Democratic National Convention, Chicago, August 29–31, 1864
The delegates cheered as the band struck up “Dixie.”1
Powerbrokers of the Democratic Party roamed the Amphitheatre in Chicago. Democrats had delayed their convention for two months in the hope that public opinion would continue to shift in their favor in arguably one of the most critical elections in American history. While the party was divided, Peace Democrats dominated the convention. They believed a course correction was needed to resolve the war and proposed an immediate armistice, followed by negotiations and a willingness to grant the South their independence to achieve peace.
Another wing of the party, the War Democrats, believed in continuing the war, vying for power in a den of asps—the Peace Democrats were pejoratively named “Copperheads” for the poisonous snake that silently sneaks up and strikes its prey without warning, as well as the copper pennies they wore on their lapels designating their affiliation. One Copperhead acidly described the opposing faction: “There is not a difference between a War Democrat and an Abolitionist. They are both links in the same sausage, made from the same dog.”2 Despite their differences, both sides agreed that Lincoln and the Republicans had destroyed the country, and ending slavery was off the table. The war being waged in the Shenandoah played a crucial role. Discussion of house burnings and other potential violations of constitutional rights and civil liberties took center stage.
Racist rants coursed through many speeches. “This war is an unholy fight. Soon the net is to be drawn that will gather in its half-million more to feed the insatiable thirst for blood of the Negro God. Let us demand a cessation of the sacrifice until the people shall pronounce their great and emphatic verdict for peace, and let the tyrant understand that the demand comes from earnest men and must be respected,”3 one delegate spewed.
Another delegate, G. C. Sanderson of Pennsylvania, argued that the war was not being fought to preserve the Union: “What is this war for? The n—er. It is for the n—er against the white man. I think we don’t want our bosoms stuffed so much with damned n—ers this warm weather. I don’t believe the negro is equal to the white man. Is it not high time that this infernal war was stopped?”4
The Copperheads’ leader, Clement Laird Vallandigham, drove the convention’s agenda. One contemporary newspaper reported, “The truth is, the masses of the party sympathize with radical men like Vallandigham. He is today the idol of the crowds. He is the great favorite of the masses of the country precincts, who crowd the convention and the city. Today, were they allowed their preference, they would nominate him unanimously for their presidency.”5
Weeks before the convention, Vallandigham illegally returned to the United States under a phony name and emerged as one of the Democrats’ most powerful voices. Despite the calls from the governor of Indiana and other politicians to lock up the Ohioan, Lincoln wisely deferred, allowing him to freely mingle in Chicago, as his arrest itself could have sparked a rebellion in the Northwest. Lincoln saw value in Vallandigham’s presence in further dividing the Democrats at the convention.
Swashbuckling captain Thomas Hines, Kentuckian John B. Castleman, and sixty Confederates covertly traveled to the Windy City and executed the first phase of the so-called Northern Conspiracy with Vallandigham’s Sons of Liberty. To aid in inciting an insurrection, the Confederate Secret Service and the Sons of Liberty planned on freeing nearly 8,000 Confederate prisoners from nearby Camp Douglas. “Our operation shall be confined to and directed against railroads, public stores, steamers, buildings in the public use, and such things and property as are of benefit to the enemy and the destruction of which will advance the interests of the Confederacy.” For the past several months, the Secret Service had plied the Sons of Liberty with tens of thousands in cash and had covertly run thousands of pistols and rifles through Northern lines or purchased them in the North to arm the Copperhead groups. Castleman and Hines also planned to hit the Federal arsenal in Springfield. But to Hines and Castleman’s utter dismay, when the time came for the uprising, the Sons of Liberty got cold feet. Castleman bemoaned their “obvious timidity.” The Sons of Liberty put their influence behind the ballot box, for now. The best the Confederate operatives could secure were promises from them to implement the plan after the election. Had the operation proceeded as planned, the result could have been devasting, as one newspaper article months after the plot related: “The consequence would be that the whole character of the war would be changed, its theater would be shifted from the border to the heart of the free states.”6
Instead of fomenting insurrection, Vallandigham emerged as the force behind the party’s major political planks on August 30—a crucial victory of the Confederate Secret Service’s influence operations. Through their asset, they had effectively written the Democratic Party’s campaign platform. Significantly, the committee that Vallandigham chaired resolved to “demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities.”7
The delegates assembled to nominate a presidential candidate on the steamy day of August 31, 1864. War Democrats put forth George McClellan, fearful that if he was not the nominee, he might run as an independent and split the Democratic vote. The Peace Democrats put forth the governor of New York, Horatio Seymour, a frequent guest of the Confederate Secret Service at St. Lawrence Hall.8 The Copperheads even proposed the toxic Vallandigham amid cheers from the crowds and an occasional hiss. Some members also suggested former president Franklin Pierce. McClellan was the Democratic front-runner. As Lincoln predicted, the Copperheads knew their best chance of winning was to promote a War Democrat on a peace platform, but numerous Copperhead speakers complained about the general’s activities during the war. One angry Marylander decried, “What you ask me to do is, in reality, to support the man who stabbed my own mother; and I for one—and I believe I speak for the whole delegation of Maryland—will never do it.… In September 1861 [McClellan] broke up the Legislature of a sovereign State, deliberately and with full purpose, to exercise tyranny and oppression in advance of Abraham Lincoln. Now here is the man who has dealt a fatal blow to the institutions of our country.”9 After the second round of ballots, McClellan secured the nomination. Vallandigham dramatically stepped up to the rostrum and asked that McClellan’s nomination be made unanimous. The address stunned reporters in the audience: a seemingly bitter pill for the Ohioan to swallow. But behind the scenes, Vallandigham had crafted a deal that ensured that he would become McClellan’s secretary of war. Undoubtedly, the very man who so stridently opposed the war from its start could hardly be expected to carry on Grant’s total war. Installing Vallandigham as secretary of war demonstrated that the Democrats intended not to win the war but to end it through a platform that called for an armistice.
