It is my privilege to introduce professor Elizabeth Barron from the university of virginia who will speak on the election of 1864 in confederate eyes. I think this is a really important topic to address early on in this symposium so that we dont forget that there is a whole other conversation going on in other parts of the country. Professor baron got her bachelors degree from swathmore college. And then went on to teach at wellesley and temple before coming to university of virginia where shes the langborn williams professor of American History. And her first two books were from a womans point of view about womens opinions and activities in the south and in antibellum virginia. Then the biography of a spy in richmond, both of which were extremely well received and the biography won many awards. Then her next book was on disunion which was about the whole debate about the discussion of strategizing about possible breakup of the union dating from 1789 onwards. Most recently her book is on victory and defeat and freedom at the end of the civil war. That has already won a number of prizes, including the library of virginia eye ward. Professor baron also has been speaking widely, including the lincoln bicentennial in springfield and the Gettysburg Civil War Institute and also on cspan, book tv. So now it is my great pleasure to introduce elizabeth varon. She will speak on catastrophe or setback. The election of 1864 in confederate eyes. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. And thanks so much for attending the event. It is a pleasure to speak in such a beautiful venue. This morning ill address the theme of confederate interpretations of the election of 1864, but also Southern Unionist and border south interpretation. So im going to take the south as a whole into my frame. Ill first sketch out confederate debates, then ill turn to Southern Unionism and particularly the role of the preeminent Southern Unionist Andrew Johnson, lincolns running mate in this 1864 campaign. Ill conclude by considering the fraught question of whether the election was a turning point for the confederate war effort. Any treatment of this topic must begin with two oftenrepeated assertions that have persisted as standard fare in civil war scholarship. The first of these is that confederate leaders believed that mcclellans election would ensure the success of their cause. They were rooting for the democrat. The second assertion is that for all confederates the unequivocal reelection of lincoln was a crushing blow. Now neither of these assertions fully captures the complexity of confederate politics during the Campaign Season of 1864. Its true that confederates followed this northern election very, very carefully, very anxiously. But they didnt uniformly assume that mcclellan had a fighting chance in the campaign, nor did they assume that his election would be good for the south. As the Election Campaign geared up in the spring of 1864, confederates were arrayed in two interpretive camps. They were divided. A peace camp led by the confederate Vice PresidentAlexander Stevens and representing mow vehemently in the press by the georgia newspaper, the augusta chronicle and sentinel. The second was a hardliner camp, the side that believed at victory at any cost, led by the confederate president jefr some davis and represented by newspapers such as the charleston mercury. The first pinned their hopes on those critics of lincolns who seemed to sympathize with the south. The historian larry e. Nelson dubbed stevens and his like the confederate copperheads because of this affinity they had with the northern peace democrats. The stevens camp hoped for a negotiated peace and that hope was based on an interlocking set of premises, one was that the north was deeply divided. The second was that the peace elements in the Northern Democratic party, these copperheads, were on the ascent politically and might be prime to call for an armistice, or even even to recognize confederate independence. Another premise was that the Davis Administration in imposing policies within the confederacy such as the suspension of habeas corpus, had lost sight of the core principle of the southern revolution, namely state sovereignty. And the final premise was that neither side, north or south, had the will to keep battering each other indefinitely. This camp, this peace camp, drew encouragement in the spring of 1864 from some intemperate congressional speeches in the u. S. Congress by northern peace democrats such as Alexander Long of ohio and Benjamin Harris of maryland. These democrats accused lincoln of tyranny. They called for an end to the war. And in so doing they seemed to acquiesce in the doctrine of secession itself. Working on these premises, stevens and his allies argued that the confederate administration should make an overt policy of building up and strengthening the northern copperheads and that they should do so by making frequent peace proposals to the north. Those proposals, stevens and his ilk reckoned, would expose to the warweary northern public lincolns unwillingness to street the south. He would reject such proposals out of hand and this would show that he was unwilling to negotiate. This would thus strengthen the hand of the northern democrats who presumably were willing to negotiate for peace. As a core layer, the cthe confederacy should refrain from offensive fighting, lest a renewed fear of confederate invasion prompt northerners to close ranks. The worry was that if the confederates were too aggressive, northerners would rally around lincoln in selfdefense. These confederate copper heads, those rooting ardently for a northern democrat victory in the war and working for it, had a brief moment vindication in august of 1864 when the democrats chicago convention, nominating convention for the party, called for an immediate cessation of hostilities and a convention of the states to negotiate a peace. Alexander stevens was widely quoted