ELECTION #20, 1864. The NASTY-METER IS 4.

QUOTE from Abraham Lincoln in the campaign of 1864. "You don't want to change horses in midstream."

Abraham Lincoln took office under stresses felt by no other president, before or since. Before his inauguration seven states had seceded from the Union and a month after his inauguration, Confederate artillery opened fire on Fort Sumter, in South Carolina, and the Civil War began.

The CANDIDATES in 1864.

REPUBLICAN: ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

Throughout the war he was severely criticized for his conduct as Commander-in-Chief; some called him a dictator, and not a very good one. Despite the criticism, some of it from members of his own Republican Party, he was renominated at the Republican convention, in Baltimore, in June of 1864. Still, no one was at all sure that he could win the presidency again. Republicans, like Horace Greeley said, "Mr Lincoln is already beaten." And Republican Boss Weed of New York said, "I told Mr. Lincoln that his reelection was an impossibility."
So a nervous Lincoln carefully picked his running mate with the idea of balancing the ticket and getting some votes from the border states - he picked Andrew Johnson, former Democrat (he had remained loyal to the Union) and senator from Tennessee.

DEMOCRAT: GEORGE B. McCLELLAN

In 1862, Lincoln had fired McClellan as commander of the Union forces, after the bloody battle at Antietam. Lincoln had told him, "If you don't want to use the army, I should like to borrow it for a while." After the firing the northern Democrats started talking up the embittered McClellan as their candidate in 1864 - even though he was a plodding general, insubordinate to Lincoln (whom he openly despised), and a divisive presence in the army. The Democrats still believed he was the only man capable of defeating Lincoln.

The CAMPAIGN in 1864.

The Democrats went after Lincoln in a big way. McClellan said, "The President is nothing more than a well meaning baboon, he is the original gorilla. What a speciman to be at the head of our affairs now!" The Republican newspaper, The New York World, said, "Honest Abe has few honest men to defend his honesty." Other Republican newspapers accused Lincoln of wanting only to be president in order make $25,000 a year; and that he stands 6'12" in his socks, which he changes once every ten days; and his anatomy is composed mostly of bones, and when walking he resembles the offspring of a happy marriage between a derrick and a windmill.

The Republicans and Lincoln retaliated. They said McClellan (Little Mac) kept to the rear of his army during any combat. Lincoln called the Union Army McClellan's bodyguard, and another Republican said that, during a retreat, "McClellan for the first time in his life was found in the front of his troops." Lincoln was not innocent of some political shenanigans. To please some high powered Republicans he acquiesced to their demands. There was a third party candidate named John Fremont (the 1856 Republican candidate)who was nominated by the Radical Republicans, who had splintered from the Republican Party in 1863. In order to get Fremont to drop out of the race Lincoln did what Fremont and some high-powered Republican wanted. He said he'd drop out if Lincoln would fire the Postmaster General Montgomery Blair, who hated Fremont and the Radical Republicans. On September 22. 1864, Fremont quit the race and the next day Lincoln fired Blair. Lincoln was relieved because he was very much afraid that Fremont would've taken Republican votes away from him in the November election.

The WINNER was ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

Lincoln got 2,218,388 popular votes and 212 electoral.
McClellan got 1,812,807 popular and 21 electoral.

The main reason Lincoln won was that the war was turning in favor of the Union by the fall of 1864. General Sherman had taken Atlanta which was immensely popular aand very helpful for Lincoln. And General Grant's Wilderness Campaign in Virginia, in 1864, against General Robert E. Lee, had kept Lee's Army from breaking off to try and stop Sherman's march through the heart of the South to Atlanta.