lincoln received 30,503 (75.8%) and McClellan 9,201 (22.9%), with the rest (543 votes) scattering (1.3%). Only soldiers from Kentucky gave McClellan a majority of their votes, and he carried the army vote in the state by a vote of 2,823 (70.3%) to 1,194 (29.7%). Suppose McClellan had Won?Had McClellan won the election, there is lots of speculation as to whether the war would have continued. The traditional argument is that Lincoln would have remained president until the inauguration, and that by March 1865 the war was all but over. McClellan would have had a victory within 4-6 weeks. He was a soldier and would not have let victory elude him.But just as plausible is that if Lincoln had been defeated it would have been a huge shock. The Confederates would have declared victory. Would Union soldiers continue to die for a cause that would never happen?McClellan was in an awkward position. He wrote that he was for restoring the Union. But that was after the war with 20-20 hindsight. However, his party's platform called for the cessation of hostilities and a negotiated settlement (meaning that the CSA would continue as a separate country). His VP was a peace candidate. His speeches at the time say he would negotiate an end to the war not fight it.If elected, would he repudiate his party and continue the war as vigorously as Lincoln? As president, he could have done so. But the price would have been alienating many or most Democrats. Had he gone the route of disregarding Democrats, he'd have been forced to cooperate closely with the Republicans (almost becoming a Republican himself in all but name).Alternatively, he could have decided to side with his party and stopped (or slowed down) the war effort --presumably during peace negotiations. The result being the CSA would win its independence.Moreover, for McClellan to have won, Sherman must fail in Atlanta and Grant must have met some disaster. In hypothetical situations, you can’t just drop McClellan into Lincoln’s shoes in March 1865. You have to account for his being there.So as with most hypotheticals, it’s too complicated to know for sure. I think the traditional view is much too simplistic. I think McClellan would have negotiated with Davis within weeks of an electoral victory.Reports of conspiracies between Peace Democrats and the Confederate government to manipulate the election abounded—including a plan, financed with a half-million Confederate dollars, to raise an insurrection among Copperheads in the West with an aim toward creating a western confederacy. The site has been offering a wide variety of high-quality, free history content for over 12 years. If you’d like to say ‘thank you’ and help us with site running costs, please consider donating here.

Most of us think we live in the most innovative time in human history. But take a step back 2,000, 3,000, or even 4,000 years, and you’ll find inventions so advanced they still puzzle modern scientists. From concrete that outperforms our best modern versions to sophisticated surgical tools, these ancient innovations tell a different story ...

Some technologies have been so advanced and secretive throughout military history that their true potential remains a mystery. These hidden weapons were developed to alter the course of warfare but ultimately disappeared due to their impracticality, secrecy, or the sheer danger they presented. Here’s a list of some of the most fascinating yet forgotten military tech and weapons that ...

Throughout history, cryptic codes and undeciphered texts have puzzled experts, hiding lost knowledge or secrets. Some remain unbroken despite decades of study, fueling speculation and mystery. From ancient inscriptions to modern ciphers, these 22 unsolved puzzles continue to challenge linguists, historians, and codebreakers, leaving their true meanings hidden in time. 22. The Voynich Manuscript (1404-1438) Discovered in the early 20th century, ...

The trope of outsiders from advanced societies using greater access to knowledge to overawe locals has a long pedigree. Take the cliché of somebody predicting an eclipse based on science, to intimidate superstitious natives with a pretense of supernatural powers. It has been repeated in fiction such as A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, ...