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A blogger has notice some similarities between now and the presidential election of 1864. Lincoln was running against General George McClellan. Lincoln had fired McClellan, a West Point graduate, in 1862.
In 1864, the Civil war was going badly for Lincoln. More radical members of his own party thought that he was not prosecuting the war vigorously enough. The summer of 1864 was one of the darkest seasons of Lincoln’s presidency. During a three-month span that summer, Union casualties totaled 110,000, double the number during any comparable period of the war. Newspaper editors, members of Congress, and others heavily criticized Lincoln for his insistence that the Confederacy must end slavery as a condition of peace. Some of his other policies were equally unpopular. In August, Lincoln gloomily predicted to a friend that he was “going to be beaten, and unless some great change takes place, badly beaten.”
Lincoln’s opponent in the 1864 presidential race was Peace Democrat George McClellan. The Democratic Party platform, adopted at the party’s convention at the end of August, demanded an immediate end to the war. Southerners rejoiced. The Charleston Mercury exulted that a Democratic victory in November–just two months away at that point–“must lead to peace and our independence . . . if . . . we hold our own and prevent military success by our foes.”
Hat Tip to www.adamyoshida.com
Posted by Ted at February 16, 2004 8:12 PM