In this election week, it’s appropriate to look at the election of two US presidents: Abraham Lincoln and Grover Cleveland. November 8, 1864 marked Lincoln’s re-election for a second term, while November 8, 1892 saw Cleveland elected.
The 1864 US Presidential Election was the twentieth quadrennial presidential election and noteworthy for even occurring during the midst of the Civil War. Incumbent president Abraham Lincoln of the National Union Party easily defeated Democratic nominee George B. McClellan by a wide margin of 212 to 21 in the electoral college, with 55% of the popular vote. War Democrat Andrew Johnson of Tennessee was selected as Lincoln’s running mate.
The Democratic party was divided between the Copperheads, who favored immediate peace with the Confederacy, and the War Democrats who supported the war. McClellan, a War Democrat, was nominated by the party, along with running mate George H. Pendleton. The Democrats adopted a platform advocating peace with the Confederacy (which McClellan rejected, although Pendleton had actually written the platform). While the Confederacy seemed it would survive in the summer of 1864, it was visibly collapsing by election day.
Despite his early fears, Lincoln won strong majorities in the popular and electoral vote, “partly as a result of the recent Union victory at the Battle of Atlanta.” Lincoln’s re-election ensured he would preside over a successful conclusion of the Civil War. It also made him the first president since Andrew Jackson in 1832 to win re-election, as well as the first Northern president to ever win re-election.
The 1892 US Presidential Election was the 27th quadrennial presidential election. In the fourth rematch in American history, former president Grover Cleveland defeated the Republican incumbent President Benjamin Harrison. Cleveland’s victory made him the first president in American history to be elected to a non-consecutive second term. This was also the first of two occasions where an incumbent was defeated in consecutive elections. To date, it is the only election in which both major party nominees had served as president (discounting Roosevelt’s Progressive candidacy in 1912).
This election also marked the first time a Republican candidate lost re-election, and Harrison’s loss was the second time an elected president lost the popular vote (the first was John Quincy Adams in the 1820s). Cleveland also defeated David B. Hill and Horace Boies on the first presidential ballot of the Democratic National Convention of 1892, making him both the first presidential candidate and the first Democrat to win his party’s presidential nomination in three elections.
A new party, the Populist Party, elected James B. Weaver of Iowa as their candidate. Cleveland swept the Solid South, and won several key swing states, “taking a majority of the electoral vote and a plurality of the electoral vote.” Weaver won 8.6% of the popular vote and managed to win over several Western states, while Harrison swept the Northern states. After this, the Democrats did not win another presidential election until 1912.
Depending on when your characters were alive, they’d have followed either of these elections with some interest, as each marked important milestones in the American election process. These elections would give an author many interesting background facts to include in a novel, assuming the dates matched up with the story.
J.E.S. Hays
www.jeshays.com
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