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Introduction
The presidential election of 1864 was one of the most important
in American history. It was, first of all, remarkable that it
even occurred. It took place in the Union states during a bloody
civil war, with no precedent for voting in a divided nation, and
with seemingly ample justification for postponement. The
spirited yet orderly process of the 1864 elections, with
relatively little corruption and negligible violence, became a
sterling example and vindication of the democratic process
itself. Furthermore, it was an election in which voters cast
ballots to determine crucial questions about the direction of
the war, the government, and the society. Should the war be
sustained or a settlement sought? What role would blacks play in
the war and in a post-war society? Those and similar questions
raised some of the most fundamental issues to be considered
since the founding of the republic.
President Lincoln's
First Term: Military Affairs
In the interval between
Abraham Lincoln’s election in November 1860 and his inauguration
in March 1861, seven states of the Deep South, those most
dependent on slavery, left the union. A compromise proposed by
Senator John Crittendon of Kentucky would have extended the
Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific. Since it would have
constitutionally protected slavery south of that line, the
president-elect rejected the offer. In his inaugural address,
Lincoln vowed not “to interfere with slavery where it exists,”
yet condemned secession as unconstitutional. He also pledged to
execute federal law and hold federal property in all states. At
odds, in particular, was the situation at Fort Sumter in the
harbor off Charleston, South Carolina (the first state that
seceded). Confederate officials demanded that the Union
commander surrender the fort, which he refused to do. With
provisions dwindling, Lincoln decided to supply the fort with
non-military goods only. When Confederates fired on Fort Sumter
on April 12, 1861, the American Civil War began. Subsequently,
four more slave states left the union.
After the surrender of Fort Sumter to the Confederates, Lincoln
took unprecedented, unilateral action as president: activating
state militias; calling for federal military volunteers;
guaranteeing the government’s credit at an incredible 250
million dollars; proclaiming a blockade of Confederate ports;
suspending the writ of habeas corpus; and using military
detention of civilians (at least 15,000 during the entire war).
Although there was sharp debate over the constitutionality of
these policies, Congress or the Supreme Court acquiesced or
ratified them after the fact.
President Lincoln concentrated on his role as commander in chief
by closely monitoring events, searching for aggressive generals,
reading books on military strategy and history, and visiting
troops. The Union’s defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run in
July 1861 was disappointing, and indicated to both sides that
the war would not be short. Frustrated in 1862 by the slow pace
of Union troop movement in the Eastern Theater, Lincoln
admonished General George B. McClellan, “you must act.”
Meanwhile the president was impressed by the victories of
General Ulysses S. Grant in the Western Theater, including those
in Tennessee at Forts Henry and Donelson (February 1862) and
Shiloh (April 1862). In September 1862, Union troops repelled
Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s invasion of the North at
Antietam (Maryland). However, after Lee’s forces were allowed to
retreat to Virginia, Lincoln removed McClellan from command of
the Army of the Potomac. In early July 1863, the Union rebuffed
Lee’s second attempted invasion at Gettysburg (Pennsylvania),
and Vicksburg (Mississippi) surrendered to General Grant, giving
the Union control of the Mississippi River and dividing the
Confederacy in two. In March 1864, Lincoln appointed the gritty,
no-nonsense Grant as general-in-chief.
President Lincoln’s
First Term: Domestic Affairs
While most of Lincoln’s attention
naturally focused on the Union war effort, the Republican
Congress enacted a sweeping domestic agenda. Recent scholarship
has suggested that the president was more active in trying to
influence the legislation, particularly monetary and banking
laws, than has previously been assumed.
In order to help pay for the extraordinary cost of the war, the
Revenue Act of 1861 included the first federal income tax
(repealed in 1872). It was a 3% tax on annual incomes over $800
(equivalent to $115,000 in 2002 dollars), which excluded most
wage earners. The Revenue Act of 1862 imposed excise taxes on
numerous goods (alcohol, tobacco, yachts, jewelry, etc.),
license taxes on all professions except the clergy, an
inheritance tax, a corporation tax, and other forms of taxation.
To manage the tax and tariff systems, the act established the
Bureau of Internal Revenue. The Legal Tender Act of 1862 created
the nation’s first paper currency (called “greenbacks”) not
backed by gold or silver. The National Banking Act of 1863
established federally chartered banks, recognized the federal
bank notes as legal tender, and levied a tax on state bank notes
(to pressure state banks to become federal banks).
The Homestead Act of 1862 distributed 160-acre parcels of land
free to settlers who agreed to occupy, improve, and farm the
land for five years. Under its provisions, 270 million acres
were eventually settled. The Land Grant Act of 1862 awarded each
Union state a grant of 30,000 acres of public land for each
member in its congressional delegation. The land was to be used
as sites for colleges of agriculture, mechanical arts, or
military science. Under its provision, over 70 land grant
colleges were established. Both acts had previously passed
Congress and been vetoed by President James Buchanan, Lincoln’s
Democratic predecessor. The Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 was the
fruition of years of lobbying for a railroad line that would
connect the settled eastern part of the United States with the
West Coast. The Union Pacific Railroad Company and the Central
Pacific Railroad Company began work the next year, completing
the project in 1869.
Northern Opposition to
Lincoln
For most of his tenure in office,
Lincoln was an unpopular president. There were two main
oppositional factions: Confederate sympathizers in the Border
States and lower Midwest, and the peace wing of the Democratic
Party. The latter group believed that the Civil War was
undermining the Northern economy, civil liberties, and states’
rights. Particularly objectionable to Northern Democrats were
two Lincoln administration policies: emancipation and the
military draft.
