The Election of 1864 was one of the most important United States presidential elections of the 19th century. Occurring amidst the American Civil War (1861 to 1865), the election served as a referendum on the way that incumbent President Abraham Lincoln and his Republican Party had conducted the war thus far. Indeed, the election could be seen as a referendum on the war itself. Peace Democrats and Copperheads wanted to end the war as soon as possible, even if it meant negotiating with the rebellious Confederacy, while Republicans and War Democrats would accept nothing less than total victory over the South. In the end, Lincoln swiftly defeated Democratic candidate George B. McClellan at the polls, giving him the mandate he needed to finish the fight and win the war.

The Election of 1864 came at one of the most pivotal moments in the history of the United States. Four years earlier, the US Presidential Election of 1860 had split the nation in two – the victory of Abraham Lincoln and the new antislavery Republican Party had triggered a wave of secession, as eleven states would ultimately leave the Union to form the Confederate States of America. After the Battle of Fort Sumter, President Lincoln had called for 75,000 volunteers to crush the Southern rebellion; what followed was four grueling years of blood, as American killed American on fields that bore the names of Manassas, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville. Initially, Lincoln prosecuted the war simply to preserve the Union; the question of slavery, which had caused the sectional divide in the first place, was one that the president had been willing to put off until later, provided that he could save the country first.

But by the end of 1862, it had become apparent to Lincoln and his allies that the questions of slavery and Union were not separate issues at all but closely intertwined. In January 1863, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, freeing the hundreds of thousands of enslaved people residing in the rebellious states. That same year, the Union scored several major victories, defeating the indomitable Army of Northern Virginia at the Battle of Gettysburg and severing the Confederacy in twain at the Siege of Vicksburg. This was the condition that the nation found itself in as it geared up for yet another presidential election in 1864.

Though the Union was winning on the battlefield, tens of thousands of Northerners had already been killed, and many more had been maimed. Despite the Emancipation Proclamation, most enslaved people remained in bondage. And so, as Lincoln prepared to seek reelection, he was forced to confront both the war weariness of the nation he led, and the enmity of the radical wing of his own party, who felt he was not doing enough for the cause of abolition. For Lincoln, victory in the election of 1864 was of utmost importance. Should he fail, a successor could forge a premature peace that might result in a reinstitution of slavery or Confederate independence. For the sacrifices of the last four years to have not been in vain, Lincoln believed he had to win.

It was assumed by many that the Republican Party would renominate Lincoln to be its candidate. He was, after all, the sitting president, whose prosecution of the war and support of party values were satisfying to most Republican politicians and voters. However, there was a sect within the party who believed that Lincoln had not gone far enough in the fight to end slavery. These so-called ‘Radical Republicans’ were quick to point out that Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had only ended slavery in the rebelling Southern states; the ‘peculiar institution’ was still legal in those slave states that had remained loyal to the Union like Maryland and Kentucky. In other instances, Radical Republicans felt that Lincoln was dragging his feet on the path toward abolition, and was not as openly enthusiastic as they would have liked. To express their dissatisfaction with Lincoln’s lack of radicalism, these Republicans briefly splintered off and formed their own party, the Radical Democracy Party, and nominated John C. Frémont as their candidate.

Frémont was a familiar figure to Republicans and abolitionists across the country. A hero of the Mexican-American War (1845 to 1848) where he had earned the nickname ‘the Pathfinder of the West’, he had been the Republican Party’s first presidential candidate in the election of 1856. In the earliest months of the Civil War, Frémont was a Union general in charge of the Western Department, tasked with defending Missouri and the entire Northwest from Confederate incursion. His haughty demeanor earned him many enemies in Lincoln’s cabinet. Indeed, Frémont constantly feuded with Frank Blair, a member of the powerful Blair family whose brother, Montgomery, was Lincoln’s Postmaster General. Frémont was also accused of abusing his office, as word reached Washington, D.C. that he was enriching himself by defrauding the army. Yet, if he was hated and mistrusted by moderate Republicans and officeholders, he was adored by the party’s radical wing, since he had long been staunchly opposed to slavery.

In fact, Frémont would take advantage of his position to advance abolitionist goals. On 30 August 1861, he issued a proclamation putting Missouri under martial law and freeing any enslaved person owned by a Confederate sympathizer. This proclamation, which Frémont issued without bothering to notify the Lincoln administration, was shockingly radical – at this early stage, the war was still mainly being fought to preserve the Union, with the issue of slavery not yet taking center stage. Lincoln was not only embarrassed that Frémont had made such a sweeping proclamation without his approval, but fearful that it might drive slaveholding border states, like Missouri and Kentucky, into the arms of the Confederacy. Lamenting that Frémont “should never have dragged the Negro into the war,” Lincoln ordered him to rescind the proclamation (Carwardine, 179). Frémont refused. In response, Lincoln removed him from his command, and rescinded the proclamation himself. It would take more than a year before Lincoln would catch up to Frémont’s radicalism by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation.

