The presidential election of 1864 transpired at a time when the country was divided, both geographically and politically, by war. The outcome of the election would ultimately be decided by swiftly changing political tides.
The majority of Republicans backed the current president, Abraham Lincoln; but Lincoln had a significant number of detractors even within his own party. They accused Lincoln of being too eager to compromise, lacking conviction, and of offering up ill-timed jokes, putting Lincoln’s renomination at first in doubt.
However, his Republican supporters had a plan. Dissention within the Democratic Party, due in part to the recent death of their leader, Stephen A. Douglas, divided the northern Democrats into three factions: War Democrats, Peace Democrats, and Copperheads. War Democrats put patriotism above party loyalty and supported Lincoln, and the Republicans sought an alliance with them. A partnership with the War Democrats brought a temporary end to the Republican Party, as the new alliance named themselves the Union Party.
Lincoln won the nomination of the Union Party, and selected Andrew Johnson as the Vice Presidential candidate on his ticket. Johnson, a War Democrat and slave owner from Tennessee, had never attended school but taught himself to read. Apprenticed to a tailor at the age of ten, he became active in politics as a teenager and stood out as a powerful orator. Johnson rose through the political ranks to become a congressman, governor of Tennessee, and a United States senator. He campaigned for the rights of impoverished white planters, but refused to secede from the Union with his home state. Lincoln believed that choosing Johnson as his Vice-Presidential running mate would give him the widespread appeal necessary to achieve re-election.
The Peace Democrats were party loyalists, and they withheld their support of Lincoln but did not take any radical action against him. The Copperheads, however, openly demonstrated their disdain for the Lincoln administration with physical and political attacks against Lincoln, the draft, and emancipation.
The Copperheads, aptly named after the snake that strikes without warning, were led by a notorious man named Clement L. Vallandingham. Venomously outspoken against the war, he was eventually brought before a military tribunal on the charge of making treasonable utterances. Convicted in 1863, he served a prison term and was banished from the Union.
However, Vallandingham did not quietly go away. He eventually resurfaced in Canada, and ran for the governorship of his home state of Ohio from foreign soil. He was not victorious in that election but did garner a significant number of votes. He eventually made his way back to Ohio, but was never prosecuted for violating his exile.
After the War Democrats joined forces with the Republicans, the Copperheads and the Peace Democrats comprised what was left of the Democratic Party. They nominated General George B. McClellan as their candidate for president in 1864. Known affectionately as “Little Mac” by his soldiers, McClellan was a stern perfectionist who demanded precision from his troops. However, his methodical practices had earned him the nickname “Tardy George” from his critics, including President Lincoln, who in 1862 had grown weary of McClellan’s reluctance to move forward on the battlefield. Lincoln finally issued a direct order for McClellan to approach and fight at the Peninsula Campaign, where the Seven Days Battles occurred. Although McClellan was defeated at the Peninsula, he had managed to garner enough popular support to earn the Democratic nomination for President in 1864.
Throughout the presidential campaign the country was at war, and the campaign itself was no different. The Union Party hurled insults at the Democrats and the Democrats responded in kind. Lincoln began to grow despondent, believing that he had lost the campaign even before the first vote was cast. But the face of the war was constantly changing, and the political tide rolled back in Lincoln’s favor.
The catalyst for this change was a series of Northern victories in Mobile, Alabama; Atlanta, Georgia; and the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. With these victories, Lincoln had the faith of the people, particularly the soldiers. Leaving nothing to chance, many Northern soldiers were furloughed during the election to improve Lincoln’s vote count. Other Northern soldiers were allowed to vote multiple times to log the votes of their counterparts who were still on the battlefields. When the results were tallied, Lincoln carried the popular vote by only about 400,000 votes out of four million cast, but he garnered 212 Electoral College votes to McClellan’s 21.