THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1864
At this time there was a presidential campaign in progress at the
North. Throughout the war, the South had the advantage of a practically
united people, while at the North there was division of sentiment, and
a violent difference of opinion as to policy. At the North there was a
political party bitterly opposing the administration which must carry
on the war, and even opposing the war itself, as unconstitutional in
its inception, blundering in its management and completely barren of
results.
Here was a fire in the rear with which Mr. Lincoln's administration was
forced to reckon, and the reckoning was a very serious one.
In 1864 the Democratic party at the North set itself resolutely against
the Lincoln administration, and in opposition to all of its plans,
to all of its policies and to all of its performances. In a national
political platform, the Democratic party declared that the war was a
failure, and in effect called for the abandonment of the Federal cause.
For president that party nominated General George B. McClellan, a
popular hero in the minds of many men, who was held by them as he held
himself, to have been baffled in his military enterprises and robbed
of his opportunities by the political antagonism of the Washington
administration, and by the prejudice that existed in Congress against
him as a Democrat.
Grant's failure to crush Lee in the field or so far to occupy him
at Petersburg, as to prevent him from sending Early to threaten
Washington, had proved to be a very great discouragement to the
Northern people. The cost of the war in men, material and money had
been enormous, and there was a widespread sentiment in the North to
the effect that it was hopeless to continue the contest. The political
feeling of Democrats in antagonism to the Republican party which was
represented by the administration was intense and implacable.
There was also a party at the North which opposed Lincoln's reëlection
upon quite other grounds than those on which the Democrats antagonized
him. This party was radical in the extreme. In its convention, which
was held at Cleveland, Ohio, at the end of May, it declared itself in
favor of an anti-slavery amendment to the Constitution of the United
States, and even urged that the lands of the Southerners should be
confiscated and divided among the soldiers who were fighting the war.
On a platform of this kind General John C. Fremont, who had resigned
from the army because of what he regarded as ill treatment at the hand
of the administration, was nominated for President. There was not
the smallest chance, of course, that Fremont could be elected upon a
platform such as this, but his candidacy seemed likely to withdraw from
Lincoln a considerable vote, which would otherwise be his.
The Republican Convention met in Baltimore on the seventh of June and
renominated Mr. Lincoln for President on a platform strongly approving
his conduct of the war and reaffirming the views that he had expressed
from time to time concerning it. At the same time Andrew Johnson, of
Tennessee, was nominated for Vice-President. Johnson was a Southerner
and was at that time acting as military governor of Tennessee. He had
always been a Democrat, but he had strongly favored the prosecution of
the war for the Union, and at that critical time when Mr. Lincoln's
reëlection seemed more than doubtful, it was deemed politic thus to
put a war Democrat on the ticket with him, by way of holding to his
support that large body of Democratic voters who favored the vigorous
prosecution of the contest.
Although Johnson was himself a Southerner, it would have been difficult
to find any man more antagonistic than he was to the ruling class of
men at the South. He had been born a "poor white,"--that is to say,
a member of that class at the South which was everywhere held in
contempt both by negroes and by white men. He had received no education
in his childhood, and it is said, could neither read nor write until
after his marriage, when his wife taught him. But he was a man of
very considerable intellectual ability, and by diligent work he had
come into prominence as a lawyer, before Mr. Lincoln selected him
to exercise the functions of military governor over the practically
recovered state of Tennessee. As every reader knows, this selection of
Johnson for Vice-President proved in the end to be a thorn in the flesh
to the Republican party. Their Democratic Vice-President was destined
to succeed to the Presidency by Mr. Lincoln's assassination, almost at
the beginning of his second term, and as President to do all that he
could to thwart and baffle the policies of the party that had elected
him.
When the Democratic Convention met in Chicago on the twenty-ninth of
August, the situation in the field was such as greatly to discourage
a large part of the population at the North. The demands of the
Lincoln administration for more and more troops had been incessant and
insistent. These demands had exhausted the willingness of the people
to respond, and the administration had been compelled to resort to a
forcible draft as a means of keeping up the armies in the field. This
resort to the policy of enforced enlistment was everywhere bitterly
resented. It was held to be un-American, un-Republican, despotic.
