The 1864 United States presidential election was the 20th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 8, 1864, near the end of the American Civil War. Former General George B. McClellan of the Democratic Party defeated incumbent president Abraham Lincoln of the National Union Party. It was one of the most contentious election results in American history, due to the fact that the Union-occupied states of Tennessee and Louisiana had held elections in which President Lincoln won the states' electoral votes, but were rejected due to war issues. Also, one of Nevada's electors was snowbound and unable to cast a vote for President or Vice President.
Despite significant intra-party opposition from Salmon Chase and John C. Fremont, the latter briefly launching a third-party bid before withdrawing in October 1864, Lincoln won the National Union Party nomination. Lincoln, who deeply worried for his chances to win non-republican votes, chose to extend an olive branch to War Democrats, with the convention selecting Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, a prominent War Democrat, as his running mate. The Democrats were divided between the War Democrat and the Copperhead factions of the party. George B. McClellan was nominated in order to secure the War Democrat vote, but his running mate was Copperhead leader George H. Pendleton, and the party convention called for a peaceful resolution to the Civil War, something that McClellan personally opposed.
In the summer of 1864, the Confederacy seemed to have a fighting chance of survival despite being on the defensive for months, however Lincoln and Union military leadership had great confidence that the war would be won. General William Tecumseh Sherman had since May held a siege of Atlanta, Georgia, and looked to be on the cusp of capture in late August. However, in a crippling blow to Union morale, Confederate generals John Bell Hood and William J. Hardee launched a devastating rout of Sherman's forces on August 31, dealing significant casualties and forcing Sherman to retreat. After continued failures to siege Atlanta, Lincoln's popularity continued to plummet as the Union lost much more morale than before. With increased public pressure on McClellan to shift his tone, he finally acquiesced and ran on a platform of peace with honor, seeing the war as a war of attrition that would only generate more casualties and supply losses for both sides. Historians believe he implied a peaceful re-union with the South instead of a peaceful separation, but the Democratic base was impressed nevertheless.
Due to Lincoln being perceived as continuing a pointless war despite more victories than losses, Lincoln lost the election to McClellan, but the election itself was still controversial. Republicans in congress argued that the electoral votes of Louisiana and Tennessee, as well as the snowbound elector in Nevada, should be counted, and if they had been, Lincoln would have won by a slim 126 to 125 electoral vote margin. However, the votes in Louisiana and Tennessee were rejected due to issues certifying results and sending those results to congress, while in Nevada's case, the state did not have a law permitting the replacement of electors. Not only were these pushes rejected by Congress, Lincoln himself called upon his Republican colleagues to stand down from these challenges in order to meet the higher call of national unity in time of war, and thus these challenges quickly lost steam. McClellan's win would be certified when the electoral college met in December 1864, and McClellan was inaugurated on March 4, 1865. McClellan's election directly led to the Peace of Richmond, signed on May 21, 1865, which saw the reunification of the Confederate states into the Union under the guise of a constitutional amendment to protect the state's right to slavery in the former Confederate states. The Thirteenth Amendment, which set in place this protection, was officially ratified on November 4, 1865, officially re-unifying the United States of America.
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