When Lincoln Faced Defeat: The Uneasy Year That Shaped the Union

On this episode of Our American Stories, by the start of 1864, the Civil War had dragged the country into exhaustion. Union armies faced setback after setback, and Lincoln watched public confidence slip as the Confederacy pressed its advantage. The outcome of the presidential election during wartime hung on the direction of the fighting, which turned the battlefield into a measure of Lincoln’s strength. Charles Bracelen Flood revisits this uneasy year, when the fate of the Union and the presidency moved together through uncertainty that reached from the front lines to the White House. We’d like to thank the Library of Congress for originally hosting this audio.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. Up next, the
story about a consequential year and a consequential man. Here's
the late historian Charles Braslin Flood to tell the story
of eighteen sixty four and Abraham Lincoln.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
On that New Year's Day of eighteen sixty four, the
Civil War had been going on for thirty three months,
on its way to being what is the bloodiest.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
War in American history to date.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
In November of eighteen sixty four, there would be a
presidential election.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
It was going to be a referendum on the war.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
In hindsight, it's easy to say that, of course Lincoln
was re elected and the North won the war, but
there were an endless number of times during eighteen sixty
four when it did not look that way. Please remember
that military success or failure was inextricably linked with what
would be Lincoln's political success or failure. Four days before

(01:02):
the Baltimore political Convention in early June that nominated Lincoln
to run for a second term, Ulysses S. Grant presided
over a military disaster. His forces had been taking terrible
casualties as they moved south against Roberty Lee through the
battles of the Wilderness and Spotsylvania. Now he started one
of the largest attacks of the war at a place in.

Speaker 3 (01:23):
Virginia called Cold Harbor.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Grant had one hundred eight thousand men and threw them
straight at Lee, whose fifty nine thousand men were well entrenched.
In the first hour, and some say even within the
first twenty minutes, seven thousand of Grant's men were killed
or wounded. With the Union attack repulsed and nothing gained,
but the bad news went on for many more weeks.
At one point Grant had lost more than forty thousand

(01:48):
men in thirty days, and that figure grew to his
having lost sixty thousand men in forty five days, sixty
thousand men dead and wounded to advance sixty miles. Also
during that time, Uble Early once again erupted from the
Shenandoah Valley. He led a massive raid that brought a
force of twelve thousand men right to the edge of
Washington's fortifications, five miles from the White House. Lincoln and

(02:12):
Mary went out to Fort Stephens, the focal point of
the attack. At one moment, the Confederate advance came to
within one hundred and ten yards of the fort. Foolishly, Lincoln,
wearing a stovepipe hat that made him a target seven
feet high, climbed right up on the parapet in the open.
Some Confederate snipers positioned a few hundred yards away started

(02:32):
firing at him, missing him but wounding with a ricochet
an officer who was standing.

Speaker 3 (02:37):
Just below the parapet.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
It's worth mentioning that this is the only time that
an American president has been under enemy fire while serving
in office. All of this news frightful Union casualties throughout
northern Virginia and Confederate striking at the Capitol, which was
coupled with bad news from Georgia. As William To comes
to Sherman slowly struggled towards Atlanta on the Southern Front.

(03:01):
That coincided with half true rumors of peace feelers going
back and forth between North and South. The northern public
was increasingly confused and disappointed in Lincoln and his administration.
Much of the press was coming out against Lincoln. Even
his own advisers were warning him that the tide is
turning against us. The Union's economy was intertwined with all

(03:23):
this speculation and gold in New York City indicated fears
that the North financial structure might collapse. The national debt
was at its highest, the public credit was at its lowest,
and the Treasury was running out of money paying for
a war that appeared to be at a stalemate. In
foreign business dealings involving valuations of the dollar, it dropped

(03:43):
to a new wartime low of thirty seven cents. Prosperous
Republicans who wanted Lincoln to be reelected were nonetheless getting
rid of Greenback's by buying land. They were doing that
on the theory that land would still have value even
if the Democrats were elected and decided to repudiate federal
government securities right down to leaving the dollar worthless. On

(04:05):
August twenty third, Lincoln involved himself in an extraordinary act
that demonstrated.