There was also the fact that Grant's great campaign from which so much
had been expected seemed to a large part of the people to have been a
failure. Grant had not crushed Lee, but on the contrary, Lee was so
strong that he had pushed a column under Early up to the very gates
of Washington. At the end of August Sherman had not yet succeeded in
taking Atlanta, but had suffered some severe reverses in his effort
to accomplish that object. At that time also, critical discontent at
the North was encouraged by the spectacle of Sheridan standing on the
defensive in the Valley of Virginia against a force scarcely more than
one fourth as great as his own. There was despair in many minds, and
weariness in many more.
The resources of the country had been strained well nigh to the point
of breaking. Taxes of every kind had been multiplied almost to the
limit of ingenuity. The credit of the country was so far impaired that
its paper currency had become depreciated to less than one half its
nominal value. The debt of the nation had been swelled to thousands
of millions, while its productive capacity was being more and more
impaired by the withdrawal of young men by hundreds of thousands from
their farms and their workshops. The country had given to Mr. Lincoln
soldiers by millions, and dollars by billions, and yet the war went on
with no apparent prospect of being early brought to a successful end.
For to people uninstructed in military affairs, there was little in
the situation in the field at the end of August, 1864, to encourage
the hope of a speedy ending of the struggle. The people generally did
not realize the great gain that had been made by Grant's insistent
pounding of the Confederates, nor did they understand how surely his
policy was weakening and destroying the capacity of resistance on the
part of the South. Under these circumstances, there was widespread
discontent with the administration and disgust over its seeming failure
to accomplish the purpose aimed at in the lavish expenditure of money,
and the enormous sacrifice of human life. A feeling of despair had come
over a very great part of the Northern people, and to this feeling the
Democratic party in its platform made a strongly persuasive appeal.
Among other things, the platform said, "that this Convention does
explicitly declare, as the sense of the American people, that after
four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war,
during which under the pretense of military necessity, of a war
power higher than the Constitution, the Constitution itself has been
disregarded in every part, and public liberty and private right alike
trodden down, and the material prosperity of the country essentially
impaired--justice, humanity, liberty and the public welfare demand that
immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities with a view to
an ultimate Convention of all the States, or other peaceable means, to
the end that, at the earliest practicable moment, peace may be restored
on the basis of the Federal union of the States.
"That the aim and object of the Democratic party is to preserve the
Federal union, and the rights of the states unimpaired."
It is obvious enough to us now that the election of McClellan upon that
platform would have meant the surrender by the United States of every
contention on which the war had been prosecuted. It would have been, in
effect, the triumph of the Confederacy. In any convention that might
have been called to reconstruct the Union under such conditions, the
South as the winning party in the war, would of course have dictated
its own terms.
For a time there seemed to be a very strong prospect that precisely
this would happen. The weariness of the people with the war, the
discontent aroused by excessive taxation, and by the continued
slaughter of the youth of the land, the despair of bankers and
business men over the never ceasing depreciation of the currency,--all
these and other influences tended very strongly to invite a favorable
response from the people to this appeal of a political party.
It was the opinion of many shrewd observers of that time, and is the
opinion to-day of many students of history who have closely considered
the facts, that if the election had occurred at the beginning of
September, 1864, there would have been a decisive majority of voters
in favor of this policy of surrender. But the election did not occur
until November, and in the meanwhile the military situation was
vastly changed. Sherman had taken Atlanta before November came, the
Confederate army under Hood had been put in the way of being crushed in
Tennessee, Sheridan had made himself master of the Valley of Virginia,
and Grant was steadily extending his lines southward and westward at
Petersburg, in a way which even the unmilitary observer must recognize
at last as a process foredooming Lee to destruction.
Under the influence of these changed conditions in the field, Mr.
Lincoln was reëlected with a popular majority of about 400,000 and an
electoral majority of 212 to 21. There was contention at the time that
the votes of the soldiers in the field were juggled with and falsified.
It is highly improbable that anything of that kind was done or
attempted in any considerable measure. It is certain that the election,
as it resulted, represented the determination of the North to prosecute
the war to its end.