Lincoln seemed to agree that his administration was not going to be re-elected. On August 23 Lincoln called his cabinet together and asked them to sign the back of a sealed document. The document was a memorandum that stated: "This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probably 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."
	The close election demanded attention to every political constituency, especially the Union soldiers. Each individual state determined on their own the process by which soldiers' vote was to be handled. Wisconsin was the first to permit their soldiers to vote in the field through absentee ballots. California, Connecticut, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania all followed suit. However, Illinois, Indiana, and New Jersey, which all had Democratic-controlled state legislatures, did not pass legislation allowing soldiers to vote in the field. Likewise Delaware, Rhode Island, Nevada, and Oregon failed to permit absentee voting. Whenever possible in these cases, soldiers were granted leave so that they could return home to vote.
	The presidential candidates offered the soldiers two distinct choices. A victory for the current Lincoln administration would mean the continuation of the war. A victory for General McClellan, offered the hope for immediate cessation of hostilies and the possibility of permanent disunion. It might seem that the soldiers would rather vote to end the war so that they could return home. But a vote for McClellan would invalidate all of the sacrifices that they and their comrades had made. As one soldier put it, "I can not vote for one thing and fight for another." Another wrote saying, "I do not see how any soldier can vote for such a man, nominated on a platform which acknowledges that we are whipped."
	What would have been the normal boredom of camp life was stirred up with the coming election. One soldier wrote in his diary "politics keep up quite an excitement on our company." Grant, while supportive of the soldier vote, wrote to the Secretary of War with the following guidelines for the election season, "No political meetings, no harangues from soldiers or citizens and no canvassing of camps or regiments for votes."
	On August 31, 1864, Lincoln spoke to members of the 148th Ohio Regiment, who were their way home after completing their term of service. In his remarks, Lincoln stressed the importance of their service to protect the American system of democratic government, and at the same time promoted his candidacy for re-election: "We are striving to maintain the government and institutions of our fathers, to enjoy them ourselves, and transmit them to our children and our children's children forever." "To the humblest and poorest amongst us are held out the highest privileges and positions. The present moment finds me at the White House, yet there is as good a chance for your children as there was for my father's." Again I admonish you not to be turned from your stern purpose of defending your beloved country and its free institutions by any arguments urged by ambitious and designing men, but stand fast to the Union and the old flag. Soldiers, I bid you God-speed to your homes."
	Most historians agree that two factors carried Lincoln to victory: first, the progress of the Union military in 1864, especially General Sherman's capture of Atlanta, and secondly, Lincoln's supporters successfully conducted a campaign that portrayed the Democratic platform as traitorous.
	Republican Abraham Lincoln received 55% of the popular vote to George B. McClellan's 45%.
	The soldier vote only accounted for 4% of the total vote cast.
	Despite Lincoln's fears in August, he overwhelmingly defeated McClellan in the popular vote by receiving 78% of it compared to 22% for his opponent. Lincoln interpreted his re-election as a mandate that the war should continue with the outcome of reunification of the nation without slavery as the only acceptable result.
	Following the election, Grant wrote to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton: "Enough now seems to be known to say who is going to hold the reins of Government for the next four years. Congratulate the President for me for the double victory. The election having passed off quietly, no bloodshed or riot throughout the land, is a victory worth more to the country than a battle won. Rebeldom and Europe will so construe it." Grant also wrote that the results would help to end the war and secure the nation's place in the world: "The overwhelming majority received by M. Lincoln, and the quiet with which the election went off, will prove a terrible damper to the rebels. It will be worth more than a victory in the field both in its effects on the rebels and in its influence abroad."
	The importance of the 1864 election cannot be overemphasized. The fact that during a civil war, when Lincoln could have made a case to retain his presidency without an election, the democratic process continued unimpaired was a testimony to the democratic system of government. The election of McClellan and the peace Democrats would have ended the war, but reversed the progress that was made toward emancipation and the end of slavery. Historian Mark E. Neely Jr., went so far as to write that "Had he [McClellan] won, slavery would doubtless have survived the war, and the history of American racial relations might be a good deal more like South Africa's.
	Thankfully we can only speculate about Neely's conclusion. Because of the resolve of Lincoln and Grant, two western heroes who were relatively unknown a decade earlier, the war was pushed. They pushed relentlessly with the same vision on two fronts: by Lincoln in Washington, D.C., on the political front and by Grant in the field at the military front.

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Author: Tim Townsend