Speaker 3 (04:10):
His belief that he would lose the election.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
When the members of his cabinet assembled for one of
their Tuesday afternoon meetings, they found Lincoln asking each of
them to sign without knowing what it said the back
of a folded over and sealed document, what Lincoln had
written that morning, what they could not see, and what
he was asking him to endorse. Sight unseen by placing
their signatures on It was this statement this morning, as

(04:36):
for some days past, it seems exceedingly unlikely that this
administration will 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. And
though he was pledging himself and his cabinet to make
an orderly transition to what he thought was going to

(04:56):
be McClellan and a democratic administration. So if anybody tells
you that by eighteen sixty four Union victory or Lincoln's
reelection was in the bag, I would respectfully refer them
to Lincoln's own estimate of the situation. He remained determined
to do everything he could. He backed Grant and his
other generals to the hilt, but speaking to a radical Republican,

(05:18):
he told the man, you think I don't know. I
am going to be beaten what I do, and unless
some great change takes place, badly beaten. A week after
Lincoln said that, Sherman set a telegram north that read
Atlanta is ours and fairly won. Everything changed there. It

(05:39):
was the news bringing the hope that so many in
the North had lost even the most ardent Confederates saw
this as the enormous strategic victory that the Union had won. Atlanta,
the south second most important city after Richmond, dead center
in what had.

Speaker 3 (05:54):
Been Confederate territory, had fallen.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
There were still nine weeks until the election, but everything
began to go Lincoln's way. He was re elected in
an electoral college landslide, not so decisive in the popular vote,
which came in with Lincoln winning by four hundred thousand
out of four million cast. There was yet another exceedingly
important factor in play, and I have to say that

(06:18):
a number of studies I think have not given this
quite enough attention. That was the military vote. Here you
had close to a million young men from families of
different political persuasions. Many of these soldiers were being shot
at every day. No one could be sure that they
would vote to continue a war in which so many
of their comrades were being killed and maimed. It's worth

(06:41):
noting that in the military vote, ballots cast by soldiers
who knew they were continuing, they were voting to continue
risking their lives.

Speaker 3 (06:50):
He triumphed by.

Speaker 2 (06:51):
Three to one, and on Christmas Day of eighteen sixty four,
Lincoln read another telegram from Sherman which said, I beg
to present you as a Christmas gift the city of
Savannah with one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty
of ammunition, and also about twenty five thousand bales of cotton.

Speaker 3 (07:09):
So as eighteen sixty.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
Four ended, the war was at last winding down in
thirteen more weeks Robert E. Lee, which surrendered a grant
at Appomatox Courthouse. Seventeen days after that, Lee's West Point
classmate Joseph E. Johnston, which surrendered the Confederacy's other sizable forces.

Speaker 3 (07:26):
To Sherman in North Carolina.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
Between those two surrenders, John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln
in Washington on April fourteenth, eighteen sixty five. At the
end of my book, I look ahead of those events
of eighteen sixty five, but my detailed treatment ends where
it began with the White House New Year's Day reception
of eighteen sixty five. And here again is the essential Lincoln,

(07:50):
the ultimate politician who nevertheless transcended the political strife, the
indispensable man who appeared in our nation's convulsive hour, the
resolute figure who proved that character is destiny. At this reception,
a nurse who served with the Union Army, Ada Smith,
had come by herself to the White House to pass
through the long receiving line and wish the President well.

(08:14):
As she came through the door, she recognized a crippled
lieutenant named Gosper, who had lost a leg and was
hobbling forward on crutches as he made his way to
the East Room in the fighting around Petersburg earlier in
the year. Ada had been his nurse when he was
brought in with his right leg shot off, and they
became friends during the time she cared for him. They

(08:34):
greeted each other and joined the line of hundreds that
wound around the East room, waiting to shake hands with Lincoln.

Speaker 3 (08:41):
Who had married beside him.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
From where he stood, Lincoln saw Gosper. He broke away
from his place and came striding from the other side of.

Speaker 3 (08:49):
The big East Room to greet him.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
He took Gosper's hand, and what Ada remembered as and
I quote a voice unforgettable, said God bless you, my boy.
As they left, Gosper said to her, I'd lose another
leg for a man like that, and.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
A special thanks to Charles Breslin, flood this audios from
the US National Archives, and we thanked them for it.
The story of eighteen sixty four, a consequential time for
our nation when we were perhaps never more divided, and
how Abraham Lincoln rose to the occasion. That story here
on our American Stories