The Democratic platform read, in part,

"That this convention does explicitly declare, as the sense of the American people that after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war...the public welfare demands that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view to an ultimate convention of the States."

The progress of the Union armies slowed following the two victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. A growing weariness of the war and dissatisfaction with its progress developed, and the tenuous alliance of northern war Democrats, abolitionists, and former Whigs that helped to elect Lincoln in 1860 began to unravel.

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