Lincoln presented an emancipation plan to his cabinet in July
1862, but was convinced by Secretary of State William Henry
Seward to wait until a major Union victory to announce it
publicly. After the Battle of Antietam that September, the
president issued a preliminary proclamation, declaring that he
would free the slaves in Confederate-held territory if the
Confederacy did not surrender by January 1, 1863. On that day,
the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, and thousands of
slaves were subsequently freed as Union forces marched across
the South. However, it remained for the 13th Amendment (1865) to
free all the slaves and abolish the institution of slavery
permanently.
In response to the congressional enactment of a military draft
at the request of the Lincoln administration, anti-draft riots
erupted across the North during the summer of 1863. The most
serious occurred in New York City, where huge mobs demolished
draft offices, lynched blacks, and destroyed large sections of
the city in four days of looting and burning (infamously
including the Colored Orphan Asylum).
One of the most controversial incidents of suppressing antiwar
protest involved a former Democratic congressman, Clement
Vallandigham. In 1863, he purposefully violated a military
decree in Ohio against expressing Confederate sympathies in
public by condemning “King” Lincoln’s war to free blacks and
enslave whites. Vallandigham was arrested, tried, and convicted
in a military court. The incident provoked outrage in the
Northern Democratic press and undermined War Democrats’ support
of the Lincoln administration. Vallandigham appealed to the
Supreme Court, who refused to hear the case. Lincoln commuted
his prison sentence to exile in the Confederacy. Vallandigham
soon left the South for Canada, at which time Ohio Democrats
nominated him for governor. He directed his campaign from
Canada, but lost overwhelming to the Republican nominee. When he
returned clandestinely to Ohio in June 1864 and again began
speaking out against the war, Lincoln instructed military and
civilian officials to ignore him. At the Democratic National
Convention in August 1864, Vallandigham was instrumental in
convincing delegates to add a peace plank to their party
platform.
Republican Challengers
to Lincoln
As the incumbent president, Abraham
Lincoln faced several obstacles to reelection. Recent history
was against him because no sitting president had been reelected
in over three decades since Andrew Jackson won a second term in
1832. More importantly, Lincoln faced a continual barrage of
criticism aimed at his policies and leadership, particularly
against emancipation and his management of the Union military
effort. Also, Republicans had lost seats in the 1862
congressional and legislative elections. That was not surprising
for a party in power, but in the context of a protracted war of
uncertain outcome, some Republican leaders concluded that their
party needed a new helmsman if it was to achieve victory in the
1864 elections. Challengers to Lincoln for the presidential
nomination surfaced as early as 1863.
In an effort to broaden their appeal, Republicans had begun
calling themselves the National Union party and invited War
Democrats to join them in the new alliance. A few of the
Republicans who were unhappy with the president thought that
General Benjamin Butler, the Union military commander of New
Orleans, could unite War Democrats with the radical and moderate
wings of the Republican party. The general lacked sufficient
support within the party organization, however, and declined the
overtures. A group of radical Republicans tried to persuade Vice
President Hannibal Hamlin to throw his hat into the ring, but he
stood loyally by Lincoln. The New York Herald urged the
nomination of General Ulysses S. Grant, but the Union commander
was horrified at such a prospect and was adamant that Lincoln’s
election was necessary to the Union cause.
The Chase Candidacy
A more genuine threat to the president’s nomination came from
his ambitious and talented secretary of the treasury, Salmon P.
Chase of Ohio. The dissatisfaction of abolitionists and radicals
with Lincoln, especially regarding his hesitancy toward both
emancipation and the use of black troops, worsened in December
1863 when the president announced his reconstruction plan, a
policy that the radicals judged to be far too mild and cautious.
Chase’s commitment to racial equality, on the other hand, was
firm and long-standing. The nucleus of his campaign included
Whitelaw Reid, the Washington correspondent of the Cincinnati
Gazette, Senator John Sherman and Representatives James
Garfield and James Ashley, all from the secretary’s home state
of Ohio, and Senator Samuel Pomeroy of Kansas, who felt slighted
by Lincoln’s distribution of patronage in Kansas. For his part,
Chase used Treasury Department patronage to gain support for his
candidacy, and he cooperated in the preparation of a campaign
biography.
In February 1864, the Chase campaign circulated two pamphlets,
both calling for a new president, and the second one explicitly
designating Chase as the man for the job. The latter, which
became known as “the Pomeroy circular,” had been intended for
private dissemination but was leaked to the press. Rather than
generate support, its publication created an anti-Chase
backlash, prompting even the Republicans of his home state to
endorse the president’s reelection. Lincoln himself had
essentially ignored Chase’s political activities, but the
president’s followers had been working diligently behind the
scenes to bolster support for his renomination. Their efforts
resulted in numerous state and local Republican organizations
climbing aboard the Lincoln bandwagon. Within a few weeks after
the fiasco of the Pomeroy circular, Chase announced publicly on
March 5 that he was not a candidate for the presidential
nomination.
In late June, Chase offered to resign his cabinet post, an empty
gesture the secretary had made several times before. This time,
however, the president accepted it. When Chief Justice Roger
Taney died on October 12, the president knew of Chase’s great
desire for the position, but delayed in appointing him. Chase
got the message and took to the stump for Lincoln’s reelection.
Shortly thereafter, he received the Supreme Court nomination.
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Warning
1860
