After an attempt in early May 1864 to re-create in the Battle of the Wilderness his “Hail Mary” from Chancellorsville exactly the year before, Lee settled into a war of attrition against Grant, Meade, and the Army of the Potomac. Those tactics presaged the horrific carnage of the trenches in World War I. Between May 1 and the end of June 1864, Union losses were absolutely staggering – over 60,000 casualties. The North was close to war exhaustion and many Republicans wanted to replace Lincoln as their candidate for the upcoming 1864 presidential election and many Democrats wanted to make peace with the South. Then, in September, Atlanta fell to General William T. Sherman and Mobile Bay was captured by Admiral David Farragut.
In the words Pulitzer Prize-winning Lincoln biographer David Herbert Donald:
In the words Pulitzer Prize-winning Lincoln biographer David Herbert Donald:
“You think I don’t know I am going to be beaten [in the 1864 presidential election, Lincoln] said to a friend, “but I do and unless some great change takes place badly beaten.” On August 23, with Raymond’s letter before him, he drafted and signed a memorandum: “This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. 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 can not possibly save it afterwards.”
Lincoln’s language revealed not merely his pessimism about his own fortunes but his realistic understanding of the forces that opposed his reelection. He did not say that if he was defeated the country would fall into the hands of Copperheads who would consent to the division of the Union and the recognition of the Confederacy. . . . Nor did he have doubts about the loyalty of George B. McClellan, whose nomination by the Democrats he anticipated. But he did think that if the Democrats elected McClellan the party platform would force the new administration to seek an armistice, which virtually assured Confederate independence.
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The Democrats lived up to his expectations. Their platform announced that “after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war,... justice, humanity, liberty and the public welfare demand ... a cessation of hostilities,” with a view to ending the war “on the basis of the Federal Union of the States.” It was not exactly a peace platform, for the Democrats, like the Republicans, were pledged to preserve the Union; but the condemnation of the war and the call for an end of fighting made it easy to brand the platform “the Chicago Surrender.”
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On September 4, as if timed to make a mockery of the Democratic announcement that the war was a failure, came a message from Sherman: “Atlanta is ours, and fairly won.” After Jefferson Davis named the impetuous John Bell Hood as commander of the Confederate Army of Tennessee, replacing the capable Joseph E. Johnston, Sherman was able to put Atlanta under partial siege and force its evacuation. Almost simultaneously with Sherman’s victory message the North received the news that Rear Admiral David G. Farragut had captured Mobile, the last major Gulf port in Confederate hands. Joyfully Lincoln proclaimed a day of thanksgiving and prayer for “the signal success that Divine Providence has recently vouchsafed to the operations of the United States fleet and army in the harbor of Mobile... and the glorious achievements of the Army under Major General Sherman ... resulting in the capture ... of Atlanta.”
