The reelection of the President, during this
time of war, is in serious doubt. First, he was elected with a minority
of the popular vote with the country deeply divided. He is a target of
continual ridicule, both in the media and by the opposition party. He is
accused of being incompetent and totally unprepared for the job of President.
The President initiated the war which is not
going well, some say it is going disastrously. There is a growing sense
of war weariness. A growing numbers of highly placed and influential
individuals in his own party are of the opinion that he is not pursuing
the objectives of the war vigorously enough. As is well known there are
deep divisions in his own cabinet.
The Democratic party is, in the main, a “peace
party”, opposed to the war, although there are Democrats who support the
war. However, the nominee of the Democratic party is a man with a distinguished
military record who does support the war although differing with President
on how to conduct the war. The hope of leaders in the Democratic
party is that the war record of their nominee will insulate them against
a perception of a party that is in opposition to the war.
No, I am not writing about the election of
2004; I am writing about the election of 1864.
The Democratic party was a “peace party” in favor of going back to
the status pro ante. That is they were willing to let the South back
into the Union without eliminating slavery. It is fair to say that
Lincoln initiated the war by provisioning Fort Sumner and unilaterally
denying the South the right to secede. There was no congressional
vote and the legitimate constitutional issue involved was ultimately settled
on the battlefield and not by the Supreme Court.
Lincoln was ridiculed for being an uneducated
“baboon”, and was routinely called far worse names by the newspapers and
by his opponents than is Bush. His own cabinet was deeply divided, much
more so than is the case with Bush, and not only did members of his own
party oppose him but many influential Republicans even wanted to
deny him the nomination. Horace Greeley said in the summer of 1864 “Mr.
Lincoln is already beaten. He cannot be elected. And we must have
another ticket to save us from overthrow.”
To put it mildly, the Union Army had suffered
exceedingly high casualties and the country was very war weary.
In 1864 Grant and his Army of the Potomac pushed South along a line east
of Richmond in a series of bloody battles in which the Union Army
typically suffered three times as many casualties as did Lee’s defending
Army. Grant knew that although the casualties were numerically greater
in his Army they were proportionally much higher for Lee.
Just before the Democratic Convention in Chicago
Lincoln presciently told one of his close associates “ They must nominate
a Peace Democrat on a war platform or a War Democrat on a peace platform,
and I personally can’t say I care much what they do.” The platform
of the Democratic party in 1864 was indeed a peace platform and the Democrats
did indeed nominate a War Democrat in the person of Union General George
McClellan, who had been and still was highly regarded by his troops in
the field.
Of course, in contrast to these strong parallels
there also were vast differences the situation in 1864 and that which we
find ourselves in 2004. During the Civil war, the casualties in the
Union Army, as well as on the Confederate side were horrendous, The Union
Armies suffered 400,000 war dead during the Civil War out of a total population
in the North and West of approximately 24 million. As Grant moved
south in 1864 to what amounted to essentially a stalemate in the siege
of Petersburg south of Richmond his armies sufferd 61,000 casualties in
May and June alone. There was scarcely a family in either North or South
who hadn’t been touched personally by the war. To make matters worse a
Confederate Army swiftly moved up the Shenendoah Valley virtually unopposed
and attacked weakly defended Washington actually from the north via Silver
Spring before being turned back. At great risk to his own safety
Lincoln witnessed this battle in person. One cannot legitimately compare
casualties and war weariness from a one year old war with 800 dead with
the unspeakably carnage of the Civil war. On the other hand, Lincoln
was not confronted with 24/7 cable news, multiple polls and daily second
guessing of military decisions in the field.
In September Sherman took Atlanta. In November,
Abraham Lincoln won the election with 212 electoral votes to McClellan’s
21. Lincoln won 54% 0f the popular vote and 78% of the soldier vote
which was counted separately. The rest, as they say, “is history”