The Radical Republicans never forgave Lincoln for firing Frémont, nor did the Emancipation Proclamation soothe their concerns about his zeal. On 31 May 1864, the radicals – under the guise of the Radical Democratic Party – nominated the 51-year-old Frémont as their candidate at a convention in Cleveland, Ohio. For a short while, it seemed that Frémont might be a real threat to Lincoln and the establishment Republicans; while there was almost no chance that he would actually win, he could potentially split the vote enough to allow for a Democratic victory. Indeed, Frémont was quite popular and enjoyed support amongst abolitionists, European immigrants, and War Democrats. Frémont made it clear that his issue was only with Lincoln himself, promising the Republicans that he would step aside if someone other than Lincoln was nominated.

Despite the candidacy of Frémont, most of the Republican Party was actually united behind Lincoln. In contrast, the Democratic Party was quite fractured indeed. The main split was between War Democrats, who wanted to see the war through to its conclusion, and Peace Democrats, who favored a peace settlement with the Confederacy, even if it meant agreeing to Southern independence in some capacity. Peace Democrats were further split between moderates and radicals; while moderates still wanted a negotiated peace settlement, radicals saw the war as a complete failure and were in favor of ending it immediately. These radical Peace Democrats were seen as little better than Confederate sympathizers by most Republicans, who derisively mocked them as ‘Copperheads’, likening them to a species of venomous snake. For the Confederacy, which was rapidly losing the war on the battlefield, the best chance at independence was probably the victory of a Copperhead in the general election.

On 29 August 1864, the Democrats met for their convention in Chicago, Illinois. Tensions were high, as the factionalism between War and Peace Democrats threatened to divide the party. Democratic leaders, therefore, knew they needed to find a leader popular and charismatic enough for the entire party to rally behind. They settled on General George B. McClellan, who had led the Army of the Potomac in the early years of the war, and had come within a hair’s breadth of capturing the Confederate capital of Richmond.

Like Frémont, McClellan had a personal bone to pick with Lincoln; the Republican president had considered McClellan overly cautious and had removed him from command shortly after the Battle of Antietam in 1862. Though McClellan was a War Democrat, the ticket was balanced by the vice presidential nominee, anti-war Representative George H. Pendleton. Despite McClellan’s personal preference to continue the war, the Democratic Party went against him and adopted a pro-peace platform written by the influential Copperhead Clement Vallandigham. Thus, the general election was shaping up to decide the outcome of the war itself – whether the North kept fighting would depend on the victory of either Lincoln or McClellan.

In the months leading up to the November election, Lincoln remained popular with the Republican Party. Some political leaders like Benjamin Wade and Salmon P. Chase were initially reluctant to support Lincoln’s renomination, on the grounds that he was uncertain to win; indeed, Chase even briefly sought the Republican nomination for himself. But, by the summer, it was clear that Lincoln had the support and endorsement of the entire party outside of its most radical fringes, causing the stragglers like Wade and Chase to fall in line (Chase would be rewarded for his support with an appointment to be Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court later that year). Yet Lincoln was aware it would take more than just Republican support for him to win the general election. He and his supporters opted to make common cause with the War Democrats, many of whom fiercely rejected their party’s peace platform. Republicans and War Democrats therefore formed a coalition known as the National Union Party.

The National Union Party held its first and only convention in Baltimore, Maryland, from 7 to 8 June 1864. Its nomination of Abraham Lincoln for a second term was a foregone conclusion; the convention’s main task was to choose a suitable running mate. The incumbent vice president, Hannibal Hamlin, was not chosen to remain on the ticket. Hamlin was an ally of the Radical Republicans, and most convention delegates felt a Democrat should be chosen to replace him, to underscore the party’s vision of national unity.

The party ultimately nominated Andrew Johnson, a folksy politician from Tennessee who had lately served as that state’s military governor. A Southerner and a War Democrat, Johnson was considered an ideal candidate, whose presence on the ticket might mollify those voters who felt that Lincoln was becoming too radical. After nominating the Lincoln – Johnson ticket, the National Unionists laid out their party platform which included pursuing the war until the Confederacy’s unconditional surrender, as well as a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery nationwide. The National Union Party also expressed its satisfaction with Lincoln’s prosecution of the war and praised the Union’s use of Black soldiers.

