| Lesson
Plans: Election of 1864
Objectives:
1. To learn the basic issues and candidates in the
Presidential election of 1864.
2. To understand how the fall of Atlanta acted as
a turning point in the 1864 election.
3. To understand the significance of the 1864 election
in the continued prosecution of the Civil War.
Lesson Activities:
Activity 1
Tell your students that you are taking a poll for
an upcoming Presidential election (don't mention the
Civil War to them yet). Give them the following two
candidate profiles and let them vote for the candidate
they think is most likely to win.
Candidate 1
This candidate is the incumbent. He is a lawyer and
former Congressman. His election four years ago brought
on a war that the country has been fighting ever since.
The war is not going well but he is determined to
keep fighting until one side or the other has won.
If your country wins, he has no plans to punish your
enemy, but instead wants to help them recover economic
stability as soon as possible. He is strongly in favor
of civil rights.
Candidate 2
This candidate was the general commanding your forces
in this war until Candidate 1 dismissed him. He was
very popular with your troops and many people say
that if he were still in command the war would not
be going so badly. Still, he is campaigning on a peace
platform. If he wins, his party wants to negotiate
a truce with your enemy and stop the war. He is not
against civil rights, but he is not as strongly in
favor of it as Candidate 1.
Now tell your students that you just heard some
important news. Your country has just won a big battle
and it looks like you could win this war after all.
Ask them if they would consider changing their vote.
Candidate 1 is Abraham Lincoln as many people saw
him in the summer of 1864. Republicans in his own
party thought that he was not prosecuting the war
vigorously enough. His opponent in the 1864 Presidential
race was Peace Democrat George McClellan. The Peace
Democrats wanted to negotiate peace with the Confederacy
and end the war. The summer of 1864 was one of the
darkest seasons of Lincoln's presidency - the war
was not going well and he was at odds with Congress
over Reconstruction policy. Lincoln wanted a lenient
policy that would reintegrate the Confederate states
into the Union as quickly as possible.
On August 23, 1864 Lincoln wrote in 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 cooperate with the President-elect
as to save the Union between the election and the
inauguration; as he will have secured his election
on such grounds that he cannot possibly save it afterwards."
The fall of Atlanta in September 1864 changed the
political picture overnight. Headlines blazoned the
news across the North. Dissidents within the Republican
party abandoned plans to nominate an alternate Republican
candidate and threw their political clout into the
effort to defeat McClellan. When the election was
held only two months later, Lincoln won with 212 electoral
votes, and beat McClellan by more than 500,000 popular
votes. His support was especially strong among Union
soldiers.
Activity 2
Ask your students to pretend they are in a parallel
universe where Lincoln lost the election of 1864 and
McClellan negotiated a peace with the Confederacy.
Have them write a brief encyclopedia-style article
about the Confederate States of America as it might
exist today. (They might take a current article about
the U.S.A. and alter it to fit-for example, the country
was founded in 1861, its first President was Jefferson
Davis, its capitol is Richmond, Virginia…)
Discuss the issue of civil rights. If the Confederacy
had become a separate country, would slavery still
be legal there today? Why or why not?
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