9.5: The Election of 1864 and Emancipation

The Election of 1864 and Emancipation

The presidential contest of 1864 featured a transformed electorate. Three new states (West Virginia, Nevada, and Kansas) had been added since 1860 while the eleven states of the Confederacy did not participate.

Lincoln and his Vice President, Andrew Johnson (Tennessee), ran as nominees of the National Union Party. The main competition came from his former commander, General George B. McClellan. Though McClellan himself was a “War Democrat,” the official platform of the Democratic Party in 1864 revolved around negotiating an immediate end to the Civil War. McClellan’s Vice Presidential nominee was George H. Pendleton of Ohio — a well-known “Peace Democrat.”

On Election Day —November 8, 1864 — Lincoln and McClellan each needed 117 electoral votes (out of a possible 233) to win the presidency. For much of the ’64 campaign season, Lincoln downplayed his chances of reelection and McClellan assumed that large numbers of Union soldiers would grant him support. However, thanks in great part to William T. Sherman’s military victories in Georgia, which included the fall of Atlanta on September 2, 1864, and overwhelming support from Union troops, Lincoln won the election easily. Additionally, Lincoln received support from more radical Republican factions (such as John C. Fremont and members of the Radical Democracy Party) that demanded the end of slavery.

In the popular vote, Lincoln crushed McClellan by a margin of 55.1% to 44.9%. In the Electoral College, Lincoln’s victory was even more pronounced at a margin of 212 to 21. As Lincoln won twenty-two states, McClellan only managed to carry three: New Jersey, Delaware, and Kentucky.

In the wake of reelection, Abraham Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address on March 5, 1865, in which he concluded:”With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan — to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”

Figure 25 — Abraham Lincoln giving his second Inaugural Address by Alexander Gardner, Wikimedia Commons is in the Public Domain

The second inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln, given on 4 March 1865 on the east portico of the U.S. Capitol.

Emancipation played a major role in the election and the war. Yet, Abraham Lincoln did not abolish slavery with the stroke of his pen, nor should he be celebrated with the title of the “Great Emancipator.” While Lincoln played a leading role, the accolades bestowed upon him by contemporaries and subsequent generations obscure the elaborate process by which numerous actors in the Congress, the military, and enslaved people themselves brought about emancipation.

Of course, abolitionists had long struggled to obtain freedom for enslaved persons, but the war brought them unexpected allies. Politically, the roots of emancipation can be found in the First Confiscation Act of 1861. Republicans in Congress authorized military officials to do the actual work of freeing enslaved persons, a process called military emancipation. With each military victory, beginning with naval actions along the Atlantic seaboard, the U.S. military deployed constitutional measures to seize contraband. In August, General John C. Fremont declared all enslaved people in Missouri to be free, while General Benjamin Butler emancipated hundreds at Fortress Monroe in Virginia. Lincoln condemned Fremont’s actions, but Butler’s became military policy.

Rank-and-file soldiers and sailors pushed beyond the mandate of the law. Most Union soldiers had never before encountered enslaved people. In their diaries and their sketchbooks, soldiers and sailors recorded their interactions with newly freed African Americans, legitimating an essential humanity that would find popular reverberations in newspapers and magazines. Moreover, the increasingly visual culture of the 1860s in the North relied on photographs and sketches of the freedmen to provide evidence not only of their abuse at the hand of southern slaveholders, but also of their resilience and determination to resist them.

Figure 26 — Thomas Nast, “Emancipation,” 1865 by Thomas Nast, Wikimedia Commons is in thePublic Domain

Perhaps most important to bringing about emancipation were the enslaved people themselves, who remained ever vigilant for opportunities to gain freedom. This process unfolded unevenly and violently, with African American women often playing leading roles in community organization. In a sense, these efforts can be seen as extensions of earlier tactics of resistance, but the events of the Civil War presented unprecedented opportunities for new and more lasting forms of fighting back. Once free, African Americans continued to work of freedom by enlisting in the Union army, supporting military efforts of their liberators, and, in time, supporting political measures that enabled their full civil rights.

To ensure the permanent legal end of slavery, Republicans drafted the Thirteenth Amendment during the war. Yet the end of legal slavery did not mean the end of racial injustice. During the war, ex-slaves were often segregated into disease-ridden contraband camps. After the war, the Republican Reconstruction program of guaranteeing black rights succumbed to persistent racism and southern white violence. Long after 1865, most black southerners continued to labor on plantations, albeit as nominally free tenants or sharecroppers, while facing public segregation and voting discrimination. The effects of slavery persisted long after emancipation. ⁽³⁾

Conclusion

As battlefields fell silent in 1865, the question of secession had been answered, and America was once again territorially united. But, in many ways, the conclusion of the Civil War created more questions than answers. How would the nation ever become one again? Who was responsible for rebuilding the South? What role would African Americans occupy in this society? Northern and southern soldiers returned home with broken bodies, broken spirits, and broken minds. Plantation owners had land but not labor. Recently freed African Americans had their labor but no land. Former slaves faced a world of possibilities — legal marriage, reunited family members, employment, and fresh starts — but also a racist world of bitterness, violence, and limited opportunity. The war may have been over, but the battles for the peace were just beginning. ⁽³⁾

Sound-Scape

The Module 7 sound-scape presents an excerpt from Charles Anderson Dana’s Recollections of Civil War. Dana, a journalist who served as Assistant Secretary of War for the Union, wrote the book from which this excerpt was taken shortly before his death in 1897. ¹

Listen to an excerpt from Charles Anderson Dana’s Recollections of Civil War and follow along with the text.

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^{An audio element has been excluded from this version of the text. You can listen to it online here: http://pb.libretexts.org/ush/?p=126}

Excerpt from Recollections of Civil War

Charles Anderson Dana (1819–1897)

Just before one o’clock the men moved out of their intrenchments, and remained in line for three quarters of an hour in full view of the enemy. The spectacle was one of singular magnificence. Our point of view was Fort Wood. Usually in a battle one sees only a little corner of what is going on, the movements near where you happen to be; but in the battle of Chattanooga we had the whole scene before us. At last, everything being ready, Granger gave the order to advance, and three brigades of men pushed out simultaneously. The troops advanced rapidly, with all the precision of a review, the flags flying and the bands playing. The first sign of a battle one noticed was the fire spitting out of the rifles of the skirmishers. The lines moved steadily along, not halting at all, the skirmishers all the time advancing in front, firing and receiving. The first shot was fired at two o’clock, and in five minutes Hazen’s skirmishers were briskly engaged, while the artillery of Forts Wood and Thomas was opening upon the rebel rifle-pits and camps behind the line of fighting.

Recollections of the Civil War: With the Leaders at Washington and in the Field in the Sixties by Charles Anderson Dana is in the Public Domain

Recollections of the Civil War records the events that took place during the American Civil war. It forms one of the most remarkable volumes of historical, political, and personal reminiscences which have been given to the public. Mr. Dana wrote these Recollections of the civil war according to a purpose which he had entertained for several years. They were completed only a few months before his death on October 17, 1897.

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