Reelection. Jennifer webber examines the Political Climate in the summer of 1864 and explains how lincoln won by a landslide. This is hosted by the Lincoln Group of d. C. Its about 50 minutes. Good morning. Im pleased to be here this morning and honored to be able to introduce our next speaker, jennifer webber. Jennifer is an associate professor of history at the university of kansas where her specialty, no surprise, is the civil war. Her first book was copperheads for those of you who may not have a copy at home. This, of course, is about the Antiwar Movement in the north. This was published by Oxford University press in 2006 and actually has a forward by jennifers mentor, james m. Mcpherson. You can tell she comes from a quality line. Her second book is actually geared toward children and this fact has won her a special place in the hearts of many of us in the Lincoln Group who view the importance of sharing the story of lincoln, his heir and the nations history with our youngest americans. That story tells the battle of gettysburg and is called summers loveliest days. Shes working on a book about the civil war area and the impact of inscription on the civil war north. She has coed itted a bach. Shes lectured throughout the country on lincoln. Im sure this morning you are going to enjoy her talk. We have heard copperheads referenced a lot this morning. This is the expert, having heard her talk on the subject several years ago, i know you are going to find this an interesting and useful subject. I turn it over to jennifer. [ applause ] good morning, thank you for coming out. I would like to thank the Lincoln Group for inviting me out today. Its a pleasure to be in d. C. Today, im talking about the summer of 1864, the summer lincoln lost the election. 1864 did not start out as a particularly bad year for Abraham Lincoln. It actually started out reasonably well. The union armies were doing fairly well in the field, which was a key predictor of how the public was going to feel in the north. He did have some movement politically from freemont and freemont supporters, but he appeared to be in pretty good shape politically at the outset of the year. He helped himself considerably in march by appointing this man, grant, to take command of all the union armies. Grant had become a hero in the west. He performed extremely well out there and lincoln decided to promote him to be the commander of all the armies. Grant came back east to carry out that job. He was officially the commander of the army of the potomac, but he would leave his mark on that army and its doings for the rest of the war. In june, as we discussed, lincoln was nominated by what was now called the union party, the Republican Party changed the name for this one year. The union party to be its nominee for reelection as president of the United States. So, this all looks good. But, at the same time that lincoln was nominated by the union party, grant was engaged in the Overland Campaign in central virginia. Now, this is really important. Grant is a tenacious general, by any description. Here we see this play out in spades because where previous commanders of the army of the potomac would lose to lee or would come to a draw with lee and retreat. Grant continues to pursue lee. They do this dance, as you can see on this map down virginia. They meet. Often grant doesnt do well. Lee moves south, grant chases him. They clash over and over again. This was a bloody five or six weeks that take place between may and june of 1864. Over the course of this relatively short period of time, grant takes 60,000 casualties. Now casualties are killed, wounded and captured. Im not talking 60,000 deaths. 60,000 casualties is a lot. This does not go over well with the northern public. This is really ugly. This is some of the ugliest fighting of the civil war. Thats saying something. For instance, the battle of the wilderness where a number of injured men are burned to death in a fire that is started by hot led ammunition in the underbrush. Its really gruesome. The battle of spotsylvania. The trenches fill with blood and men. Blood and bodies. The northern public reads about this and is absolutely horrified about what is going on in their name in the field. Here is a list of the casualties here, both union and confederate. Going to have to get my glasses to read this. So, the union is about 35,000 and the confederate is about 33,000. This is its just huge. Grant had come in to this position in march. With the nickname of Unconditional Surrender grant. After this campaign, his nickname changes to grant the butcher. Lincoln is also held responsible for this. Theres an editor in wisconsin who wont call Lincoln Lincoln anymore. He wont call lincoln the president anymore. He only refers to lincoln as the widow maker or the orphan maker. Thats the only way that he refers to lincoln. And what do we have to show for this horrendous blood letting . Precious little. Grant winds up in a siege in petersburg, south of richmond. Hell be in the siege for roughly the next nine months. Things dont look that good for the other armies of the union forces either. In georgia, sherman is stuck outside atlanta in another siege. In louisiana, the army there is sitting on its hands in new orleans after trying to make a move up the red river. They are turned around. Nathanial banks and his men go to new orleans and they are just there. They are not doing anything. You can imagine, then, how this looks to the northern public, which is war weary. It is sick of this. It doesnt many, many people in the north, even republicans dont want to continue this war anymore. They just want it to end. They blame lincoln for keeping it going because of his belief in emancipation. Theres a widespread belief in the north, not founded on any sort of evidence, but a widespread belief that if the north would just give up emancipation as a term of surrender that the confederates would give up the fight and come back in the fold. Thats not true. Because