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1864 Democratic Party Platform Donald Bruce Johnson, comp., National Party Platforms (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 1:34–35. Perhaps one of the most interesting points about the 1864 election is that it occurred at all. In the midst of the national civil war, the constitutional requirement for calendared elections remained a value of Americans, and they adhered to its requirements. With southerners out of the Union, the Democratic Party acted throughout the war as a loyal opposition to the decisions and actions of President Abraham Lincoln’s administration and the Republicancontrolled House of Representatives and Senate. One of the hidden strengths of the Union versus the so-called Confederacy was the continuance of two-party politics even during the war years. Two-party politics meant accountability; the Democrat minority challenged the Republicans to justify and explain all of their actions and decisions and, thus, the Republicans and the administration could not enact just anything because of the criticism and presence of the second political party. That said, the 1864 Democratic Party platform did not help their cause tap into the warweariness that existed in the North and Midwest by the summer and fall of 1864. This “peace platform,” based on its second plank that demanded “that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view of an ultimate convention of the States, or other peaceable means, to the end that, at the earliest practicable moment, peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal Union of the States,” went too far for most of the voters in the Union, who though wishing for the war’s end were equally committed to seeing the war completed and won— not compromised with the southerners who had started the conflict. For their presidential nominee the Democratic Party chose ex-Union army General George McClellan of New Jersey, and for his running mate the convention chose Congressman George Pendleton of Ohio. McClelland campaigned against this party platform that placed peace above Union Documentary History of the American Civil War Era 130 and that implicitly supported slavery in the phrase “to preserve the Federal Union and the rights of the States unimpaired.” McClellan hoped to carry the vote of the soldiers in the ranks; but, by large numbers, the soldiers supported Lincoln. In the November general election, McClellan carried only his home state of New Jersey, and the states of Delaware, and Kentucky as the country rejected the Peace Democratic Party platform and McClellan. Resolved, That in the future, as in the past, we will adhere with unswerving fidelity to the Union under the Constitution as the only solid foundation of our strength, security, and happiness as a people, and as a framework of government equally conducive to the welfare and prosperity of all the States, both Northern and Southern. Resolved, That this convention does explicitly declare, as the sense of the American people, that after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war, during which, under the pretense of a military necessity of warpower higher than the Constitution, the Constitution itself has been disregarded in every part, and public liberty and private right alike trodden down, and the material prosperity of the country essentially impaired, justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities, with a view of an ultimate convention of the States, or other peaceable means, to the end that, at the earliest practicable moment, peace may be restored on the basis of the Federal Union of the States. Resolved, That the direct interference of the military authorities of the United States in the recent elections held in Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and Delaware was a shameful violation of the Constitution, and a repetition of such acts in the approaching election will be held as revolutionary, and resisted with all the means and power under our control. Resolved, That the aim and object of the Democratic party is to preserve the Federal Union and the rights of the States unimpaired, and they hereby declare that they consider that the administrative usurpation of extraordinary and dangerous powers not granted by the Constitution—the subversion of the civil by military law in States not in insurrection; the arbitrary military arrest, imprisonment , trial, and sentence of American citizens in States where civil law exists in full force; the suppression of freedom of speech and of the press; the denial of the right of asylum; the open...

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