For much of the year, Lincoln remained pessimistic about his chances at victory. Although the Union Army was technically winning the war, the price was growing painfully steep. The bloody summer of 1864 was costing the Union Army of the Potomac thousands of casualties every day – the Overland Campaign, launched by General Ulysses S. Grant in Virginia, had turned into a meatgrinder, with staggering losses reported from apocalyptic engagements at the Battle of the Wilderness, Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, and Battle of Cold Harbor. Although Grant’s aggressive tactics were paying off, the butcher’s bill was steadily increasing with no end in sight. Lincoln and his allies were therefore worried that Northern voters might not think that victory was worth prolonging such a deadly conflict. If the Democrats could effectively weaponize the nation’s war weariness, then the defeat of Lincoln and the National Union Party was almost guaranteed. What Lincoln needed was a decisive battlefield success, something that would convince voters that the war was almost over and that victory was just over the horizon.

In the meantime, he had to deal with the dissent within his own ranks. Luckily for him, this would prove quite easy. Frémont was enraged by the news that the Democratic Party had adopted a ‘peace platform’. He believed that the South needed to be vanquished and thought that the Democrats and Copperheads were taking the coward’s way out by wanting to end the war before victory had been achieved. As such, when Lincoln’s supporters approached Frémont to ask him to drop out, he was prepared to do so, so as not to divide the pro-war Republican vote. However, he had one condition – that his personal foe, US Postmaster General Montgomery Blair, be removed from office. Lincoln assented to this compromise, believing that victory was worth turning Blair into a sacrificial lamb. Blair was removed from office on 24 September and Frémont, in return, withdrew from the race.

By this point, however, Lincoln’s chances of victory had significantly improved. News had reached Washington that Union forces under General William Tecumseh Sherman had captured Atlanta, Georgia, on 2 September. Not only had Atlanta been a major hub of Southern arms and supplies, but its capture opened up the Confederate heartland to the possibility of Union invasion. This was the big military victory that Lincoln needed; given enough time, the defeat of the Confederacy was practically assured.

But even though the end was now in sight, the outcome of the election was still in doubt. In the weeks leading up to the opening of the polls in November, it was clear that the result would depend in part on the soldiers’ vote; in 1864, as many as 1 million American men were actively serving in the federal army. Unfortunately for the Democrats, the vast majority of Union soldiers supported the Republican Party. It was true, of course, that McClellan – the former darling of the Army of the Potomac – still enjoyed much support amongst Union officers. However, the rank and file not only disliked their former commander but truly wanted to keep fighting. They had sacrificed too much to now accept a dishonorable peace, and most soldiers wanted to see victory over the South. “I had rather stay out here a lifetime (much as I dislike it),” wrote one soldier, “than consent to a division of our country…We all want peace, but none any but an honorable one” (quoted in McPherson, 804). These soldiers trusted Lincoln, and agreed with his campaign slogan, “Don’t change horses in the middle of a stream” (quoted in battlefields.org).

Prior to the election, 19 states had enacted provisions that allowed soldiers to vote from the field. The Democratic-controlled legislatures of three states – Indiana, Illinois, and New Jersey – however, had recently blocked measures that would allow soldiers to cast absentee ballots. But despite these measures, the fact that citizen-soldiers would be choosing the next president in most states was an extraordinary moment in the history of the US republic. As historian James M. McPherson writes,

Here was a bold experiment in democracy: allowing fighting men to vote in what amounted to a referendum on whether they should continue fighting. But as Grant put it, ‘they are American citizens, they have as much right to as those citizens who remain at home. Nay, more, for they have sacrificed more for their country’” (ibid).

The election was held on 8 November 1864. Since most of the Southern states were still in open rebellion against the federal government, only 24 states participated – Louisiana and Tennessee, Confederate states that had recently been recaptured by federal soldiers, sent presidential electors which were rejected by Congress, on the grounds that these states had chosen to leave the Union. Lincoln handily won the election. He carried 22 states, won 212 electoral votes as well as 55.02% of the popular vote. He also recieved 75% of the soldier vote.

McClellan won only 3 states, 21 electoral votes, and 44.96% of the popular vote. The reelection of Lincoln and the success of the National Union Party was one of the final death knells of the Confederacy. A little over a month after Lincoln’s second inauguration on 4 March 1865, the Southern capital of Richmond had fallen, and the last Confederate armies surrendered. Though Lincoln would not live to see the end of the war, he had succeeded in guiding the nation through it.