as saying this platform, this democratic platform, was the first real ray of light he had seen since the war began. Thats how hopeful he was. His calculation was that once the shooting stopped in some punitive negotiation or convention, no one would have the heart to start shooting again. As for the prospect of negotiation, what exactly did confederate copperheads think they might negotiate for at this stage . What might transpire if the states met in the convention to consider peace. Such a convention, stevens reckoned, would be a way to bypass lincoln and Jefferson Davis, each of whom was a hardliner on the subject of peace, unwilling to negotiate. Stevens hoped that perhaps a convention might turn back the clock, reaffirm state sovereignty, renounce coercion and perhaps even disavow emancipation as a war aim of the union. Confederate copperheads, in other words, fantasized that such a convention might bring victory, either recognition of the confederacy which is their first choice, or as a fallback position reunion on the souths terms. Now were going to switch to our seconds camp here. This either or formulation was completely unacceptable to the second camp in this debate. The hardliners represented by Jefferson Davis. For davis and his ilk, peace without independence was failure and the offering of peace proposals to the north was a sign of weakness that would only serve to stoke northern aggression. These hardliners agreed that the confederacy should work to weaken the flort from within by encouraging the peace elements there, but only clandestinely through the machinations as it turned out of an unofficial Diplomatic Mission based in canada. This Diplomatic Mission was going to aid and abet those northern peace elements again on the down low. It would provide secret societies in the north with money, propaganda and organizational counsel. Confederate agents as part of these machinations hatched such plots as buying and hoarding gold specie in new york and raiding prisoner war camps in the northwest in ways to undermine the northern war effort. It is easy to dismiss these plots which came to naught as hairbrained schemes based on delusional thinking. But they reflected the hope on the part of confederates in both camps really that the Campaign Season in the north might be attended with violence, to quote the confederate war bureau chief, that social chaos might break out in the north, or perhaps even an armed mutiny on the scale of the new york draft riots of 1863. But hardliners rejected the idea the confederates should openly endorse the northern peace democrats. They feared that such an endorsement would backfire. It would discredit the democrats in the eyes of the northern electorate. Republicans would be able to say, jefferson dafvis wants mcclellan to win and that wouldnt be good for the mcclellan campaign. Indeed the Republican Press had a field day when stevens said he thought democratic platform was a ray of light. But hardliners also invoked a deep rooted tenet of secessionist yidologist, the argument that it the Democratic Party could not be relied upon to protect southern interests. Hardliners invoked this deep rooted are den net. The lesson of secession, the charleston mercury reminded its readers in the spring of 1864, was that the south could depend upon no party at the north for the protection of their liberties and institutions. Noting how many Union Generals were old democrats, members of that party, and ben butler for confederates was the most notorious example here. The editorial concluded all northern parties, republican and democrat, are united in the wicked and bloody policy of subgentlemsu subjugating the south. It is an expression of the true ll of the democrats, a willingness to negotiate, perhaps to recognize southern independence. Hardliners by contrast believed the democrats choice of mcclellan as their standard bearer was far more revealing that the platform that he had adopted in their convention. Mcclellan hardliners argued was clearly a war democrat, someone who rejected southern independence and who was not to be trusted. They invoked mcclellans acceptance letter of the democratic nomination in which he explicitly rejected the idea that there might be peace without reunion, without the south repudiating secession. Fk clelens letter famously intone odd the union must be preserved at all hazards. I could not look in my face of the gallant comrades of the army and navy and tell them that their labz and sacrifice of so many of our slain and wounded had been in vain, that we had abandoned that union for which we had so often perilled or lives. No peace can be permanent without union. Mcclellans position at odds with his partys platform. For hardliners in the confederacy the meaning of this letter was clear. A september 19th richmond dispatch editorial commenting on the letter asked rhetorically shall we be slaves to the yankees and answered general mcclellan says we shall. That stance would lose him the election the editorial predicted because it erased any meaningful difference between mcclellan and lincoln. Both were pro war war. If mcclellan left the northern masses any ground for hope his election might have stopped the fusion of their blood and money he might have been elected but given the choice between two war candidates, the people of the United States have no reason to change their government. In short, the two confederate camps differed not only on the question of means but also ends. Hardliners had little faith that a democratic president would do the souths bidding. Instead they wished for lincolns defeat because it might signal the erosion of northern morale and herald the coned confederacys military triumph. The core principle of the hardliners of Jefferson Davis and his camp was that only battlefield victories and not political machinations would win southern independence. The primary aim of these hardliners was not to encourage northern dissent. That