# 1864 Presidential Election [[Abraham Lincoln]]'s reelection during the [[American Civil War]] — one of the most consequential wartime elections in any modern democracy, and one that Lincoln himself believed he would lose as late as August 1864. The Republican Party rebranded itself as the **National Union Party** for the election to attract War Democrats, and replaced VP Hannibal Hamlin with Tennessee Democrat [[Andrew Johnson]] as Lincoln's running mate. Lincoln's Democratic opponent was [[George B. McClellan]] — the general Lincoln had fired in 1862 — running on a peace platform that the war was a failure that should be ended by negotiation. Atlanta fell to Sherman on September 2, 1864; the political effect was immediate. Lincoln won 212 of 234 electoral votes (Confederate states did not participate) and 55% of the popular vote. ## Result - **[[Abraham Lincoln]]** (National Union / Republican) — 212 electoral votes, 55.0% popular - **George B. McClellan** (Democrat) — 21 electoral votes (Delaware, Kentucky, New Jersey), 45.0% popular - Total: 234 electoral votes (11 Confederate states absent) - Turnout: 73.8% ## Right-wing relevance The 1864 election's right-wing relevance is structural rather than ideological: it is the canonical example of a wartime democratic election conducted under conditions in which an incumbent's reelection determined whether the war would be prosecuted or abandoned. Conservative defense-policy literature regularly invokes 1864 as proof that democratic elections can be conducted under existential national crisis without breaking constitutional norms. The Johnson VP choice — the proximate cause of the post-Lincoln Reconstruction debacle — is also a recurring case study in vice-presidential selection consequences. ## Connections - [[Abraham Lincoln]] — Winner; assassinated April 1865, six weeks into second term. - [[Andrew Johnson]] — VP on the National Union ticket; ascended on Lincoln's assassination. - [[Ulysses S. Grant]] — General whose 1864 Overland Campaign and the parallel Atlanta-Sherman campaign created the political conditions for Lincoln's reelection. ---