15. The 1864 Election

1. Did party politics aid or hinder the Northern war effort?
2. Why was slavery still such a difficult issue in northern politics in 1864?
3. Why did Lincoln win re-election and what was the source of opposition?

Eric McKitrick, “Party Politics and the Union and Confederate War Efforts,” in The American Party Systems: Stages of Political Development ed. William N. Chambers and Walter Dean Burnham. UCL TEACHING COLLECTION: MAIN 2956
Michael S. Vorenberg, “‘The Deformed Child’: Slavery and the Election of 1864,” Civil War History 47 (2001)
Mark E. Neely, The Union Divided: Party Conflict in the Civil War North (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2002)
Adam I. P. Smith, No Party Now: Politics in the Civil War North (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006)
Michael Holt, “Abraham Lincoln and the Politics of Union,” in John L. Thomas, ed., Abraham Lincoln and the American Political Tradition (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986) OR in Michael F. Holt, Political Parties and American Political Development from the Age of Jackson to the Age of Lincoln (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992), pp. 323-354.
Joel H. Silbey, A Respectable Minority: The Democratic Party in the Civil War Era, 1860-1868 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1977)

Primary souces:
Francis Lieber, No party now but all for our country (New York: Loyal Publication Society, 1863)
The Lincoln catechism wherein the eccentricities & beauties of despotism are fully set forth: A guide to the presidential election of 1864. [Democratic Campaign Document, 1864]
1864 Election cartoons
American Political Prints from the Library of Congress