was a secondary aim. But instead to revive southern enlistment and discourage desertion and stoke the will to fight on the part of the confederates. Jefferson davis in his speeches and communications during the 1864 campaign, spring, summer, fall of 1864, played down the importance of the northern election. Didnt say much about it. He focused instead relentlessly on two themes. Yankees atrocities and confederate manpower. In speeches he delivered in georgia and South Carolina in the fall of 1864, davis invoked the union armys alleged outrages in atlanta asking would you see the fair daughters of the land given over to the brutality of the yankees. His prescription, davis prescription, for confederate victory was simple everyone able must go to the front. Convinced that recent military setbacks transpired because too many southern men had shirked duty, davis intones, if half the men now absent without leave will return to duty, we can defeat the enemy. This is his message during the Campaign Season. He went on, the yankees were dogs, he declared. And the only way to make them civil was to whip them. And you can whip them, he told confederate men in october of 1864. If all the men capable of bearing arms will do their duty. The fate of the confederacy then, davis insisted, was in the hands of the confederates themselves. Stom what was the end game. The position of the stevens faction, this wish for peace and negotiation, commanded substantial public support in the spring and summer of 1864. But that support waned in the fall as Union Military successes improved lincolns prospects. We tend to credit the fall of atlanta with sealing lincolns victory but in confederate eyes and particularly for the virginia press, confederate reverses in the Shenandoah Valley were every bit as pretentious as the fall of atlanta. This combatle will secure the election of lincoln, of which indeed there was no doubt before. With the peace democrats losing ground in the wake of northern battlefield victories, stevens, the confederate Vice President , now publicly accused davis, the president , of failing to do the right thing, of failing to have fully promoted the northern peace party, to give it a fighting chance. Stevens speculated in a controversial letter which he wrote on november 5th, 1864, and which was widely reprinted in the confederate press, stevens speculated that Jefferson Davis actually preferred lincolns election to mcclellans. Davis considered this a scurrilous charge and denied it. The confederate president and Vice President were at war. But many of their countrymen never took clear and consistent positions aligning themselves with one interpretive camp or another. Instead, these confederates careened back and forth between these two poles in somersaults of reasoning, mental acrobatics. These mental acrobatics became more ubiquitous after the fall of atlanta and the setbacks in virginias valley as 9 confederates are increasingly in damage control mode. And in damage control mode they take to arguing that there is indeed no functional difference between lincoln or mcclellan or that the very idea that they had ever looked to the yankee election for their salvation was itself a spurious piece of northern propaganda, that they had never been so deluded. Some began to argue that lincolns election might indeed be preferable. When the writing was on the wall, many began to argue that lincolns election might indeed be preferable. After all this last argument ran, lincoln, a the new devil southerners brew. Misdemeanor colleges life, by contrast, might breathe new life into the northern war effort and splinter the south if cred dthe credudlous southerners. Any other result should be disastrous to us. We need his folly and fanaticism for another term. His mad pursuit of his peculiar ideas. Lincolns reelection will make us realize that we must make a choice between perpetual resistance if necessary and a condition of surfdom. As the election approached, both camps trafficked in images of republican electoral fraud to explain why lincoln would win. Confederate newspapers claimed that democratic meetings notice north were being disrupted by abolitionist mobs, that voters were being indtimidated, that te Republican Press was whipping up war fer vor and that lincoln himself would manipulate the soldiers vote to ensure his own victory, that lincolns tools will stuff the ballot boxes and in every conceivable way cheat and steal to carry their point. No one has a doubt, editorialized one paper. We have no idea lincoln will permit a Fair Election and therefore no hope for mcclellans election to continue. Such a view was echoed in a letter written on election day i do not see that any good can come to us from this yankee election, yet i long to know how it has gone. Do i in the think there will be a real election. So many have been sent from the army and from the government to use the influence patronage and means of corruption at their disposal and they will carry the election by fraud if no other way. Now for the stevens faction, there wasn in such images of fraud a glitter of light. They hoped the election might bring the long awaited revulsion against lincoln by the northern public. This is what the stevens types were waiting for, a revulsion on the part of the northern public against lincoln. But the hardliners in davis camp saw things differently. In their eyes the republicans would get away with fraud and intimidation and they would get away with it because lincoln and the radical republicans held the majority of northerners in their sway. In other words, the widespread election corruption was a sign, in the eyes of davis, of lincolns strength and his power, not his weakness. In the end, lincolns victory did more to vibd kate the hardliners with their uncompromising commitment to the confederates than the confederate copperheads for lincolns victory, the hardliners insisted, would make the scales fall from the eyes of southerner