Copperheads balanced the ticket by installing as vice-presidential nominee Vallandigham’s right-hand man, Congressman George H. Pendleton from Ohio, a hardcore Copperhead who had voiced sympathy for the Confederacy. While not a Copperhead, McClellan regurgitated the Democrats’ central plank, telling an associate on August 23, “If I am elected, I will recommend an immediate armistice and a call for a convention of all the states and insist upon exhausting all, and every means to secure peace without further bloodshed.”10 Commissioner Clay wrote to Secretary of State Judah Benjamin on the success of the Secret Service’s influence operations: “Peace may be made with him on terms you may accept. He is committed to the platform to cease hostilities and try negotiations. That is a great concession for him and the War Democracy. An armistice will result in peace.” Clay hammered home a crucial point: “The platform means peace, unconditionally. The war cannot be renewed if once stopped, even for a short time.” Clay stressed that “McClellan will be under the control of the true peace men. Horatio, or T.H. Seymour is to be Secretary of State, Vallandigham Secretary of War. McClellan is privately pledged to make peace even at the expense of separation, if the South cannot be induced to reconstruct any common government.”11
During the final weeks of summer, Abraham Lincoln was convinced he would lose the election. History was not on the president’s side; for thirty-two years, through eight presidential administrations, only Andrew Jackson had won reelection to a second term. On August 23, Lincoln asked his cabinet members to sign an envelope that contained a memorandum he would not allow them to see until after the election. Known as the Blind Memorandum, it read, “This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be reelected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration as he will have secured his election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it afterwards. LINCOLN.”12 Lincoln acknowledged that his chances for reelection seemed hopeless, but he determined to do everything in his and his cabinet’s power to win the war before March 4, 1865, and the inauguration of a president McClellan.
Although Lincoln predicted failure at the polls in November, he adamantly advocated for their necessity the day after he was elected. “But the election was a necessity. We cannot have free Government without elections, and if the rebellion could force us to forego or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.”13 He believed in the will of the American people.
Others earlier had called for the postponement of the election, maintaining that if the election were held during a civil war, “the vote would be fraudulent.” The country would “flame up in revolution, and the streets of our cities would run with blood.”14 Lincoln trusted in the inherent wisdom of the American people. The wartime president later eloquently stated, “It has long been a grave question whether any government not too strong for the liberties of the people can be strong enough to maintain its own existence in great emergencies. On this point, the present rebellion brought our Republic to a severe test, and a Presidential election occurring in regular course during the rebellion, added not a little to the strain. If the loyal people, united, were put to the utmost of their strength by the rebellion, must they not fall when divided and partially paralyzed by a political war among themselves?”15
The founder of the Jessie Scouts, John Frémont, also threw his hat in the ring as a third-party candidate and threatened to split the Republican base. A faction known as Radical Republicans questioned Lincoln’s commitment to Black civil rights and attracted high-profile abolitionists like Frederick Douglass, but within weeks Frémont dropped out of the race.
Shrewdly, Lincoln ran under the banner of the National Union Party to garner both Republican and Democratic voters. In that vein, he jettisoned his current vice president, Hannibal Hamlin, and brought on a Democrat, Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s appointee as military governor of Tennessee, as his running mate.
The platforms of the two parties could not have been more diametrically opposed. When read out loud at the earlier Republican convention in June in Baltimore, each of the eleven planks resonated with the audience there:
Resolved, that as Slavery was the cause, and now constitutes the strength, of this Rebellion, and as it must be, always and everywhere, hostile to the principles of Republican Government, justice and the National safety demand its utter and complete extirpation from the soil of the Republic [applause]:—and that, while we uphold and maintain the acts and proclamations by which the Government, in its own defense, has aimed a death-blow at this gigantic evil, we are in favor, furthermore, of such an amendment* to the Constitution, to be made by the people in conformity with its provisions, as shall terminate and forever prohibit the existence of Slavery within the limits or the jurisdiction of the United States. [Tremendous applause, the delegates rising and waving their hats.]16
One plank lauded Union men in uniform: “Resolved, That the thanks of the American people are due to the soldiers and sailors of the Army and Navy [applause], who have periled their lives in defense of their country and in vindication of the honor of its flag; that the nation owes to them some permanent recognition of their patriotism and their valor.” Another called for honoring soldiers regardless of color: “That the Government owes to all men employed in its armies, without regard to distinction of color, the full protection of the laws of war.”17 Calls went out for a transcontinental railroad that would unite the American coasts. Finally, the National Union Party had grave concern for the borders of the United States and foreign encroachment in North America and called for enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine. France had invaded Mexico in 1862 and installed Maximilian I after conquering portions of the country. With regime change also came a country favorable to the Confederacy. Nevertheless, an insurgency still raged in Mexico, and with the Union fully engaged in civil war, the country could do little to oppose a potentially hostile European power on the southern border.
Regardless of the Republicans’ platform, the Democrats argued that the time had come for a new approach to the war. Endless casualties in a forever war that would eventually bankrupt the treasury was the current prospect. The South, in their view, did not need to win the war, only survive it. Political will wavered, many feeling a military solution was not viable. Democrats offered a new path—a course correction—through an armistice, a very likely by-product of which would have been a peace agreement to grant the Confederacy what it long sought: independence.
* In April 1864, the Thirteenth Amendment ending slavery in the United States sailed through the Republican-controlled Senate. In Congress, Democrats in the House of Representatives blocked the amendment when it failed to reach the required two-thirds majority in June 1864. The Thirteenth Amendment was passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified on December 6, 1865.