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chance; and, when Lincoln was renominated by the Republicans, General McClellan became the candidate of the Democrats, who openly declared the war for the Union a failure, and demanded an immediate cessation of hostilities.1 The success of the Peace party indeed would secure all that the rebels were fighting for; a fact very well understood by the Richmond government and its generals.
It was worth while to hold out a little longer in the field while their allies in the Northern states went to the polls.
The elections would occur on the 8th of November, and until that date every military movement had an immediate political effect.
If the rebels could by some transient success still further discourage the weak-hearted at the North; if by protracted resistance they could even temporarily exhaust the endurance of those who had persisted so long—they would exert an influence directly favorable to McClellan.2 With this view they redoubled their efforts, and with this view the Democrats continued theirs, while a chorus of foreign aristocrats
1 See resolutions passed by Democratic Nominating Convention, September 1, 1864.
2 ‘We have already referred to the great consideration which attached to the Presidential contest in the North which was now to take place; we have stated that it gave a new hope for the South in 1864; and we have indicated that the political campaign of this year was, in the minds of the Confederate leaders, scarcely less important than the military. Indeed, the two were indissolubly connected; and the calculation in Richmond was, that if military matters could even be held in a negative condition, the Democratic party in the North would have the opportunity of appealing to the popular impatience of the war, and bringing it to a close on terms acceptable to the great mass of the Southern people.’—Pollard's ‘Lost Cause,’ pp. 556 and 557.
New York Appleton 1885.
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