Copperheads Attempt Election Manipulation Through Peace Platform and Confederate Conspiracy While Deploying Racist Propaganda

The 1864 presidential election takes place near the war’s end with incumbent President Abraham Lincoln of the National Union Party facing Democratic nominee former General George B. McClellan. The Democratic Party is deeply divided between Copperheads (Peace Democrats) who favor immediate peace with the Confederacy and War Democrats who support continuing the conflict. The convention nominates McClellan, a War Democrat who supports fighting to restore the Union, but the platform committee controlled by Peace Democrats—led by notorious Copperhead Clement Laird Vallandigham of Ohio—adopts a platform declaring the war a failure and advocating immediate peace, creating a disastrous contradiction. McClellan repudiates the peace plank but cannot escape association with it, alienating both factions. Reports abound of conspiracies between Peace Democrats and the Confederate government to manipulate the election, including a plan financed with $500,000 in Confederate dollars to raise an insurrection among western Copperheads aimed at creating a western confederacy. Democratic promoters deploy groundless racist propaganda, arguing that abolition would cause nationwide social upheaval and spreading false claims that Lincoln supports “miscegenation” (the derogatory contemporary term for interracial mixing), believing such rumors will isolate Lincoln from racist Northern whites.

Lincoln himself worries about reelection chances and fears that if McClellan wins, Copperheads will pressure him to abandon his campaign promise to continue the war, potentially handing victory to the Confederacy through negotiation rather than military defeat. Lincoln makes his Cabinet secretly promise to cooperate with McClellan if he wins to secure Union victory before inauguration. The political situation transforms dramatically when Sherman captures Atlanta on September 3, the day after the Democratic convention ends—the military victory undermines the “war failure” plank and shifts momentum decisively toward Lincoln. Union soldiers, who might have supported their former commander McClellan, cannot abide the Copperhead company he keeps or the war failure platform, even though McClellan repudiated it, leading to overwhelming military vote for Lincoln. Lincoln wins decisively with 212 electoral votes to McClellan’s 21 and 55 percent of the popular vote, though the combined Democratic total represents significant opposition even as Union victory approaches.

The 1864 election exemplifies attempted electoral manipulation through multiple channels simultaneously: Confederate financing of domestic insurgency, racist propaganda designed to inflame white supremacist fears, and a deliberate platform contradiction intended to appeal to different constituencies while maintaining plausible deniability. The Copperhead strategy of declaring the war a failure while nominating a general committed to winning it represents cynical political calculation prioritizing electoral advantage over policy coherence or honesty. The Confederate financial support for domestic insurrection reveals active enemy involvement in American electoral processes, constituting treason by Peace Democrats who coordinate with the Confederacy to undermine Union war efforts through political rather than military means. The racist propaganda campaign—falsely claiming Lincoln supports miscegenation—demonstrates how fabricated threats can be weaponized to manipulate voters through fear and prejudice rather than substantive policy debate. The episode shows democracy’s vulnerability during wartime when a major party faction prioritizes partisan advantage or ideological commitment (peace at any price) over national survival, willing to collaborate with enemies and deploy dishonest propaganda to achieve electoral success. The military vote’s rejection of McClellan despite his popularity reveals how soldiers directly experiencing war’s costs see through political manipulation, recognizing that the Copperhead peace platform constitutes betrayal of their sacrifice regardless of the nominee’s personal position.