“The Wisest Radical of All”: Reelection (September-November, 1864)
Chapter Thirty-four “The Wisest Radical of All”: Reelection (September-November, 1864) The political tide began turning on August 29 when the Democratic national convention met in Chicago, where Peace Democrats were unwilling to remain in the background. Lincoln had accurately predicted that the delegates “must nominate a Peace Democrat on a war platform, or a War Democrat on a peace platform; and I personally can’t say that I care much which they do.”1 The convention took the latter course, nominating George McClellan for president and adopting a platform which declared the war “four years of failure” and demanded that “immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view to an ultimate convention of the states, or other peaceable means, to the end that, at the earliest practicable moment, peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal Union of the States.” This “peace plank,” the handiwork of Clement L. Vallandigham, implicitly rejected Lincoln’s Niagara Manifesto; the Democrats would require only union as a condition for peace, whereas the Republicans insisted on union and emancipation. The platform also called for the restoration of “the rights of the States 1 Noah Brooks, Washington, D.C., in Lincoln’s Time, ed. Herbert Mitgang (1895; Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971), 164. 3726 Michael Burlingame – Abraham Lincoln: A Life – Vol. 2, Chapter 34 unimpaired,” which implied the preservation of slavery.2 As McClellan’s running mate, the delegates chose Ohio Congressman George Pendleton, a thoroughgoing opponent of the war who had voted against supplies for the army. As the nation waited day after day to see how McClellan would react, Lincoln wittily opined that Little Mac “must be intrenching.” More seriously, he added that the general “doesn’t know yet whether he will accept or decline.
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