Jefferson Davis has one war game and that is independence. Lincoln has two. One is emancipation and the other is reunion. Reunion and independence are directly at odds. Neither man is going to give up his position. As long as these two men are in office, these two armies, broadly speaking are going to be at logger heads. The only way that this war is going to be decided is at the business end of a gun. There will be no negotiated peace with these men in office. This is a widespread opinion in the north that if you just gave up emancipation, the confederates would return. Okay. Forest greeley, the most prominent publisher, arguably, in the country, certainly the most prominent republican publisher at the time, he writes lincoln in july of 1864 with this plea that is emblemmatic of our experience. Our bleeding bankrupt, almost dying country longs for peace, shutters at the prospect of fresh wholesale devastations and new rivers of human blood. Thats pretty dramatic. But, his opinion represents many in the north. As i said, including republicans, which is quite interesting. Greeley actually tries to get lincoln in on a scheme of his. Hes been in discussions with a couple men in canada. They are confederate agents and have told greeley they are authorized to negotiate for peace. Lincoln doesnt believe this. But, he sends his personal secretary up to niagara on the canada side with greeley to talk to these men about brokering some sort of a peace deal. It very quickly becomes apparent they have no authority whatsoever to be having this conversation. Greeley comes back to new york with his tail between his legs. Lincoln takes this opportunity to explain to the public that he has these two war aims. And that, unless the two aims are met, that he will continue to prosecute the war on the battlefield. Hes hoping, in making this announcement, making this very clear, again, to smoke out Jefferson Davis and get davis to say, publicly, that his war aim is independence. Davis doesnt really bite on this. Lincolns idea was that if davis would make this announcement, maybe the northern public would blame davis instead of lincoln as being the person who was blocking a path to peace. That, however, doesnt happen. Instead, northerners become increasingly sour over the course of the summer. On august 22nd, and i normally dont pay, you know, a lot of attention to dates, but in this case, i think dates are fascinating because a lot happens here in a really, really short period of time. On august 22nd, henry raymond, who is the editor of the New York Times and the chairman of the Republican Party writes a letter to lincoln telling lincoln he is going to lose the election. That he is going to be really lucky to carry two or three states and among the states he is going to lose is illinois. His own home state. He wont carry it. He suggests to lincoln that lincoln send a delegation south to meet with Jefferson Davis and to propose peace terms on the idea of reunion alone. Now, i find this a really extraordinary moment. This is the chairman of the Republican Party, which had been founded only ten years earlier on the explicit platform of being antislavery. And here they have emancipation in the palm of their hand and this man, the chairman of the Republican Party is talking about letting it go. Whether hes sincere or whether this is a rouse to get davis to tip his hand is unclear to me. But, lincoln thinks about this. In fact, he writes out a memo to send somebody south to meet with Jefferson Davis. And, as he often does, he puts it in one of the pigeon holes of his desk and sleeps on it overnight. He wakes up the next day and says that god would judge him for time in eternity if he betrayed his promise to the slaves. And so he doesnt. He doesnt send that memo, he doesnt send a delegation down south. This is a moral decision on lincolns part. This is a decision where he decides he is going to be right rather than president. Its also a practical decision. By this time, about 200,000 africanamericans are in the United States military forces, the army and navy. Thats about 10 . 10 . I think. 20 . Of the total force. Its a significant amount of the american men in the field. If lincoln goes back on this promise of emancipation, what is going to hold these men in the field . Nothing. They are going to leave because they no longer have a promise of emancipation either for themselves or for their families. Their motivation is gone. Theres nothing to fight for if he removes emancipation. Theres a really practical aspect of this as well. Remember, the army has been having an extremely difficult time raising men, even with a draft for two years. So, the presence of africanamericans in the military is crucial for the war effort. So, that memo goes away. What happens instead is that lincoln writes a memo to his cabinet and in it he lays out a sketch of what he intends to do between november and march. The four months that he will be a lame duck, he anticipates, the four months between the time that the democratic candidate will have been elected and the time he takes office. Lincoln sketches out this plan. He takes this piece of paper and he folds it up and puts it in an envelope. He seals the envelope, takes it to a Cabinet Meeting and asks all his members to sign the envelope without telling them what the contents are. Sign the envelope and promise to carry out the instructions inside. And they do. So now we are talking around august 24th, 25th. On august 29th, the democrats meet in chicago. Whats been going on over the summer as things have not been going well for the union militarily is that there is growing Antiwar Movement. More and more people are joining the ranks of the copperheads, the antiwar democrats over this over the course of this summer. They are at the pinnacle of their influence. They have been talking against the war since its outset, some of them. They have been joined, the ranks have been joined over the course of the war, over issues like habeas corpus, emancipation