Surprising Amount of Opposition to Lincoln’s Reelection

Most modern polls show that the American people consider Abraham Lincoln the greatest president in the nation’s history. He guided the Union to victory over the Confederate States of America during the Civil War, issued the Emancipation Proclamation to free the Confederacy’s slaves, delivered what is universally hailed as one of the greatest of all speeches (the Gettysburg Address), and his legacy was burnished by his tragic assassination just as the Civil War was ending. Therefore, it may surprise many people to learn that Lincoln’s reelection in the presidential campaign of 1864 was very much in doubt.

The man he once appointed head of all Union armies, General George B. McClellan, was Lincoln’s opponent and bitter rival in the 1864 election. By late 1864 growing numbers of the public and press were tired of the long war’s cost: too many people had died, and the nation’s debt was growing. Several of Lincoln’s policies, including the wartime draft and the Emancipation Proclamation itself, were unpopular. However, in the end Lincoln won convincingly, gaining 55% of the popular vote and crushing McClellan in the electoral vote 212 to 21 as Lincoln won 22 states to McClellan’s 3. Lincoln’s administration and policies were affirmed, and he went on to lead the Union to victory in the war.

The following three historical newspaper articles, all published on Election Day, reflect some of the opposition to Lincoln in the 1864 election. The first article was reprinted by a Southern newspaper that attributed it to a “Northern Paper” without proper identification. This article was published by the Augusta Chronicle (Augusta, Georgia) on the front page of its Nov. 8, 1864, issue:

Democratic Warnings against Lincoln’s Re-election

Mr. Lincoln was not worth five thousand dollars on the day he was inaugurated. He now confesses that he is worth five millions of dollars.

Over fifty men were discharged from the Brooklyn Navy Yard on Saturday for the sin of being for McClellan.

Do you want another draft? If you do, vote for Lincoln. He is your man.

Keep it before the people, that Abraham Lincoln unnecessarily and wickedly sacrificed the lives of one hundred thousand men south of the Rapid Ann during the past summer, in the experiment made to prove that his “plan” was better than General McClellan’s plan.

If Abraham Lincoln is re-elected, we will have another draft, before three months, and it will be the heaviest draft that has yet taken place. It will not be for one year or for three years, but for the war—and God only knows how long that will be.

Every man, therefore, who votes for Lincoln, votes to make himself liable to another heavy draft.

Everyone who is in favor of a draft for five hundred thousand men every sixty or ninety days during the next four years, should not fail to vote for Lincoln and Johnson. All those opposed, will vote for McClellan and Pendleton.

This article was published by the Cincinnati Enquirer (Cincinnati, Ohio) on Nov. 8, 1864:

The Cost of Transportation

A Springfield correspondent of the St. Louis Republican says:

A New York surgeon stationed here obtained a furlough and transportation, yesterday, to go to New York to vote. The transportation will cost the Government forty-two dollars, which is to be paid by the tax-ridden people. It is in this way that Lincoln is using the people’s money to re-elect himself. It is estimated that it will cost the Government five millions of dollars to pay for transporting soldiers home to vote. No soldiers are furloughed and allowed to go home except they are known to be for Lincoln. Thus Lincoln is using millions of the people’s money as an electioneering fund to secure his own election.

This long editorial was printed by a leading newspaper right in the nation’s capital. Although it supported Lincoln in his first term, the paper decided he had veered from his stated objective “to be guided by the Constitution and the laws,” and therefore the paper endorsed McClellan’s candidacy. This editorial was published by the Daily National Intelligencer (Washington, D.C.) on Nov. 8, 1864:

The Day of Decision

The Presidential canvass which this day comes to an end has been wholly without precedent in the history of the country, whether regarded in its substantial issues or in its collateral aspects. In the heart of a great civil revolution, stirring society to its lowest depths, the people have been called to consider the elements that make up the political situation, and to decide what direction shall be impressed on the mighty current of the events passing before their eyes…

On Mr. Lincoln’s accession to power, and after the advent of civil war, we gave to his Administration the fullest support it was in our power to give. The hearts of the loyal people of the whole nation were fused into one glowing mass of patriotism by the flames of the conflict. The political dross of more than a quarter of a century was purged away as in an instant by that fiery ordeal. Old issues passed away. Wire-drawn discriminations about banks, tariffs, internal improvements, &c. disappeared. The simple question was, “who will support the Government against armed sedition?” The simple object of the war, at the same time, was avowed to be the restoration of the Union under the Constitution.

To the support of the Government, as established by the Constitution, we are irrevocably pledged, under all Administrations. And in supporting the Government, as we conceive, we have given to the present Administration all the support we could honestly give it in consistency with our paramount allegiance to the Constitution and the laws. When its measures have seemed to us constitutional and expedient we have given them our earnest cooperation. When they seemed otherwise, we have never failed to indicate our opinion, as duty and candor required at our hands. And just in proportion as the Administration has, in our eyes, strayed from the simple paramount obligation imposed upon it, to conduct the war for the Union under the Constitution, have been the frequency and the earnestness of our dissent from its policy and measures, until in the end, when called to consider the rival claims of Mr. Lincoln and Gen. McClellan in the present canvass, it was not difficult to decide which of them, in consistency with our known opinions, was entitled to receive our support, if we took any side in the struggle…

The support of the candidacy of Gen. McClellan followed so naturally and necessarily from the convictions of political duty inculcated in these columns since the outbreak of the war, that we have never paused in the intervals of the canvass to offer any explanations, much less any defense of our course. We had simply to ask which of the two candidates frankly accepts the conditions of our political problem as they were stated by Mr. Lincoln himself at a time when, in common with the great mass of the nation, we were giving him our confidence and support; for it was on the 4th of July, 1861, that President Lincoln, in his message to Congress, wrote as follows:

“Lest there be some uneasiness in the minds of candid men as to what is to be the course of the Government towards the Southern States after the rebellion shall have been suppressed, the Executive deems it proper to say, it will be his purpose then, as ever, to be guided by the Constitution and the laws; and that he probably will have no different understanding of the powers and duties of the Federal Government relatively to the rights of the States and the people, under the Constitution, than that expressed in the inaugural address.

“He desires to preserve the Government, that it may be administered for all, as it was administered by the men who made it. Loyal citizens everywhere have the right to claim this of their Government, and the Government has no right to withhold or neglect it. It is not perceived that, in giving it, there is any coercion, any conquest, or any subjugation, in any just sense of those terms.”

That was then the platform of President Lincoln, as it was ours. Today it is the platform of Gen. McClellan, as it still is ours. Standing on this platform we were willing to cooperate with Republicans in 1861. Standing on this platform we have been willing to cooperate with Democrats in 1864. What we were not willing to do in 1861 and what we are not willing to do in 1864 is to desert this platform of principles for the sake of following the lead of any party in schemes which we believe to be subversive of the Constitution and fatal to the Union. We can yield much in the way of administrative measures, but we cannot yield the fundamental principles of our political polity as we understand them. We cannot turn revolutionists in the act of suppressing sedition, and hence it is that, in the present election, we have preferred to act with that party which, without regard to antecedents, seemed to us the most conservative of the vital principles of the Government, as involved in our present complication. It has not been with us a question which of the parties in the past was the wisest and the best, but which today is best fitted to check the tendencies which have received too much development and impulse from the drift of events during the last four years.

For more information, visit the Abraham Lincoln: An Extraordinary Life website provided by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

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