what if lincoln had not been re-elected?

hurryuphill

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(President George Mcclellan probably would have been late to his own inaugural. )
would the new president continue the war or seek a negotiated peace?
 
A key factor in McClellan's election is that Lincoln would remain as president until March 4, 1865. Lincoln would have pulled out all the stops to finish the war by then. And if it wasn't finished, McClellan was not fool enough to negotiate a peace when the war was so close to won.

Although a McClellan victory would have meant that the voters were heartily fed up with the war, Americans have not been satisfied with leaving a fight in a draw.

Just a thought.

Ole
 
Too many factors to really understand the long-term consequences. For instance, it would depend greatly on the makeup of the house and senate. If the Democrats could have captured a majority in those bodies, then "Reconstruction" would have looked quite different.

More facts are needed for the what-if. Why did Lincoln lose? Because Atlanta and Mobile didn't fall? Those might have more consequences than a McClellan victory.

I agree with Ole that McClellan would not have ended the war on the terms the Peace Democrats (and the Democratic party platform) contemplated: reunion with a withdrawal of emancipation. McClellan could not "sell out" the sacrifices of the soldiers and simply make peace with the Confederacy. Of course, even the Democratic Platform called for peace with reunion, not separation, which left McClellan something of an out since the South, by that point, would not agree to reunion. The more troubling part of the Democratic Platform is that it called for an immediate cease fire. If McClellan won, Davis was canny enough to immediately call for such cease fire to put pressure on Lincoln to accept, since a cease fire meant a practical end to the war and thus some kind of Southern independence.

One effect of McClellan election would possibly be less demoralization and thus fewer desertions among the Army of Northern Virginia. But since we do not know how much of the desertion problem was caused by Sherman's march and how much by Lincoln's reelection, it is hard to quantify this, either.

A last thought: McClellan was opposed to emancipation so even if he finished prosecuting the war, one wonders if he would have withdrawn the Emancipation Proclamation in order to, as he would have ssen it, further remove the props holding up the dying Confederacy. The ramifications of that are too far-reaching to even contemplate.
 
What if Lincoln had not been reelected?

Concerning the war itself, not much would have changed. Lincoln was determined to win the war, before he left office, with or without McClellan's assistance.
Sherman would have blazed a trail directly to Va. in a much shorter time, than he did in fact, if Lincoln and Grant demanded. By the time McClellan assumed office the war would to all intents and purposes, would have been over, and little mac, would sooner stab his politician frineds in the back rather than his soldiers.
Post-war is murky, because it would depend more upon the make-up of Congress than McClellan. If there were enough hard war men in Congress, there would be a terrific 'dust up' over slavery, the 13th Amendment and Reconstruction.


P.S. IMO, McClellan would have no problem with emancipation, except he might try to get some compensation for slave owners (not likely to be successful, even if war weary , northerners would be unlikely to support paying slaveowners for slaves they had lost during a war they, the slaveowners, fought to save) he would probably not have supported the 13th Or the 14th and 15th, passage depending upon their support in Congress as they did in real life. The concept of 'Reconstruction' would be an anathama to him, I think and fought it tooth and nail. But, again, it would depend on the make-up of Congress.

P.P.S. And depending on the Makeup of Congress, McClellan (with his rigid personality and hatred of All Politicians) could have been much more likely And easier to Impeach.
 
Victory

By election day, everyone knew the union was winning the war. Remember, McClellan actually ran against his own parties platform during the 1864 race. He was a War Democrat and would have pressed the war home until victory in 1865...
 
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