and the draft. Those alienate a lot of people who had been otherwise sitting on the fence and they join the Antiwar Movement. But, nothing like this summer has driven people into the ranks of the copperheads. They are so powerful at the time of this convention that the war democrats are really scrambling to try to hold them off. To try to maintain a more moderate position, but they have to do some things to hold the copperheads at bay to keep them from taking over the entire convention and running over the party as a whole. So, what the democrats do is they name george mcclellan, who they considered a war hero and they thought was incredibly appealing to Union Soldiers as their president ial nominee. Their Vice President ial nominee is George Pendleton from ohio. He is a committed and well known copperhead. They also put this man on the platform committee. Clem ent vallandigham was the most notorious copperhead. A congressman from ohio, from dayton, when the war broke out. He has been gerrymandered out of his seat in 1862. He had gone home in the spring of 1863 and started making a lot of speeches in which he attacked the administration for its actions during the war saying that what it had done was unconstitutional, that lincoln was a tirate and despate. They issued saying anybody who spoke out publicly against the administration would be tried as a traitor. Free speech here, is a dead letter. They seized this as an opportunity. Hes a smart guy, smart politician and he sees it as a chance to become a martyr for the cause and to go down for the cause. He goes back out, makes another speech, which he criticizes lincoln and the administration and at 2 00 the next morning, the soldiers are at his door. They bundle him up, give him just enough time to get dressed. They bundle him up, a small riot breaks out among his supporters. Hes shipped off to cincinnati where he is tried not in a regular court, but by a military try tribunal and sentenced to a military prison. Lincoln finds out the way everybody else finds out, by reading the papers. He is none too happy about this. It puts him in an extremely awkward position. Republicans themselves are not very happy about this because they recognize this arrest for what it is, which is a gross infringement on free speech. It makes them look terrible. And so lincoln is left in a quandary of what to do. What do you do with this man . If you let him go, you undercut your general. If you leave him in prison, you make him a martyr, not that hes not enough of one already, but you make him more of one. So, he comes to a quintessential solution, which is pragmatic and amusing. That is, if you like the south so much, fine, were going to banish you there. So, he is sprung from prison, taken down to tennessee. Hes taken almost to a confederate picket line in the dead of night and told to walk this way. Some picket encounters him. Can you imagine being some private, an 18yearold kid and heres this guy that stumbles out of the dark, hes got this speech hes rehearsed about how hes a political prisoner of Abraham Lincoln and wrote, what do you do with this guy . So he goes up the chain of command. He goes all the way to Jefferson Davis. Hes taken to richmond, ultimately. He meets all these confederates along the way. They all tell him what they want is independence. What the copperheads have been talking about is an immediate end to the war, an immediate halt. They never really say what the terms are that they would be willing to agree to in a peace negotiation but they want an immediate end to the hostilities. When the confederates tell them they want independence, they do not want to reewe nate with the north the way the copperheads keep thinking they will. They pay no attention to them what so ever. What he does is essentially put his fingers in his ears and go, la, la, la, la, la. Thats it. He discovers he doesnt really like the confederates. The confederates learn they dont really like him, either. After a month in the confederacy, they come to an agreement he will leave. So, he gets on a blockade runner that goes to the caribbean. Hi picks up another ship there and goes up to canada and spends the next year or so in windsor, ontario, right across the Detroit River from detroit. There is a union gun boat parked in the middle of the river as long as he is there with its guns trained on his front parlor. But, hes having a lot of meetings with confederate agents, with copperheads. He is up to probably all kinds of no good. But, he wants to come home. He runs for governor of ohio in 1863, from windsor. The copperheads think hes going to win. Because the soldiers will vote for him en masse because he wants an end to the war. He is going to stop it. And release them from service. They completely misread the situation, not for the only time. They are crushed in the november elections where hes running for governor in 1863. The soldier boat goes 95 against him. Fast forward seven months, he sneaks back into the United States in june of 1864. Lincoln gets all these notifications about it. What do we do . Do we arrest him . Lincoln says just let him be. Keep an eye on him. Just let him be. So, he is in chicago for the convention. He is put on the platform committee. He puts a plank into the platform that calls the war a failure and demands an immediate cessation of hostilities. This is widely voted for. It has almost 100 support in the Democratic Convention that year. They love this idea. They think this idea is going to carry them to victory in november. They are really pretty sure they have got this thing sealed up. They also think its not just this, but the fact that their candidate is this former general whose troops loved him. They dont realize that the troops dont love him anymore. They have sort of seen him now for what he is. Who the troops love is lincoln. They have come to identify very, very strongly with lincoln. And they are writing these letters home saying if you dont vote for lincoln, i will disown you.