Judging Lincoln

6. A View from the Field: The Soldiers’ Vote for Abraham Lincoln’s Reelection

6 A View from the Field: The Soldiers’ Vote for Abraham Lincoln’s Reelection T  campaign of  occurred during a particularly troubled time. In fact, no election in history ever took place at a worse time. The nation had been entangled for three years in a bitter civil war. The growing dissent against an unpopular conscription policy, combined with growing public uneasiness over broadening the goal of victory to include emancipation, triggered draft riots and desertions that suggested a crumbling of national unity. Casualty lists in  far exceeded those in previous years. Many wanted peace at any price. Critics, particularly Peace Democrats, attacked President Lincoln for seeming to change the war’s aim from union sovereignty to emancipation. It was almost a miracle that the  election was held at all. And crucial to its outcome would be whether the soldiers in the field would be allowed to vote and whom they would support. This is the story of the overwhelming support given to Lincoln over his Democratic opponent, Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, by the same soldiers who had served under McClellan in the Army of the Potomac. It would take something powerful for many of these soldiers to forego their deep loyalty  Reprinted with permission of the publisher from A View from the Field: The Soldiers’ Vote for Abraham Lincoln ’s Re-Election (Redlands, Calif.: Lincoln Memorial Shrine, ). ©  Lincoln Memorial Shrine. This lecture was presented at the sixty-eighth annual Watchorn Lincoln dinner at the Lincoln Shrine on February , , in Redlands and was published as a monograph later that year. I am especially grateful to William C. Davis for making available his original source material for his Lincoln’s Men: How President Lincoln Became Father to an Army and a Nation. I am also grateful to Harold Holzer, William D. Pederson, and David E. Long for their close reading of the manuscript. They offered invaluable suggestions. Thanks also to John Y. Simon, Stephen B. Oates, Peter Harrington, Marilyn Hopkins, David M. Rich, and Donna Petorella, who assisted in various and essential ways. Finally, I acknowledge and thank Larry E. Burgess and Don McCue, along with their committee of the Lincoln Memorial Shrine, for the chance to present a version of this essay. A View from the Field to “Little Mac.” The bond between McClellan and his men has no comparable situation in American history. John Pershing, Douglas MacArthur, Dwight Eisenhower, George Washington—none was as widely and wildly loved by his troops as was McClellan. Something like a familial bond, leaning toward the spiritual and even the mystical, bound them to their former commander. Why did this bond exist? Was it because McClellan drilled them and developed an esprit de corps? Or were they grateful that he did not throw them into combat and risk their lives? Perhaps it was simply because he took a proprietary interest. “The Army of the Potomac is my army as much as any army ever belonged to the man that created it,” he would later say.1 He deliberately identified with “his” men. McClellan never forgot the hold that Gen. Win- field Scott had over his troops during the war with Mexico. To him, the morale of the soldiers and officers was directly related to the confidence they had in their commanding general. McClellan had linked morale so directly to his own popularity that this characteristic became even more important than military ability. He set out to be as familiar a figure among the men in the ranks as their company commanders. Gen. John Gibbon recalled when McClellan shook an enlisted man’s hand and congratulated him on the fight his brigade had just made. In no time at all, the news of it had swept to the entire brigade.2 That is why McClellan was potentially the most dangerous military leader in American history. I think he is the only commander since independence who might actually have been able to mount a military takeover of the government without having the bulk of his army turn against him—at least in late . It is therefore incredible that more than  percent of these same soldiers would vote for his opponent in . Why did they reject McClellan? Lincoln’s leadership style and campaign savvy require analysis. Lincoln’s Realistic Leadership One of Lincoln’s assets was that he knew his limitations. He had a realistic view about the sweeping forces of the time, saying bluntly that he had not controlled events but...