November 8, 1864--- Abraham Lincoln Wins A Second Term

NOVEMBER 8, 1864:       

Abraham Lincoln is re-elected President of the United States. The North, the South, and Europe watch anxiously as United States citizens go to the polls this day to choose a Chief Executive. Everyone concerned knows that the election of 1864 is a plebiscite on the conduct of the war. It is also unique in that no republic has ever held an election in the midst of a civil war. The Confederate States of course, cast no popular votes and their 80 electoral votes are a nullity. Nobody really knows how the election will turn out.

 

Lincoln himself is unsure. Although most of his advisors are blithely confident that the President will be re-elected, Lincoln himself is the canniest of politicians who is aware of just how fickle the American electorate can be. He knows that the recent string of Union victories --- Mobile Bay, Atlanta, Opequon (Winchester), Fisher’s Hill, Athens (Alabama), Marianna, Allatoona, Glasgow, Cedar Creek, Westport, and other smaller contests --- have bolstered Union morale magnificently. 

But he also knows that just about two months ago his chances for re-election were so nonexistent that he formed a Transition Committee to aid the new President in prosecuting the war. And he has not forgotten that the Richmond-Petersburg Line has not broken, that John Bell Hood is moving toward Tennessee, and that Nathan Bedford Forrest is wringing victories out of the very stones of the South. The Confederacy may be on her knees indeed, but she has risen before to grasp the Union by the throat to be knocked into the dirt. The Summer of ’64 has left a bitter metallic taste --- the taste of spilled blood --- in Lincoln’s mouth.

General George B. McClellan resigns his commission in the morning so that he can take the Presidential Oath of Office as a civilian.  No one knows whether the “Soldier Vote” will go to Lincoln or to the still-admired and respected and beloved “Young Napoleon.”

 

If Lincoln has one trump card, it is his sour Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton. Although Stanton once referred to Lincoln as “that long-armed creature,” he has come to love the President, who he sees not only as a great military and political leader but as a moral force and an avatar sent from elsewhere to guide the nation through its darkest peril. 

Stanton (with and without Lincoln’s permission) has taken steps to ensure the President’s re-election:

 

Stanton has furloughed nearly 100,000 men from the Armed Forces and has given them free transportation home so they can vote. Men in remote and forgotten frontier outposts whose only duty in the war has been to scan the horizons for Indian attacks that never come, suddenly find themselves being greeted by the Mayors of their hometowns, feted as heroes, and being led by the hand to the voting booth. Men in a thousand garrisoned towns are given leave, their places temporarily taken by U.S.C.T. (who cannot vote) and by avowed Democrats (whom Stanton does not want to vote). They are met by mothers and fathers and siblings and wives and sweethearts and children at the nation’s railroad stations who rejoice that the kind government of good President Lincoln could spare them to come home. For men in critical positions --- and in combat --- who cannot be furloughed, Stanton has convinced at least the Republican Governors of the States to experiment with a revolutionary new way of voting --- the absentee ballot --- and has made sure that the ballots can reach local Supervisors of Elections in time to be counted by designating them as military dispatches.

Stanton has also ensured a smooth and undisturbed electoral process by placing thousands of Federal troops on alert in Chicago and New York (both suspected of being terror targets on Election Day). He has likewise made sure that the election proceeds undisturbed in the restored southern states of Louisiana and Tennessee by stationing armed soldiers in every polling place. He has further made certain that there will be no hanky-panky in counting the votes by assigning handpicked, that is staunchly Republican, poll watchers and Elections Supervisors in the restored southern States and the Border States.

Exactly how many McClellanites, Copperheads, and pro-Confederates are kept away, scared away, or chased away from the voting booths on Election Day will never be known. Probably less than can be imagined, more than are estimated. A little voter fraud is encouraged, too: In Indiana, a garrison of Massachusetts volunteers is permitted to vote as native Hoosiers. Undoubtedly Indiana is not the only place this happens.

Still, the election is not an open-and-shut matter. Lincoln needs 117 Electoral Votes to win. No one really knows (until the results come in) whether voting will go easily in the south. New York, with its massive 33 electoral votes, is always a Democratic stronghold. Tennessee is in the midst of battles. Arkansas, though it has a Unionist government, is in too chaotic a condition to conduct an election. The Pacific coast States are too far away to influence. Nevada’s jackrabbit admission to the Union just a week ago is seen as a help to Lincoln, but the butternut counties of Illinois, Ohio and Indiana are Peace Democrat territory as is much of southern Pennsylvania. How Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and particularly bloody Missouri will go is a huge question mark.  

In the event, there are some irregularities. One of Nevada’s three Electors is absent and never casts a vote. After the election the United States Congress refuses to accept Tennessee’s ten electoral votes and Louisiana’s seven as a smack at Lincoln’s Reconstruction policy.  Thus, only 25 Union States participate in the election.

Still, as it transpires, the election is a massive victory for Lincoln. Lincoln wins a whopping 212 (counted) electoral votes to McClellan’s 21, 78% to 22%.    

The incumbent President receives 2,220,846 popular votes to McClellan’s 1,809,445, 55% to 45%, a plurality of 411,401 votes. 

Lincoln garners 70% of the Soldier Vote --- having rejected the “Peace Plank” of his party’s platform and having vowed to continue the war, McClellan has essentially erased any difference between them on the issue --- and a Midwestern soldier’s comment in an exit poll of sorts becomes a household expression: “Why then should we change horses in midstream?”

McClellan wins just three States --- his home State of New Jersey (7 electoral votes), Delaware (3 electoral votes) and Lincoln’s birthplace of Kentucky (11 electoral votes, where he dominates in the Soldier Vote). 

Lincoln does carry New York’s 33 electoral votes by a razor thin margin (less than 1%), Pennsylvania’s 26 by 3.5%, and Connecticut’s 6 by 2.75%. For McClellan’s part, he win’s Delaware’s by 3.6%. 

One has to wonder if Louisiana and Tennessee’s votes would have been counted in a closer election?

The extent of Lincoln’s electoral victory is clear when one considers that even if Lincoln had lost New York, Pennsylvania and Connecticut he still would have received 211 electoral votes, 94 more than he needed to win re-election.  

The Republicans also gained solid majorities in both Houses of Congress in this election cycle.

If nothing else, and there is much else, the Election of 1864 is proof positive of the strength of the democratic process and the republican form of government. 

We cannot have free government without elections. If the rebellion could force us to forgo, or postpone a national election it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.” --- Abraham Lincoln